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Prey
[Blu-ray]
Blu-ray B - United Kingdom - 88 Films Review written by and copyright: Eric Cotenas (24th September 2025). |
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The Film
 One night, an alien ship comes into Earth's orbit and alien Kator beams down into the middle of the English countryside. The bear-faced alien brutally murders a necking couple and takes over the body of the man Anderson (Enemy Mine's Barry Stokes,) and presents himself as a wounded, disoriented stranger to the residents of a nearby sprawling estate: young Jessica (Felicity's Glory Annen,) and her older companion Josephine (Vampyres' Sally Faulkner,). Jessica is sympathetic and even intrigued by the stranger, but Josephine is repelled by him yet too dismissive to take his odd behavior beyond face value ("He's no weirder than any other man"). Growing jealous over Jessica's infatuation with Anderson, Josephine welcomes the man to stay if only to show him up to Jessica as nothing more than an animal. As Anderson fails to rise to her bait, Josephine becomes increasingly frustrated and less credible to Jessica as she becomes the one to insist that there is something wrong with the man; instead, Jessica starts to suspect that Josephine may have been behind the mysterious disappearance of their last male visitor. While Anderson has unknowingly become part of a psychosexual triangle, the women do not realize that his only real interest in is finding a food source that is "high in protein and easy prey." A decade before Stuart Gordon's From Beyond, British-accented aliens discovered humans are easy Prey in Norman Warren's lesbian gore sci-fi chamber piece. Predating the trendsetting Alien, Warren's film has been likened to a sexed-up exploitation version of D.H. Lawrence's novel "The Fox" – previously adapted by Mark Rydell in 1967 – but it also feels somewhere between Harry Bromley Davenport's later tits and gore British sci-fi flick Xtro and Jose Ramon Larraz's Symptoms. Although shot on a very low budget with a minimum of special effects, and only three principals on a Shepperton Studio backlot including interiors from the house also scene in many an Amicus production – stuntmen Gerry Crampton (Raw Meat) and Eddie Stacey (Eat the Rich) turn up briefly as two policemen to provide a couple more victims – Prey holds interest not because of the nudity and gore but because the script provides enough for the human characters to work with in order for them to be more than inevitable victims, immersing the viewer in the love triangle that Josephine and Jessica believe they are in with the alien until the sticky climax. Faulkner and Annen play well off of each other, and Stokes' emotionless performance is also very effective when playing off the other two, especially during a scene where Josephine dresses him up as a woman in an attempt to mock and humiliate him (Stokes previously found himself in the middle of a tense, sexually-tinged relationship between a stepmother and stepdaughter in the Spanish giallo The Corruption of Chris Miller). Warren's earlier Satan's Slave had previously combined a Gothic setting with modern sex and gore. After his next film Terror – a homage to Dario Argento's Suspiria only in the sense that it was a series of supernatural stalk-and-kill set-pieces – Warren dabbled with sci-fi again with the sex comedy Spaced Out (also featuring Stokes) and then the Alien-concurrent gore flick Inseminoid. The film was released in Italy as "Terror in Amityville Park: The Mystery of the Sphinx" reportedly with exclusive footage. 
Video
Given scant theatrical release in the U.K. as the bottom half of a double bill, Prey suffered heavy cuts for its X-Certificate release of nearly eight minutes which carried over to the Vampix pre-cert VHS and the subsequent BBFC 18-certificate VHS releases. When Anchor Bay's U.K. arm released the film as part of its The Norman J. Warren coffin box set, it was in the form of a cropped tape master that actually ran about four minutes longer but was still shy of the original running time which would be eighty-two minutes at PAL speed, and that same video master was carried over stateside to DVD from Image Entertainment and then Koch Lorber when each of them had distribution deals with Redemption Films, and then back to the U.K. when Odeon put out a double feature DVD with Satan's Slave. Prey got its uncut debut on Blu-ray/DVD combo in 2018 via Vinegar Syndrome working from the same 2K restoration that Powerhouse Films would put out in their Indicator Bloody Terror: The Shocking Cinema of Norman J. Warren 1976-1987 box set in 2019 (followed by a single-disc release in 2021). 88 Films' 1080p24 MPEG-4 AVC 1.66:1 widescreen Blu-ray presentation ends with Vinegar Syndrome logo so it appears they have used their master rather than whatever came direct from Euro London's rights owners. The 1.66:1 transfer restores information to the sides of the frame that balance out compositions and keep the opening and closing credits in the frame. Colors are slightly richer and detail is improved, although not always to the film's benefit since Stokes' prosthetic alien snout does not mesh with the rest of his skin and the dead fox now looks much more like a stuffed animal. The image is virtually spotless apart from reel change marks. 
Audio
The LPCM 2.0 mono track boasts clear dialogue, a sparse effects track, and an emphatic electronic score by Ivor Slaney (Death Ship) which was released in 2009 on CD with his score for Terror. Optional English HoH subtitles are also included. 
Extras
The Anchor Bay and Indicator releases featured a commentary by Warren moderated by Jonathan Rigby recorded in 2004 while Vinegar Syndrome included a newer track by Warren and actress Faulkner. 88 Films includes a new audio commentary by film historians Troy Howarth and Nathaniel Thompson in which they discuss the film's indebtedness to D.H. Lawrence's "The Fox" and its film adaptation, the parallel careers of Warren and Pete Walker from sexploitation to horror with different mindsets but similar results and career trajectory. In discussing the project's origins as being spearheaded by producer Terry Marcel who financed the ten-day shoot with deferred payments and favors from his industry friends including crew from the Pink Panther franchise, they discuss the idea of using the template of an existing story to learn story structure and how Prey ended up being Warren's most structured film while his follow-up Terror would be his least. They also provide background on the cast, noting their experiences in other British sexploitation films while being more than capable of carrying a dialogue-heavy film as well as discussing Warren's approach to sexuality in the context of British horror's general stodginess of the likes of Hammer in contrast to the "carnality" brought to the industry by emigres like Larraz. They also compare the film's muddied subtexts to that of Walker's films written by David McGillivray (House of Whipcord).  The disc also includes "Stephen Thrower on Prey" (33:35) in which Thrower discusses Warren's beginnings trying to get into the industry and also compares him to Walker, noting that the latter was more of a cynical businessman while Walker was more naive and did not profit from any of his hits, with Satan's Slave's distributor spottily distributing it before buying it off him and then giving it wide release. While Thrower provides more background on the film, more interesting is his discussion of the film's post-Andrea Dworkin/Valerie Solanas sexual politics and pondering the source of the film's animus towards its lesbian seperatism and hermetic existence into which it introduces a "fox in the hen house", its digs towards vegetarianism, and supposed "gotcha" moments, both noting that it is not fair to attribute this attitude to Warren since he came on late in the development with just three weeks of prep time and also taking into the constant on-set rewrites and the relative inexperience of the credited writers and whether it really intends to be a "nightmare embodiment" of its lesbian man-hater (who is ultimately proved to be right about the male interloper's "animal" or alien nature). The film's theatrical trailer (1:03) and an image gallery (3:12) are also included. 
Packaging
The first pressing includes a double-walled O-ring slipcover and booklet notes not provided for review.
Overall
Rushed together, funded with deferred payments, and shot in only ten days, Norman Warren's lesbian gore sci-fi chamber piece Prey manages to be a nasty and effective little British chiller despite or because of its muddied and somewhat backwards attitudes towards lesbianism.
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