Deadly Prey is something special. I want to be very clear and say this is not a good movie. Not in the slightest bit. It’s quite bad actually. Maybe even horrendous. That doesn’t mean I don’t love it.

Ted Prior stars as Mike Danton, an extremely muscular Vietnam vet. And when I say muscular I mean it. Prior is absolutely ripped and the movie definitely wants the audience to know this. He spends the majority of the film in nothing but cutoff jeans. Anyway, one morning while taking out the trash Danton is attacked and kidnapped by some men in a van.

The men take Danton out to a wooded area and release him. The plan is to hunt them as part of military training they are receiving from Col. John Hogan (David Campbell). What the men don’t know is that Danton was also trained by Hogan and was actually the best student he ever had. What happens next is a cat and mouse game as Danton tries to take out Hogan and his team before they can kill him. It won’t be easy as the man leading Hogan’s team is Lt. Thornton (Fritz Matthews), a worthy opponent to Danton.

When I say Deadly Prey is bad I mean it. The premise is bad, the acting is mostly bad, even that from the film’s few veterans in Troy Donahue and Cameron Mitchell, and the special effects leave a lot to be desired. Still I think the movie offers up a lot of fun. There’s a certain charm to it and director David A. Prior (brother to Ted) had the best intentions. Prior was trying to make a good movie and it just didn’t work out. It’s not as crazy and fun as something like Miami Connection, but fairs more favorably to the likes of R.O.T.O.R. What I mean by that is while it does offer up some crazy moments that will leave you howling, there is a lot of fat and filler that is kind of boring. There is a decent amount of time spent just waiting to get to the next insane scene.

There are so many moments in this film that made me stop and scratch my head. I can’t understand how someone would think these things up and then read them over and say, “Yeah, that’s a good idea.” First let’s start with the scene where Danton gets kidnapped. As far as I could tell this was occurring fairly early in the morning. Jaimy (Suzanne Tara), Danton’s girlfriend, doesn’t get concerned until later that evening. I’m not sure how long it would take for me to be concerned that my significant other didn’t come back from taking out the trash, but I’m fairly certain that it would be less than a couple of hours. Furthermore when Jaimy does finally call someone it’s her Dad (Mitchell). No call is placed to the proper authorities.

Now let’s talk about Mitchell’s role. We never learn his name and I’m pretty sure he’s just credited as Jaimy’s Dad. This is interesting because his role is fairly large. Even if you don’t say his name in the movie it seems like you would have given him one in the script. Just an odd observation.

In effort to track down Danton Jaimy’s Dad immediately heads out to this military training facility. Why does he start there? I thought maybe it’s because Danton was a Vietnam vet and so maybe he’s starting there for assistance but no. Once on the scene Jaimy’s Dad is very sneaky. He doesn’t want to be caught. He just assumes they are responsible. In his defense they are, but how in the world does he know that? Also I think the training base was a secret location. How did he find it? Why isn’t there any answers?

While Jaimy’s Dad is sleuthing it up, Danton gets captured again but not before he takes out a handful of Hogan’s men. When Hogan finds out Danton is the man they kidnapped he doesn’t want to kill him at first. No, instead he tries to convince Danton to join his team. And why wouldn’t he, Danton is the man! Danton will have none of it though, because dammit he has morals and ethics!

Like most movie villains Hogan leaves Danton tied up alone for a while. This allows Danton to escape and when he does he’s approached by one of Hogan’s goons. We see Danton reach into the goon’s pants and then dive for cover. The goon looks confused for a moment before blowing up. And he blows all the way up. The only thing left are his boots which now have smoke emitting from them. No joke. This means Danton placed a grenade in this dude’s pants. Where did he get this grenade from? He literally just escaped from being tied up and is only wearing tiny little cutoff jeans. No way he was hiding that grenade on his person.

The rest of Deadly Prey is littered with awesomely bad moments like these ones. So yeah, it’s pretty awful. But at the same time it’s hoot. How can you deny the fun of something like this? You can’t I say!

The Blu-ray release on this one is interesting. It’s one of the first titles from the Olive Films and Slasher // Video partnership and it has a label on the cover (a couple labels actually) that indicate the film was not sourced from HD materials but rather the best elements made available to Slasher // Video. The transfer actually comes from a PAL Beta SP tape which is kind of nuts. Deadly Prey was made for the home video market so nobody really cared what happened with the original elements. They’re likely lost or possibly just sitting in some dude’s basement. At any rate since they’re not available this Blu-ray actually looks a lot more like a VHS. It’s good that Olive and Slasher // Video were upfront about this to consumers but I will say the quality is even a little worse than I was expecting. Because of this the film does have this nostalgic viewing vibe to it which is kind of cool but still I hope that better elements are found to give us a great Blu-ray release. That’s right, I’m saying that this movie is bad, but I still want a great Blu-ray release.

Deadly Prey is now available on Blu-ray from Olive Films & Slasher // Video.