Prey For The Beast

In the spirit of Deliverance, this begins with four friends going away for the weekend to help one of them get over a messy break-up.  Taking a boat up the river to go camping in the woods, the group think they are alone with no-one for an hour's walk in any direction but there is a nearby foursome of girls with similar ambitions for the weekend.  Also in the area is a huge creature which kills anything that crosses its path. 
 
Far from being a peaceful few days away, this weekend turns into something much worse and, oddly, the lads seem to have come prepared, one bringing a Desert Eagle and another a longbow.  Maybe they wanted some uninterrupted target practice or maybe they were boy scouts, who knows?  When Frank fires his gun, the girls decide to investigate and find the lads; with all four women being young and attractive and two apparently lesbians, three of the blokes think that this would be a perfect opportunity to make the moping Bud (who keeps looking in vain at his signal-less cellphone) forget about his ex and move on.
 

You know that things are going to end badly because the film has beast in the title and there are not one, but two prologues showing a couple of campers being quickly dispatched and a photographer and his guide getting lost in the woods.
 
When Bud finds an old man (the photographer) with his legs torn off and rambling about something dangerous, the mood changes and the eight campers team up in the interests of self preservation.  Sadly by then, Frank has used up most of his ammo and tensions are running high. 
 
Prey for the Beast is a film where characters and plot are almost incidental - it's all about the man in the rubber suit and how quickly and brutally the campers are dispatched.  At only 75 minutes long, there is little time for characterisation or relationships being formed - this is a cheesy survival horror with an unconvincing monster and similarly unrealistic characters.  I didn't care a great deal about the people and just wanted to see them die in nasty ways but, as this is a low to no budget film, the gore levels aren't going to be great - it's not as if KNB were doing the special effects make-up!
 
With a small budget and short running time, Prey for the Beast is all about getting as many credible death scenes as you can into the confines of the narrative and if the characters strike a chord along the way, so much the better.  This isn't trying to be the greatest horror movie ever made and isn't anything more than a cheap monster movie.  At first, director Brett Kelly seems to be following the Tourneur school of thought, showing as little as he can for maximum effect, but you have to show the monster at some point, even if it looks like a big man in a fur suit adorned with a mutated pig's head.
 
This wears its low budget roots proudly, with the credits boasting a 'Beast Wranger' and 'Arm Shemp' and, whilst it's no Evil Dead, Prey for the Beast is perfectly passable if you're expecting something cheap and cheerful. The order of the day is to expect the worst and you won't be disappointed.
 
Picture and Sound
A reasonable anamorphic transfer though the picture is a little soft and suffers in the darker scenes.  As mentioned, the monster and gore effects aren't great but perfectly suitable for this kind of film.
 
The sound is fairly clear but some of the dialogue gets lost as the actors speak a little too quickly and indistinctly.
 
Final Thoughts
A group of people go into the woods where something evil lurks - hardly the most original concept but a tried and tested formula where you can film quite cheaply and without many constraints.  This Canadian addition to the genre is never going to be considered a classic but is probably worth a look for a horror marathon on a dark night.  Brain Damage Films' RRP of £2.99 is probably about right.