User reviews

Although the plot of kidnapping humans for target practice has been done a million times before (and still is), no movie comes as close to the entertainment value of this. Here, bad army guys inadvertently kidnap Mike (unofficial middle name : Dramatic Casio Chord) Danton, a Vietnam vet played by male model Ted Prior. And after letting him loose in the forest armed with only a sawn-off pair of levi's and a particularly offensive mullet, Mike turns the tables on the most inept bunch of soldiers.

You will laugh! You will laugh again! You can feel the tension gripping you to the couch as the next bad guy positions himself into an easily ambush-able place. You will see Cameron Mitchell deliver his best speech ever. You will see tiny grenade explosions hurl people several feet through the air. You will never see a more lethal twig in your entire life or more effective camouflage from a handful of leaves. The one-man army action movies from the 80's (think along the lines of Commando/Rambo) may have been awesome at the time and despite aging, entertain today in the same way a piece of well-matured piece of cheese tastes more delectable than something eaten fresh from the dairy. Deadly Prey is no exception, the only difference being budget. And acting. And direction. But it's still something to relish. Most films like this are best enjoyed over a few beers. Here I would recommend a few crackers and a nice bottle of chardonnay to truly honour this cheesy experience. Cheers!

Wow, this an oddity, make no mistake about it. It's typical: One minute you're at your house with your lovely lady wife taking the trash outside, next you're knocked senseless by a pipe to the back of your skull. Before you know it, you're being forced to run topless and shoeless through a forest pursued by a bunch of mercenaries in a private army who are using you as training practise. Fortunately, you're more resilient than most, being an ex-military guy yourself and in an elite faction, at that. So, with your 80's blonde mullet and your abs the size of Canada, you decide to turn the tables on your pursuers by setting up all kinds of homemade traps that anyone who hasn't seen Rambo would fall into. Will you ever get out of there alive? Can you find the person responsible for your kidnap and beat seven bells out of the scumbag? And is there a way to make worms and rats over a campfire taste any better? All will be revealed (Well apart from the last one perhaps..)

Where do I start with a movie as bizarre as this? What could have been a run of the mill action film, is transformed into something else entirely thanks to the increasingly strange proceedings. Considering these are supposed to be trained soldiers, don't they get dragged into bushes and stumble over tripwires rather easily? And why the hell is the Commander sending his men to their deaths for the sake of catching just one guy? Also, what is the point in the role of the ex-police chief father-in-law of the hero? I could also bring up the unlimited supply of bullets, and the hilariously fake explosions, but that isn't what caught my attention.

No, what I want to talk about is the ending, which features much sadism and has more than one surprise death. This sudden bloodshed is combined with a wholly inappropriate love song over the credits, which makes it a very surreal experience indeed. In fact, there is almost enough weirdness here for it to qualify as a parody, if it didn't take itself so seriously.

However, in spite of all that it manages to entertain despite itself by giving us lots of juicy scenes of shootings and maimings. The death toll is extremely high too, so expect non-stop action involving everything from knives to missile-launchers. When it had finished, I didn't feel I had wasted my time, and even admired it in a way for concluding in such an uncompromising and unpredictable fashion. 5/10 from me, and certainly worth seeing..

A group of para-military mercenaries kidnap unsuspecting people off the street in order to hunt them in the forest as part of their training regimen. The mercs make a fatal mistake when they unknowingly grab 'Nam vet and Special Forces-trained tough guy Mike Danton (Ted Prior), who proceeds to lay waste to their ranks. Also featuring Cameron Mitchell as the hero's father-in-law, David Campbell and Fritz Matthews as the chief villains, Suzanne Tara as the damsel-in-distress, and Troy Donahue (!!!) as a corrupt senator.

This is firmly in the so-bad-it's-good category, with a low budget accenting the film's overly ambitious aims. Prior is a sight to behold, with his muscle physique on display for much of the film as he runs around in jean-shorts and that's it, except for the occasional small tree branch he drapes on himself as camouflage. With his blond mullet haircut and a laughable intensity, he's very entertaining, if not actually for the intended reasons. The film is very brutal, with lots of killings, a sexual assault, and some dismemberment. It's produced so ham-handedly though that it's unlikely to offend.

