Prey (1977 film)

Did You Know?

• Plans for a sequel titled Human Prey were abandoned due to the original film's limited distribution.
• The film's pet parrot is named Wally.

Plot

A shape-shifting alien named Kator lands in the English countryside as the vanguard of an invasion force, tasked with assessing humans as a food source. He kills a couple, Anderson and Sandy, and assumes Anderson's appearance. Calling himself Anders, he encounters Jessica-Ann and Josephine, a lesbian couple living in a secluded manor house. Jessica inherited the property from her Canadian parents, but Jo is the dominant partner, possessive and suspicious of men.

Jessica's boyfriend Simon has disappeared. The women are vegetarians and keep chickens and a pet parrot. Kator feigns an injured leg and is taken in, causing tension: Jessica welcomes him, while Jo resents his presence and suggests he is an escapee from a psychiatric hospital. Returning to the murder scene, Kator kills and partly devours two policemen investigating the abandoned car.

Jessica finds a knife and bloodstained clothes belonging to Simon in a spare bedroom, realizing Jo murdered him. The next morning, Jo finds the chickens slaughtered and blames a fox, setting traps and hunting with a rifle. Kator kills the fox alone and presents it as a trophy. A champagne party follows, where Jo dresses Kator in drag.

During hide-and-seek, Kator's predatory nature emerges. Jo discovers the fox carcass stripped bare and warns Jessica, who angrily reveals she knows about Simon's murder.

Themes

Critics have identified Prey as a vehicle for commentary on sexism, love, adultery, betrayal, and racism within a horror framework. Steve Chibnall calls it a dark Darwinian fable that offers a serious discourse on the predatory nature of masculinity. Leon Hunt analyzes the conflict of gender roles, arguing that the film depicts country houses as sites of dangerous female sexuality—bisexual or lesbian, unstable, murderous, and castrating—and considers the film misogynistic.

Jo's sexuality is contrasted with Kator's carnivorous masculinity, which grows from the natural play between hunter and prey. Hunt notes that Kator, though a predator, is not invulnerable; his near-drowning represents a threatening immersion in the feminine. The vegetarian women are herbivores who fall victim to Kator, making Prey a competing carnivore movie whose aim is gender restoration. Jeremy Heilman sees Kator as a blunt metaphor for the threat men pose to lesbian relationships.

The film has been compared to D. H. Lawrence's novella The Fox, sharing elements such as the enclosed world of a chicken farm, homoerotic seclusion threatened by a fox and a male stranger, and heterosexual temptation. Ian Cooper suggests the film also pastiches José Ramón Larraz's Vampyres.

Production

The story was conceived by Terry Marcel and David Wimbury and developed by Quinn Donoghue. Marcel pitched it to Norman J. Warren in early May 1977, and Warren agreed to direct. The film was made on a budget of about £50,000 in deferred payments and £3,000 cash. Warren shot it in ten days starting 23 May, with three weeks for pre-production.

The cast came from CCA Management, which also invested in the film. Glory Annen made her film debut; she and Barry Stokes later appeared in Outer Touch. Some cast members were not professional actors: Sandy Chinney was the girlfriend of the second assistant director, and the two girls in the final scene were Marcel's daughters. Due to budget constraints, some actors supplied their own costumes.

Filming took place on the wooded backlot of Shepperton Studios on the River Ash, with a bridge that had appeared in Dr. Terror's House of Horrors. Production designer Hayden Pearce secured the manor house in Littleton Park for the women's home. The crew redecorated rooms using items from the studio's prop store, resulting in a mixture of decors that Warren felt helped create the right atmosphere.

Release and reception

Supreme distributed Prey in the UK. Cuts to Kator's killing of Jessica were required for an X certificate, granted on 2 November 1977. In London, it screened as a double feature with Charley One-Eye. It was re-rated 18 for its first home video release in 1986.

Tom Milne of the Monthly Film Bulletin noted the film's pleasantly outrageous theme and attractive settings and photography, with very creditable performances. Kim Newman described it as the most minimal of Warren's exploitation films and among the strangest British movies, playing like a reverse spoof treated with solemnity. Jeremy Heilman praised it as a solid B movie effort, slyly humorous and disturbing, more character-driven than typical sci-fi horror, but criticized the cinematography and editing, particularly the prolonged drowning scene.

Kevin Lyons of the British Film Institute called the drowning sequence excruciating but judged the film a nicely claustrophobic melodrama and an overlooked British sci-fi horror of the 1970s.