Connection To THE TOXIC AVENGER - both films feature a man getting beaten with own their severed arm.
I wrote an entry about Deadly Prey, the best piece of writing in the history of the world and like an idiot I deleted it by accident whilst the middle part of that sentence might not be true it's a shame when you took some time to write something and now it's gone and you have to go through the pain of recapturing the joy that you spoke about, here is my something of an attempt at a re-write...
Fan-fucking-tastic, that is what I would use to describe this and yes it needs the unnecessary swearing in it to help describe my joy that I have finally discovered this movie, unbeknownst to me Deadly Prey in the last few years had quietly been getting a cult following - which is impressive since it's yet to see any sort of DVD release and as 1.5 million views on a You Tube upload of the movie (this could be a number of people constantly returning to it which I wouldn't be surprised about) and even recieved a sequel - Deadliest Prey - based off of this resurgence. For somebody who hasn't seen this the question is what is the appeal of this obvious First Blood knock-off?
Well the appeal besides from being bloody awesome is the fact it's 80's direct to video brilliance - cheesy dialogue with bad performances to go with it, OTT death and action scenes and a villain so trigger happy in killing his subordinates why would anybody want to work for him...
Mike Danton (Ted Prior, the brother of the director and writer of this movie David A. Prior) is a Vietnam vet, the wrong man kidnapped whilst taking out the rubbish by a group for paid mercenaries who kidnap innocent people to use in training exercises as their prey, they capture him and literally let him go int he forest and stripped to his shorts and all oiled up, the mercenaries go after him and are all killed one by one, all in cool and inventive ways such as turning a man sideways and ramming him into a tree thus breaking his back.
The First Blood comparisons are obviously the most notable but clearly stuff like The Most Dangerous Game has had an influence in their as well, Danton is probably the great unsung action hero in movie history kicking ass for the full and extremely enjoyable 90 minutes with a bunch of awesome/bad one-liners.
The ridiculousness of everything somehow comes together, there is a stupid/unintentionally funny scene where a group of mercenaries are looking and discussing to find Denton and they walk away and Denton is hidden in the trees this would work if this was not just literally over their heads and they really should have seen him but yeah it just adds to the charm. This is certainly a film I wish I had seen sooner, but now I can say I am on the Deadly Prey band-wagon. I think the fact that this film doesn't play it tongue in cheek but rather as serious works in the film's favour, I don't think it would be quite as fun.
Overall if all direct to video movies from this time period where as fun, I'd be trying to find more in this vain but alas sadly it's a diamond among the rough, see it and fall in love with it like I did.
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