Mike Danton is an ex "military strong man" who has retired. One morning he is kidnapped by a mercenary-group who wants to use him for target practice. They let Danton escape through the woods, wearing nothing but his underwear so they can hunt him down and kill him. But they didn´t count on Danton to be...the DEADLY PREY. This movie made me laugh like crazy. It´s RAMBO meets SURVIVING THE GAME without a budget (or a script). The action is so badly edited and coordinated and the acting is terrible (especially Ted Prior as the pumped up Danton). Still it makes you laugh just as hard as any great comedy, though it is clearly not supposed to. I recommend it highly, for all the wrong reasons.

I would be one of the few people who owns a copy of this classic. But i dont only own 1, i actually own 2. Its THAT good.

Well, when i say good, i mean bad. But i will try to do a thorough review. I even watched 'born a ninja' which one of the other reviewers here mentioned, to compare it to this. And born a ninja is actually worse, but not quite as funny.

And is this ever funny. EVERYTHING about this movie is poor. EVERYTHING. The plot is absolutely stuffed (note the 'you'll need to keep me alive if you want to know where to find your wife'). EVERY action sequence is stuffed too. Our hero danton is more than a hero; he can stab people with twigs, take 3 bullets in the heart at 50 cm away without even bleeding, and tie a rope up to a tree which, when an enemy steps on it, ties a knot around the enemies leg, picks him up, and throws him 50 metres into a bunch of spikes.

The acting is so bad it is impossible to comment on it, but it should have you rolling, especially dantons 'jump out of the ground and growl at the bad guy'. Oh yes, and the bad guys: somehow, it seems they resurrect themselves 5 times each in the movie. Perhaps it's just that there weren't enough actors, but in a movie of this calibre? i doubt that.

The 'plot' is about how danton was a soldier in the vietnam war, and now his colonel is hunting real people for training for his mercenaries. The colonel just happens to pick up danton, then danton fights back. This is just the excuse for a rambo clone, with most of the movie being danton slaughtering soldiers. And i really cant explain the plot any more cos there is nothing else to the movie. It still rocks though.

What else could be wrong you ask? Dont get me started. Hand grenades which actually go off at the actors' feet because the explosion is the size of a match.Scenes where there are 5 people chasing danton, then the camera cuts away and back and there are 7. The way that every time danton loads the grenade launcher he is against the same background even though he is in completely diffrent locations. And the worst part is when danton pushes the plastic boulders onto the enemies, and one enemy is completely untouched by the boulders, so he doesn't know what to do so he half heartedly dies without even being touched. It's ridiculous!!!

But funny. Very, VERY funny. This is one of the few movies i can thoroughly recommend to everybody, cos if you dont find it funny, you are 1 in a million. And for the rest of us it's magic.

Back in the 80's there were lots of these, Rambo has a tremendous amount to answer for. What I mean by "These" is cheesy, testosterone fueled moronic gung-ho action flicks.

The cover says it all here, if you're looking for anything even remotely intelligent look elsewhere. This is literally 90 minutes of an ultra buff dude running around a jungle in his underwear being badass.

The "Plot" is a mercenary force who train their troops by kidnapping people off the streets, setting them off into the jungle, then hunting them. But I'm sure you see where I'm going with this, on this occasion they picked the wrong person *Insert dramatic music here*. That's right our lead is a former special forces something something, you know like they always are in every straight to VHS/DVD action movie.

The acting is dreadful, the plot is generic, it looks a combination of ugly and unintentionally hilarious and the whole movie is cringe inducing.

One for cheesy action fanatics only.

The Good:

Cheesy 80's action movie soundtrack

The Bad:

Some of the action is plain silly

Dreadful acting

SFX are laughable

Beefcake "actor" Ted Prior (brother of writer & director David A. Prior) stars as Mike Danton, a former Marine, in this B level gem. It's about as far as you can get from high art, with a whole lot of completely inept action sequences and hilariously lame performances. Obviously owing a heavy debt to that familiar old plot of "The Most Dangerous Game", it's also clearly inspired by "First Blood" and its sequels, as well as "Commando".

