Jessica (Glory Annen) wakes in shock in the middle of the night, convinced she has seen some kind of unidentified flying object land in the woods surrounding the mansion house she lives in. The woman who shares her dwelling is Josephine (Sally Faulkner), and she is rudely awoken by her lover rushing through from her bedroom to rouse her and tell her excitedly about the experience she has just had. Josephine puts this yarn down to one of Jessica's recurring nightmares, but perhaps she had not be so dismissive as there really has been an arrival from outer space in the forest, as a nearby canoodling couple are soon to discover...
Prey, or Alien Prey if you were watching this in North America, was a low budget horror shot in a week and a half by British exploitation figure Norman J. Warren, one of his seventies renaissance movies that he made his name with after a spell directing in the sixties. Of course, not everybody was pleased to see that someone was making anything at all in the impoverished climate of the U.K. film industry, and Prey was largely dismissed as cheap nonsense, yet as the years have gone by many fans have found themselves oddly fond of this type of thing, in an indulgent, "well, at least they tried their best" kind of way.
Weirdly, the inspiration for this was evidently the sixties film version of D.H. Lawrence's The Fox, where a pair of lesbians out in the middle of nowhere encounter a mysterious man who puts the sexual cat amongst the pigeons. Or the cat amongst the sexual pigeons. Whatever, he's a disruptive influence, and so it is here when a stranger calling himself Anderson (Barry Stokes) appears in the woodland while Jessica and Josephine are taking am investigative stroll. Jessica wants to look after this chap, while Josephine is more suspicious mainly because she is very possessive of her girlfriend in a not in any way stereotyped man-hating manner.
Naturally, they are both making a mistake in allowing Anderson into their home, but Jessica thinks he is acting strangely because he's had an injury, unaware that the real reason is down to the fact he's a monster from outer space who has assumed human form. With this cunning disguise, and the name Anders Anderson (Jessica asks if he's Swedish and you half expect him to answer "No, Andersonian"), he hangs around at the women's country pile while drawing up plans to... ah, but that would be telling. Not that you'd have any trouble guessing, as when we see he takes bites out of the couple at the start and a pair of coppers investigating their disappearance.
Mostly this is a three-hander, and the rising tensions between the trio provides the meat of the drama, so much so that the horror and science fiction elements seem like an intrusion when they pop back into the narrative for the finale. Incidentally, when Anders resumes his alien form the makeup artists saw fit to give him red eyes - fine - sharp fangs - okay - and a cute little teddy bear nose - huh? If you can put that image from your mind, Warren has a few more to trouble you, from softcore love scenes between the lead actresses to the way in which just about every animal that appears ends up with its guts ripped out. By a fox? Or by Anders? That is the question that doesn't cross the mind of the couple, leaving them susceptible to danger. Add in cross dressing, hide and seek, poor swimming and a bleak ending, and you have an exercise in making the most of limited means that is undeniably diverting, leaving you pondering only why there is a credit for designer underwear when there's one pair of knickers seen in the whole film. Music by Ivor Slaney.
