Prey

A shape-shifting space alien takes the form of a handsome young man on Earth and, after violently doing what he was sent for (which we learn at the end), he finds two pretty lesbians holed-up in a rural country estate... just so he can study their daily/nightly routine... Which means that men are all the same no matter what planet they derive...

For a robotic-like Barry Stokes it's a complicated (and often risky) lesson of love and jealousy in what's an offbeat triangle within a low-budget science-fiction horror, with plenty of intended downtime...

Giving the feel that cult director Norman J. Warren's PREY is actually more of a deliberately slow-paced arthouse thriller, and, filmed in England with British actors, the acting's quite good when it really shouldn't be...

Featuring the more feminine and once straight Glory Annen (with an unseen backstory involving an ex-husband), who's given either loving/controlling kisses or dirty/frustrated looks by her shorter-haired yet equally attractive Sally Faulkner, the most fun is how the bickering couple tries figuring out this strange male visitor, who winds up like a benign, manipulated little brother of sorts...

Meanwhile the taboo exploitation gets sporadically intruded upon by what hardcore horror fans want much more of, like gruesome body count deaths by the alien, particularly while sporting full fangs, an interstellar wolfman, who, despite having plenty to watch (as a voyeur along with the intended male audience) has very little to do.

A cannibal alien from outer space on a reconnaissance mission to Earth drops in on the estate of a monied, eccentric British lesbian and her neurotic woman-child live-in girlfriend. Now how can anyone possibly go wrong starting with a premise like that? It has the feel of a Merchant-Ivory film adapted by Roger Corman (or maybe a Roger Corman film adapted by Merchant-Ivory?) As added attractions, the women are erotic and beautiful and the music, for some reason, is awfully nice in parts. A great B-movie.

Instantly watchable and delightfully cheap British sci-fi finds a male alien missionary on Earth being taken in as a house-guest by an unsuspecting separatist lesbian couple. The true fanged creature is concealed beneath a stolen body, but occasionally emerges during conflicts and feeding frenzies(and looks a bit like the titular terrors of THE BAT PEOPLE). The decidedly non-vegetarian visitor becomes caught in the middle of the womyns' peculiar psychodramas and recurring hostilities, and at one point is cross-dressed by them and finds new pleasures in the consumption of champagne....allthewhile drooling over a pet bird they have kept in a hanging cage.

This film, for all its misgivings, remains one of the more "out there" entries in the sci-fi/horror genre...a bad film, to be sure, but one recommendable for its sheer uncommonness. At least they were clearly trying for something altogether different...and they sure did succeed in that task.

5.5 out of 10 -- for decent performances and overall...erm...queerness.

Don't expect a top notch production here, by any means. But, if you allow yourself to vegetate, it's entertaining. Even better, the story, to an extent, is believable and possible.

An alien sent on an at first unknown mission lands on Earth and assumes the form of some man he comes across and kills. He's taken in by a lesbian couple, one of whom believes him to be injured. As time passes, however, she starts to want to be his lover and be taken away from her possessive lesbian lover. Said lesbian lover arrives just in time to see, after they have consummated, the alien eating her! She tries to flee, but is immediately hunted down... which leads in to the finale which reveals the alien mission: a child runs about playing as our alien reports in he has found perfect cattle stock to start raising food with!

This is a nice play on the old cliche of Mars Needs Women type of film story. And, though stories have been done where aliens come down to conquer Earth for food (Read "V.") this is, so far, the only film I've seen where they've combined the two cliches: capture Earthlings to use as cattle to reproduce to raise food. Beyond this theme, though, is where the film doesn't do as well. The direction is a bit plodding, but at least, some positive character development is given between the jealously obsessive lesbian lover losing her opposite other. The lighting is practically non-existent, so, turn up the brightness.

All in all, if you can stomach it, it's a good movie. It's not as disgusting as some flicks, of course, but, be warned there is one graphic murder (The eating scene. Who here remembers the great Continental Video release of this, where the front cover box features the alien looming over its victim, chewing on a piece of her body, and blood coating the ENTIRE cover? "THEIR HUNGER MAKES US ALL... ALIEN PREY!") and 2 strong sex scenes.

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.