Colonel John Hogan (David Campbell) leads a group of mercenaries. They're hired for a gig by an unscrupulous "businessman" named Michaelson (Troy Donahue). The thing about these guys, though, is that they like to have thorough training sessions before the actual missions. So they abduct guys like Mike, and chase them through the California woods. But they've made an extremely dumb move in selecting Mike this time around, and he's going to give them what-for in a major way.

Top billed Cameron Mitchell, who plays a former cop and the father to Mikes' wife Jaimy (Suzanne Tara), is very much just here for his name value. He has little to add to the plot. Instead, the action focuses on the studly Ted P., who for much of the running time darts around in short shorts. Ted may not be Olivier, but his emoting near the end still needs to be seen to be believed. Campbell is amusing as the money hungry villain, as is Fritz Matthews as Lieutenant Thornton, his main henchman.

"Deadly Prey" can boast a steady supply of violence and a respectably high body count, but it might not be gory enough to suit some tastes.

The absolute best moment of this epic occurs between Mike and Thornton. You'll know it when you see it, and may howl with appreciative laughter.

"Deadly Prey" is deliciously daft nonsense, with an ultra corny theme song to serve as perfect accompaniment.

Seven out of 10.

Are you a man? Do you have frosted hair? Do you sleep in very short, denim cutoffs? Yes? Then this is the film for you. Because Ted Prior does.

Ted Prior posed nude in Playgirl and that worked for him because he didn't speak, didn't have any lines. Here? We are tortured by not only his bad acting but the bad acting of the rest of the cast. That's not the worst of it though. We're also subjected to bad sound, bad editing, horrible dialog and a tedious, relentless 88 minutes of men chasing other men and pretending to be blown up by low budget grenades and gun fire. But the acting isn't just bad, it's PAINFUL!

Please don't waste your time on this. Your time is valuable. We're here for such a short time. You can't waste 88 minutes on something like this. Just watch Predator if you need something like this. You can watch it in short denim cutoffs.

Fellow bad movie lovers, gather round my brethren for here there be a classic!

This is the story of evil Colonal Hogan who is utilising kidnapped innocent civilians as big game in order to train his bloodthirsty group of mercenaries. All is going fine in this cruel pursuit to until that is one day his men make the BIG mistake of kidnapping one Mike Danton who turns out to have been formally trained by Hogan and who furthermore makes Rambo look like a wimp!

Armed only with a pair of cut off shorts, his mightily muscled frame, his wits and a rather fetching mullet our man now proceeds to wipe out every single one of his hunters in a myriad of wild and wacky ways including breaking their backs against trees, impaling them with twigs(!) spearing them and setting them up in some decidedly grisly traps!

Highlights in this? Damn, so many to choose from but check out our hero's girlfriend for a start who must surely rank as one of the most outrageously stupid women in film history! After seeing her beloved knocked over the head and driven away at speed in a truck does she ring the police as any normal, intelligent person would do? No, she instead rings her dad! OK so he was an ex police officer but really! To be fair her father doesn't seem much brighter either! Does he get back up? No, he goes to the military training camp all on his own!!! In fact this film is absolutely riddled with such daft plot contrivances as to render one utterly speechless! Take for instance the fact that whenever our man kills one of the bad guys he never picks up their guns(?!?!?!?) Oh well, he was so damn macho I suppose he didn't feel he needed them until the end!

Back to cool scenes again now though and you'll simply marvel at a plethora of utterly terrible fight choreography, a Styrofoam boulder attack(!), a thoroughly appetising scene of delicious worm chomping(!) our man hiding up a tree with no foliage about three feet above his pursuers and them not spotting him (this dumbfoundingly daft scene just has to be seen to be believed!) and my very favourite bit at the end when our hero slices off an opponents arm with his machete before beating the guy to death with his own severed limb!!! To top it all off our man then scalps him!!!

