Innocent Prey ( US/Australia, 1983)
Rating: ***1/2
Starring: P.J. Soles, Kit Taylor, Grigor Taylor
Behind the suit and tie, Cathy Will's husband Joe has a nasty habit of slitting throats when he is in a bad mood. She finds out about this in the harshest way when she spots his car parked at a motel that one night she drops a friend off to the airport, catching him in tryst with a prostitute before slitting her throat mid-passion.
Obviously frightened of her discovery, Cathy calls the cops and set-up a bust that very same night, with the men in uniform waiting outside their isolated ranch to capture her husband once after she makes him confess about his killings. But this only sets Joe deeper into dementia as a few days after his capture, he spots an opportunity to escape the asylum he was carted off to and makes his way back to finish off his wife.
A few more police got called in for her protection, only to be killed off, leaving Cathy to fend for herself in your typical slasher film damsel-way until her sheriff friend come into the scene and assures her safety. At least for that night as her husband hot foots away, evading capture.
The attack pushed Cathy into flying away from Dallas to Australia, and living there with another friend. Things are far from fine, though, as crazy as that sounds; not only did her husband find out where she moved to, but she also caught the attention of another psycho, the tech-savvy maintenance keeper of the building she is living in, who monitors everything happening in each room with hidden cameras and rigged each door with powerful volts.
Innocent Prey (1983) has good build-up around its characters, though I do feel that the two psychos eventually devolves into one-note menaces the further the story goes and our lead heroine Cathy (played by Halloween 1978's P.J. Soles) do come off as quite naïve at times. Dialogue can be a bit goofy occasionally, but it adds to the playful cheesiness this film have underneath all of its production's attempts to look serious. When Cathy moves to the land down under, the plot did take a slight breather from all the blood-chunked cheddar and give us some soap-opera hysterics where Soles' character adjusts to her new life, only to dive down again to creepy thriller territories as our hapless gal gets terrorized by an altogether different ghoul. It has its slow moments, but director Colin Eggleston of Long Weekend (1978) and Cassandra (1986) knew how to build good tension and thrills to keep the escalating troubles and carnage interesting, most of it coming from Kit Taylor's own take as a maddened hubby and John Warnock as a landlord with a thing for voyeurism and electrocution.
The tone can be all over seeing we're basically watching two kinds of plots unfolding throughout the movie, with some scenarios getting over-blown in ham as the situation keeps getting trashier and edgier by the minute. Hell, even the last shot of the movie seems to address the undeniable reeking cheddar of the overly dramatic and concerningly cruel turns the story takes. More reason for us horror fans to at least give this bonkers movie a swing, I guess.It's not perfect as you can tell; a lot of elements simply don't work out and if you're the kind who cannot tolerate outrageous character and build-up, then you'll be riding this with a headache. Otherwise, if you're the type of slasher fanatic who can swallow a good sense of hamminess and weird plotting, Innocent Prey (1983) is a movie to add to your collection!
Bodycount:
1 female gets her throat cut with a razor
1 male found knifed
1 male knifed on the gut
1 female found decapitated
1 male had his neck snapped, set on fire
1 male murdered, method unknown
1 female electrocuted in a pool
1 male electrocuted on a rigged door knob
1 male pushed through a window, falls to her death
Total: 9
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