Thank God for youtube. I was able to watch large chunks of this 80s action classic there, and I had never heard of this particular beauty until stumbling across it on youtube. So, many thanks to youtube. This masterpiece of low-budget, rip-em-up action is a cross between FIRST BLOOD and ZAROff'S HOUNDS (THE MOST DANGEROUS GAME to cinephiles). A wacky Army officer is kidnapping people off the streets and using them as training prey for his jolly band of mercenaries. The mercenaries hunt these poor souls in a "secret" wooded area quite close to Los Angeles. I guess the cops and citizenry must all be deaf. Or they figure it's gang war and ignore it. The mercenaries make the monumental mistake of kidnapping a former special ops guy, who quickly proceeds to turn the tables on them. This muscle-bound, blond mullet-sprouting, underpants-clad superman (looking oddly like YOR HUNTER FROM THE FUTURE) manages to kill several dozen over-sized brutes before film fadeout. He does so in a variety of novel ways, including spearing one guy with what appears to be a twig and hacking the arm off another guy and then beating him to death with it. He never stops to retrieve any of the automatic weapons from his victims, instead improvising as he goes along. He is, after all, indestructible, much like COMMANDO. Proof of the pudding: After taking what appears to be a direct hit from a tank, he bounces right back, runs up onto the tank, opens the hatch and shoves a grenade inside. The fact that the hatch wasn't locked is interesting, but what's even more interesting is that he grabs the tank's long gun to climb up and off. The gun had just fired several rounds, and must have been very hot. But our hero never notices. As he charges the guy who will be beaten to death with his own arm, he takes three shots from the guy's weapon point-blank. Again, he appears not to notice. Some of the explosions are equally hilarious. Our hero pops a live grenade down one mercenary's trousers. When the mercenary blows up, we cut to an explosion from a completely different scene, possibly stock footage, with no mercenary in evidence. And when he drops the grenade into the tank, the explosion is also lifted from some other scene or movie. Oh, did I mention our hero can turn invisible? In one scene, he stands about six feet off the ground in a sapling while these big-time mercenaries race under him, never once looking up. We can see him, but they can't. DEADLY PREY is a lot of fun. As a low-budget Rambo clone, it's not half-bad. For old-time movie lovers, Cameron Mitchell in a William Shatner toupee has a small role as the superhero's father in law. I guess they couldn't get William Shatner. The hero, who I would love to see go one on one with Chuck Norris or Yor, is played by the brother of the film's director. A must-see bad movie.
Review of Deadly Prey