Simply ridiculous stuff and all the more hilarious for it!!! If you have any shred of self respect then you simply must get hold of this film by any means possible!

This movie is hilariously bad, so hilariously bad that it makes you wonder if it was meant as a spoof of movies like Rambo. But I have read it was meant to be taken seriously. Yet, every single thing in this movie is ridiculous, even (or especially) the audio. The "soundtrack" is someone hitting on a synthesizer keyboard the same three chords over and over again.

Have fun!

I first heard about this film 6 years ago. One of my friends told me about how good it was and how he used to own a VHS copy but that it sadly went missing. That was 6 years ago... 6 years later he found a copy on ebay. I try to avoid using clichés but it really *was* worth the wait! I haven't laughed so much in all those 6 years!

I've seen a lot of funny bad movies in my time, but this is definitely the one that stands out above the rest! In fact it's so good that it's made me write my very first IMDb review! Everything about this movie, the acting, the plot, the continuity...it's just so good, i mean bad, or do i mean good? This film deserves repeated viewings, i'm going to play it to all my friends as it should be compulsory viewing for all! Try and track down a copy!

This movie is the funniest action movie ever. The best thing about it is that it is supposed to be serious. And Danton kills almost everyone the same(knife in the chest). He kills about 100 guys in this movie. And the final scene is great. I am still laughing from when he cuts off that guys arm and beats him to death with it. There are so many plot holes in this movie. Like, how does the father find the base so easily? Anyway, rent this movie.

The rifftrax version of this film is showing on pluto channel! "someone" has kidnapped mike danton and his tiny little cutoffs, and dropped him into some woods... somewhere. This appears to be a training ground for hunting. Humans. Mike takes out many of his adversaries, even teaming up with an old friend. It's pretty awful. Some bad acting, cheesy sound effects, lame script. The rifftrax crew is doing a great job of pointing out the many flaws, so I won't repeat them here. It's currently rated 5.1 out of ten on imdb. Written and directed by david prior, ted's brother. Keep your eyes peeled for an appearance by troy donahue. He must have needed the money! Donahue did some pretty bad stuff in the 1980s and 1990s. The sequel to this from 2013 is rated a whopping 4.3 out of 10. That one is on amzn and vudu.

Since there were a fair amount of cost-cutter Rambo rip-offs, finding the ripest one isn't as easy as it would seem, but no doubt DEADLY PREY is a prime choice. It's a one-man-army saga made on the ranch in L.A., with mini muscle-dude, Ted Prior, stripped to his cutoffs and hunted for sport by a bunch of p***ed-off militia dudes. As misguided and inept a macho potboiler as one could imagine. Give me librium or give me meth!!!

Miles O'Keeffe wannabe Ted Prior, the real-life brother of writer/director David A. Prior, is kidnapped off the street of LA so he can be a human target for a mercenary training camp. However, these mercenaries didn't know who they were kidnapping when this ex-Marine goes full-Rambo on them. "Deadly Prey" is standard 80s dreck you'd find in the action section of your neighborhood video store. Also in classic 80s low budget action film tradition, "Deadly Prey" features past-their-prime actors, this time Cameron Mitchell ("The High Chaparral" "How to Marry a Millionaire") and Troy Donahue ("Imitation of Life" "A Summer Place"). Dull and unoriginal, but I suppose is might be worth watching in a so-bad-it's-good way or if you want some cheesy 80s action film comfort food. FUN FACT! Speaking of food, Ted Prior ate real worms for the worm eating scene.

Cameron Mitchell steals the film with his lines:

CM: " Friend or enemy?"

BG: "I'm a friend."

CM: "YOU'RE A LIAR."

*BOOM*

Was unlucky enough to see this while travelling by coach across Africa. It was far and away the worst film I have ever come across. Deserves to be the #1 all-time worst ;-) No acting, no plot, very little speaking. Lots of ape-like grunting though, in this hopelessly unlikely film. An unwitting self-satire - you'll either laugh at it or cry.

