Deadly Prey

Deadly Prey is something of a cinematic masterpiece. It’s as if someone watched Rambo too many times, read the short story The Most Dangerous Game, and then sat down to write Deadly Prey. I can only imagine that they wrote it with crayons.

The evil and mind-bogglingly stupid Colonel Hogan is kidnapping civilians in order to train his mercenaries. Apparently hunting down shoeless, unarmed guys in the terrifying jungles of Vietnam area 75 miles southeast of LA will help him create the world’s most elite fighting force.

The protagontist of Deadly Prey is Mike Danton, mullet ninja. Danton is the finest soldier that Colonel Hogan ever trained, and he’s still the best! And the Colonel’s men just happened to grab him off the street to use for one of their training exercises.

There are many things that make Deadly Prey a bad movie gem. Pretty much everything, actually. Acting, special effects, fight scenes—it's as though each element is in some insane competition to be the worst.

There isn’t a single good performance; from people stumbling over their lines to Colonel Hogan’s hammy cries of “DANTONNNNNN!” Danton’s wife in particular comes across as an idiot that can barely comprehend how to read the script.

The action will likely have you laughing out loud. Danton may not be a ninja, but he manages to hide in broad daylight just by wearing some ivy. For most of the movie he insists on killing the bad guys without guns; you’ll see him take their guns a few times but he never uses them up until the end. He’d rather stab people, smash them into a tree, drop styrofoam rocks on them, or make some ridiculous (but amusing) booby traps.

Danton appears to have classic '80s hero “bulletproof nudity”, meaning that the less clothes the hero is wearing in the movie, the less likely it is that they can be hit by anything. He's impervious to bullets, and grenades only knock him down. Hurray for cutoff shorts! If only the villains had caught on to this trick.  Danton’s only weakness appears to be karate. It’s like his kryptonite. Or maybe it’s the fact that the karate bad guy had shades on. Never underestimate a bad guy with shades in a crappy ‘80s action movie.

What’s really amazing is that the ending doesn’t let you down—the movie just keeps on getting more and more ridiculous right up until the credits. If you’re looking for a film to make fun of with some friends, this would definitely be high on my list of recommendations. Grab a couple of drinks and get ready to laugh. They don’t get much more unintentionally funny than Deadly Prey.

• While finishing up this review I discovered that they had indeed given Richard Connell (author of “The Most Dangerous Game”) writing credits. Poor bastard.