that Edwin wanted a musical score that was "Rachmaninoff[-like]—big, thundering." Release The Prey was released by New World Pictures on November 4, 1983, screening in cities such as Louisville, Kentucky. It subsequently screened on premium television stations in Canada beginning November 8, 1983, and continued to screen on the Showtime television network throughout September 1984. The film continued screening in the United States in various cities throughout 1984. Critical response TV Guide awarded the film one out of five stars, writing: "The killer in this standard mad-slasher-in-the-woods effort is a crazed gypsy mutant horribly burned in a fire that occurred 30 years before. Still angry and wielding an ax, he lumbers off after a bunch of camping youths. There is not one iota of creativity here." Ron Castell in the Blockbuster Video Guide called the film a "tiresome shocker, which contains the absolute minimum of plot and dialogue required to make a horror film." Charles Tatum from eFilmCritic.com awarded the film one of five stars, stating, "There is not one minute of suspense here." Tatum summarized by saying, "Sure, most of the slasher films of the 1980s were not worth the celluloid they were filmed on, but this video nightmare may well be the dullest produced." The slasher film website Hysteria Lives! gave the film an unfavorable review, stating, "THE PREY is dumb, boring (I had to push needles into my legs just to stop from slipping into a catatonic state), and pitifully indulgent." Dread Central gave the film a favorable review, calling it "an effective little backwoods slasher offering some vicious kills and a memorable, downbeat shock ending". Film scholar John Kenneth Muir praised the film, writing: "For horror aficionados, The Prey remains a superior (and vastly underrated) film of its genre because it reaches a fever pitch of terror near the climax." Muir also notes the recurrent "man vs. nature" theme in the film, accentuated by the repeated sequences of wildlife interspersed throughout the narrative. Film scholar Thomas Sipos, however, characterized the film as "basically a travelogue" due to its ubiquitous nature footage. In his book The Gorehound’s Guide to Splatter Films of the 1980s, Scott Aaron Stine echoes a similar sentiment, writing: "The highlights (be as they may) are some impressive National Geographic-style nature photography. In fact, there's so much stock footage (did I just hear someone shout "padding"?) that the person responsible was given co-cinematographer's, and