I love this movie to the point that I found an e-mail address for Ted Prior's ex-wife and wrote to her. It thrills me to know that she passed on the regards of Ted's legion of Gold Coast fans to him.

Please, if anyone is reading this and considering watching 'Deadly Prey', drop everything, quit your job, divorce your wife, rent it out and enjoy what is arguably the finest motion picture ever committed to celluloid.

Cameron Mitchell once played in many good films, usually as a fourth or fifth character-Bombre, The Tall Men, Garden of Evil, usually WEsterns.

He's the epitome of the actor whose career went into low tide with cheap thrillers. Not all of them were bad, but they weren't "great" by any means.

Here, he plummets to the lowest depths.

The movie is hard to describe as anything other than a "so bad it's good" film. One can't imagine this film being made for any other reason. I'll give them the benefit of the doubt, and say they made this film to be funny.

But it it's not very funny.

We have what could have been a good idea. "The Most Dangerous Game", only the idea is made ridiculous by not having any sport. A mad man who thinks he's a mercenary for hire, trains his unit by kidnapping men, and telling them to run away unarmed from his well armed mercenaries.

Much of the humor comes from the fact that these super mercenaries, though heavily armed, are totally inept at killing any unarmed helpless victim, not because of "scruples", but because of ineptness.

Full of clichés, the movie become super tiresome after nearly an hour of tedious neck breaks and knife thrusts. It can only be classified as comedy, but it just isn't funny after the third time. And it seems we have this for about five million times. It's a "fast forward or go to sleep" movie.

"Deadly Prey" has to be one of the funniest action movies of all times, and this is not because it is supposed to be. It's hard to pick out a place to start with this movie, so why not from the beginning. This movie is much like "Surviving the Game" but has a much lower budget and much worse production value. Mike Danton is kidnapped by a group of mercenaries that just happen to be headed by his former Special Forces commanding officer, Colonel Hogan. WHAT A PLOT TWIST! What I really don't understand is why Danton killed so many of Hogan's soldiers, removing their automatic weapons from their dead body, but NEVER USING THEM TO KILL THE MERCENARIES TRYING TO KILL HIM!!! For such a great soldier, Danton doesn't show very good judgement.

Besides the typical amputation of a mercenary's arm with a machete, running a twig on through another mercenary's body, and a great movie score, composed of continual 'DUN DUN DUN' sound effects, Deadly Prey is chock full of many surprises, all which will leave you desiring to re-acquire the hour and a half you spent on watching this movie back. 3 out of 10 stars simply for the "Plan 9 From Outer Space" quality it has. I would also recommend "Born Killer" for any fans of "Deadly Prey" Happy watching.

There's really not much to this movie: an off-brand Rambo ("Mike Danton", just good enough I guess) with an epic mullet walks through the woods and kills evil army guys. That's pretty much it. Most scenes are identical. The most clueless army ever looks around for mullet guy, then he comes out of an implausible hiding space to kill one of them without anyone else knowing. The way things just solve themselves for our hero is beyond amazing. Nobody hears it when a victim grunts, even though they're walking about two feet from each other and there's no other noise whatsoever. Everyone has machine guns, but drop them instantly when they have an easy shot because they're just so keen on awkward hand-to-hand combat. People die from everything. At one point our hero just takes a branch and impales a guy on it...somehow. And then there's the traps, which really make you wonder how small this forest is supposed to be. One scene features Danton hiding in the water to kill someone who walks by. He doesn't lure him there, he has no way of knowing the soldier is going to get nearby. He's just suddenly there, magically. A similar thing happens when the evil backer guy helps out a guy laying on the street. Why? He's a douchebag, why would he help people? So he can get killed of course. If I'm making it sound like I hate this movie, nothing could be further from the truth. I like it, but dear God is it intensely stupid. It's like if a 12-year-old got the chance to write an action movie and just wrote whatever popped up without taking anything else into account. Yeah he can't be there, yeah that makes no sense, let's put it in anyway. This has its positive and negative points, but the former outweigh the latter. "Deadly Prey" is entertaining because it gets straight to the good stuff, but please give your brain a day off.