Prey (1977) is really a simple story. A humanoid alien being comes to earth in search of a fresh food supply for his race and becomes entangled in the tumultuous relationship between two women. Like Thomas J. Newton (David Bowie) in The Man Who Fell To Earth (1976) the alien known as Anders (Barry Stokes) is naive and childlike upon his arrival. But the alien in Prey hasn’t come to earth for water but for human flesh. This species of alien needs a lot of protein and there are more than enough people on earth. Besides, as Anders himself points out, they are such “easy prey”.
However, the focus of Prey is not on the alien character of Anders but rather on the couple, Jo (Sally Faulkner) and Jessica (Glory Annen). Unlike most “stranger in a strange land” plots, Prey prefers to use the alien character as a means of interrogating a romantic relationship. Anders is the audience proxy as well as the hair that finally breaks the camel’s back of this particularly abusive relationship.
Prey fits the same mold of uneven and abusive power dynamics that define many of Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s melodramas. The parallels between Prey and Die bitteren Tränen der Petra von Kant (1972) are as obvious as they are abundant. Both films cast the character with a more androgynous appearance as the dominant and abusive force over their highly feminine appearing counterpart. Each film charts the gradual erosion of this power dynamic with self-destruction as the inevitable end point. And, finally, both Prey and
Prey fits the same mold of uneven and abusive power dynamics that define many of Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s melodramas. The parallels between Prey and Die bitteren Tränen der Petra von Kant (1972) are as obvious as they are abundant. Both films cast the character with a more androgynous appearance as the dominant and abusive force over their highly feminine appearing counterpart. Each film charts the gradual erosion of this power dynamic with self-destruction as the inevitable end point. And, finally, both Prey and Die bitteren Tränen der Petra von Kant are films about queer women written by men produced during the seventies.
In the scene where Jo and Jessica save Anders from drowning in a pond Prey finds its central metaphorical image. Jessica, longing for contact beyond her late father’s estate leaps to rescue Anders hopeful for some sort of connection while Jo, obsessively clinging to and imprisoning Jessica, dives to her lover’s aid without a thought for Anders at all. Director Norman J. Warren shoots this prolonged scene of physical anguish, with each character in close proximity, in slow motion as if to stress his point. But more than that the slow-motion photography reveals how grotesque this struggle for personal agency between the desperate parties truly is.
Despite Anders’ predilection for devouring the raw flesh of mammals it is Jo who is the real villain of the drama. Her need for control has not only lead her to kill in the past, but motivates her to keep Jessica prisoner in her own home. This behavior extends to Anders who is perceived by Jo as an obvious threat to her hold over Jessica. Depicted as an almost comical misandrist, Jo goes so far as to clothe Anders in one of Jessica’s dresses in order to make his presence more tolerable while simultaneously signifying her dominance over him. Of course, this reading relies on the cues and codes of gender politics in the seventies when the person wearing the pants in the house was typically thought of as the boss.
Peppered throughout this psychodrama are scenes that remind the viewer of Anders’ science fiction roots. Just as the relationship between Jo and Jessica implodes in a climax of domestic abuse and screams the film erupts finally into a full blown science fiction thriller as if the relationship between the two women was all that kept Prey attached to any semblance of reality. It’s a cathartic moment of genre hopping that resolves Prey with nothing but death and the promise of more destruction to come.
