Prey (1977)

Pretty Good

Just perfect...

A Disappointing Continuation

It's entirely possible that sending the audience out feeling lousy was intentional

You know the big house in the Omen (1976), the secluded stately pile in the English countryside where Ambassador Thorn and his wife intended to raise young Damien before they found out the hard way that he was the Anti-Christ? Well, that big old house was on the grounds of the now-defunct Shepperton Studios, and when cult director Norman J. Warren (fresh from a surprise hit with the slow- burning shocker Satan's Slave) found out it was free for ten days in 1977, he gathered a tiny group of actors (who wore their own clothes on camera) and technicians, and set about making a feature film in little over a week with a largely improvised piecemeal script. Actually, the story behind the making of Prey is a little more complicated than that, but this potted version of events simply underlines the freewheeling, anything-goes state of British cinema in the seventies, when apparently anyone with a few quid to spare and nerves of steel could shoot a film on loose change and have it playing in the Odeons and ABCs alongside the latest blockbusters from America in a matter of weeks. The fact that a turf accountant is mentioned in the credits for Prey tells you all you need to know, really.There's not much of a plot here - a half-man, half-canine alien called Kator / Anders lands in the British countryside on a fact- finding mission and is adopted by a lesbian couple - one slightly butch and prone to possessive hysterics, the other more feminine and submissive. Things very quickly go awry as it becomes clear that Anders / Kator isn't all he seems, chickens are killed, policeman investigating the gruesome disappearance of a motorist are butchered, a fox is found half-eaten, and it's only a matter of time before the awful truth comes out. You've probably guessed the twist already, which is understandable because the title kind of gives it away, but not only are the man-dog-alien thing's alien brethren going to kill us all, but eat us as well. Yikes!Norman J. Warren has been referred to in some quarters as the nearest British cinema's ever come to its very own Fred Olen Ray, but that pat description manages to belittle both parties. Warren was a knowledgeable craftsman and canny director, capable of performing minor miracles on the tightest of budgets, and stands nicely alongside his closest contemporary Pete Walker as one of the true 'wide boys' of seventies exploitation. If Walker offered the public unsentimental tales, however, Warren could be downright misanthropic, presenting a very dim view of humanity with his endlessly shrill and argumentative characters, skew-whiff pocket universes where an attempted rape, a bloody murder or a Suspiria- referencing set-piece lurked around every corner, and happy endings were for wimps and ten-year-old girls. He may have looked like a personable supply teacher, but there's a solid core of pitch-black nastiness at the heart of Warren's best films, and Prey is no exception. Relationships are open wounds, conversations are punctuated by recriminations and hysterics, blood (and vomit) pours off the screen and nobody emerges with any real credit. Throw in some hilariously awkward transvestism, skid row special effects, a commendably gloomy atmosphere of infinite foreboding and you've got a unique, if undeniably flawed little oddity that should please anyone with a taste for the forgotten avenues of schlock horror.A note on the performances, in particular Barry Stokes's turn as the androgynous, almost catatonic alien. Having previously hammed it up in no-budget sex comedies (something he'd do again in the Warren- directed 1979 soft-core science fiction spoof Spaced Out), Stokes proves here that he's just as comfortable with the opposite side of the exploitation coin, and he's hauntingly effective in his role. Sally Faulkner is memorable, if occasionally a touch overpowering, as the dominant half of the partnership, and the late Glory Annen (who would be reunited with Stokes in Spaced Out two years later) should, by rights, have become a legitimate film star - she certainly had the charisma, the acting chops and the looks for it, but it seems she never got the right breaks. Ivor Slaney provides the pulsating electronic score which is appropriately other-worldly and disconcerting, particularly during the genuinely nauseating scene where the three leads thrash around in a heavily polluted river in glorious slow motion - to be honest, in spite of the plentiful blood and viscera on show in certain other scenes, that's the part of Prey most likely to turn the average viewer's stomach.

An strange man named Anders (an effectively awkward and freaky performance by Barry Stokes) seeks refuge at the remote rural country cottage of bitter, man-hating, domineering lesbian Josephine (a deliciously spiky and venomous portrayal by the lovely Sally Faulkner) and her sweet, timid lover Jessica (an appealing turn by the cute Glory Annen). Unbeknownst to the ladies, Anders is really a lethal and predatory cannibalistic alien who's on a surveillance mission to find a food source for his race. Director Norman J. Warren, working from a compact and compelling script by Max Cuff, relates the arrestingly peculiar story at a slow, yet steady pace and does an expert job of creating and maintaining a tense, edgy and uncomfortable atmosphere that ultimately culminates in a grisly and terrifying conclusion with an extremely chilling last line. Moreover, Warren delivers a pleasingly abundant amount of in-your-face hideous graphic gore, tasty female nudity, and sizzling soft-core sex to further spice things up. The central narrative offers a weird and pointed critique on prim'n'proper English manners that reaches its gloriously off-center apex with a supremely uneasy and unnerving costume party sequence. The three leads all do strong work with their sharply drawn characters, with Faulkner a stand-out as the spiteful and possessive Josephine. Better still, there's no obtrusive silly humor to detract from the stark severity of the refreshingly grim and brutal horror. Derek V. Browne's fairly slick cinematography astutely nails the pervasive isolation and vulnerability of the sylvan setting while Ivor Slaney's shivery score does the spine-tingling trick. Well worth a look.

