Film Review: Prey (1978)

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SYNOPSIS:

Barry Stokes, Sally Faulkner and Glory Annan star in this horror film about an alien with a yen for human flesh. After landing his spacecraft on Earth in a remote part of Britain, an alien kills a young man, assumes his identity and shows up at the home of Jessica and her jealous lover, Josephine. Unaware that the strange light she saw in the sky is connected with the injured young man, Jessica makes a deadly mistake and invites him in. …

REVIEW:

This film was made in 1978 with the intentions of bringing a terrifying creature disguised as a human to kill his prey. It’s a shame the movie was put together with a shameful plot and just uninteresting characters. The creature comes from space and is always shown in a human form, except from when he kills his prey. The movie is a unique watch though, with two lesbian lovers shacked up in a house by themselves get visited by a stranger (Alien).

Its starts off when Jessica (Glory Annen) hears some strange sound and see’s the light of the alien’s spacecraft. Then a couple that was wondering in the woods stumbles upon the alien. This is where in movie you see how the alien takes down his victims. The alien is either a shape shifter or takes his body as he takes form of the late male victim. Then he stumbles upon a shack where he stays to transmit calls back to his mother ship.

Then you meet Josephine (Sally Faulkner) who you seem to think is a nice caring friend of Jessica. Which is totally off base later you find out she is a protective, overbearing bitch that doesn’t want to share Jessica with the world. While out walking the two girls stumble across the alien coming out of the shack. He identifies himself as Anderson, is what he heard the girl from the couple call him.

In the movie they do a good job of showing the alien doesn’t know much of anything about human life, functions, or meanings. The thing that gets me though he knows how to speak English well and knows how to count fairly fine. The movie doesn’t put together questions that you happen to want to ask through the whole movie.

Then it switches over to Jessica’s house where Josephine stays at and they two are lovers as they announce to Anderson. They begin start question Anderson about his origin, where he was heading, and his first name. Jessica mentions London so that’s where he says he was born and was heading off to. He wasn’t very creative when he created his first name choosing Anders. They were making some coffee as he waited out on their porch which he was fascinated by there pet bird. When they bring out the coffee he tries to fit in as he watches them how they use a cup and they drink.

The pet parrot that Jessica keeps is just one of the animals that Anders relies on to feed is bottomless hunger. The girls stumble across 3 dead rabbits in forest which were slain by Anders alien form. Then Josephine’s chickens fall victim to his hunger later on in the film.The movie doesn’t ever really pick up you expect it to but it stays in the house for most of the rest of the film. Anders is kind enough to kill a fox for Josephine because she believed it was what killed her chickens. For this they through a small party where they all dress up. Just when I thought the movie couldn’t get much weirder, they dress Anders up like a woman and just drink champagne. That’s not the weird part, it’s the party was thrown for the fox. Jessica bakes a cake for Josephine with a fox on top celebrating it’s death.

This is where Josephine catches onto who Anders is really maybe crazy, when she finds the fox outside skinned as he ate it for dinner. Then he stumbles across finding the relationship the two girls have is basically Jessica being kept at the house against her will as a sort of love slave. This all sort of spirals down into the feuds leading into the end of the movie. Anders becomes overstaying his welcome and then is supposed to leave when he ends up maybe adding to his dinner.
My synopsis for this movie is a poorly put together movie with a very interesting idea just not well executed. It’s an interesting watch none the less not a total waste of time as in its idea is very unique. Just another space invader movie gone wrong. I give it 2/5 stars.