A quick peek at the IMDb trivia section teaches us that "Prey" was shot in only ten days and that most of the script actually had to be improvised during shooting. These usually aren't very good signs, especially not when the director already holds the reputation of delivering movies with a low level of quality. Norman J. Warren's other films (like "Inseminoid" and "Satan's Slave") are fun but extremely unoriginal, mainly revolving on graphic bloodshed and copious amounts gratuitous sleaze. "Prey" is exactly like that, but now he totally didn't even bother to come up with a script. The result is a bizarre and often laughable film that makes no sense whatsoever, but the whole ineptness is irresistibly charming nevertheless. The story goes like this: An alien, who goes by the name of Keator, arrives in rural England with a mission to research possible new food sources to save his whole species, but the poor sucker never makes it further than the isolated mansion of two crazed lesbians. He ends up living with them; they dress him up in women's clothing like he's their third lesbian toy-girl and together they hunt down a fox. When the poor animal is eventually dead, they celebrate it with a giant party, which is just a little over-the-top if you ask me. In the meantime, Keator – whose human name is Anders Anderson (!) – develops a more or less intimate relationship with the youngest lesbian and she slowly falls for him. For you see, she's not a real lesbian but just an insecure girl and the other is a scary dominatrix that literally forces the young girl to be her lover. It's a mad world, indeed. The whole middle-section of "Prey" is rather tedious and uneventful, and only hilariously cheesy & inept dialogs keep it tolerable to sit through. Then the climax is extremely gross and bloody with a sudden massacre. Surely the sick puppies and avid admirers of 70's exploitation will appreciate the graphic bloodshed of the finale, but it comes ridiculously abrupt, like Warren suddenly got tired of his film and wanted to end it, and it totally misfits the rest of the film's tone. "Prey" is a pretty bad but curiously intriguing 70's trash-film, inclusively intended for fans of this type of cinema.

PREY Aspect ratio: 1.37:1Sound format: MonoA lesbian couple (Sally Faulkner and Glory Annan) living in a remote country house are driven apart by the arrival of a young man (Barry Stokes) who turns out to be a flesh-eating alien, the vanguard of a massive invasion...Despite its shoestring budget and leaden pacing, Norman J. Warren's follow-up to SATAN'S SLAVE (1976) amounts to a great deal more than the sum of its meager parts, thanks to a surprisingly complex script by Max Cuff (apparently, his only writing credit): Faulkner and Annan indulge an obsessive relationship whilst living in isolated splendor within the English countryside (rendered alternately beautiful and ominous by Derek V. Browne's eye-catching cinematography), though Annan's discovery of bloodstained clothing in an upstairs room marks one (or both) of these doe-eyed lovelies as psychologically disturbed, which may explain the absence of their respective families, some of whom appear to have lived in the house at one time or another and 'left' under mysterious circumstances. Stokes' unexpected arrival throws the relationship into disarray, partly because Faulkner has a pathological hatred of men and partly because Annan is attracted to him, creating tensions which result in a climactic whirlwind of violence. There's an extraordinary, multi-layered sequence in which Faulkner attempts to 'emasculate' their clueless visitor by dressing him in women's clothing, though Stokes' alien mentality allows him to rise above the intended mockery.In the early scenes, at least, the relationship between Faulkner and Annan is depicted with uncommon grace and dignity, but this heartfelt sapphic liaison quickly devolves into crowd-pleasing episodes of sex and pulchritude, culminating in an explosion of horror when Annan allows herself to be ravished by Stokes following a violent argument with Faulkner. The closing sequences are (quite literally) gut-wrenching, especially Annan's final scene, which appears to have been clipped for censorship reasons in 1977 and never fully restored (what remains is still pretty vivid, so brace yourselves!). Excellent performances by the three leads, bolstered by Warren's unobtrusive direction, which takes full advantage of the stunning woodland locations, thereby compensating for the film's budgetary shortcomings. Originally released in the US as ALIEN PREY.