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Deadly Prey[1] (released in the Philippines as Born to Kill) is a 1987 action film written and directed by David A. Prior. The film, a very loose adaptation of the short story "The Most Dangerous Game" by Richard Connell, stars Ted Prior, David's brother, as a former soldier who is kidnapped for participation in a human safari.
| Deadly Prey | |
|---|---|
 VHS cover | |
| Directed by | David A. Prior |
| Screenplay by | David A. Prior |
| Story by | Richard Connell |
| Produced by | Peter Yuval |
| Starring | Cameron Mitchell Troy Donahue Ted Prior |
| Cinematography | Stephen Ashley Blake |
| Edited by | Brian Evans |
| Music by | Tim Heintz Tim James Steven McClintock |
Production company | |
| Distributed by | Action International Pictures |
Release date |
|
Running time | 88 minutes |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
Colonel Hogan leads a group of mercenaries. His current client is businessman Don Michaelson. A deal is struck, and Hogan recruits new troops. For training, Hogan orders his troops to kidnap innocent people, take them to the forest and hunt them. One of the people they kidnap, Mike Danton, is ambushed while taking out the trash. Taken to the forest, he is stripped to his shorts, greased up and told to run.
A team of mercenaries hunt Danton; however, Danton, a Vietnam War veteran, picks off the troops one-by-one. The troops report this to Colonel Hogan, who sends a task force with his best man, Lieutenant Thornton. Part of the task force is Jack Cooper, a former comrade of Danton who saved his life in combat. Recognizing each other, Cooper defects from the mercenaries and allies with Danton.
With Cooper alongside him, Danton continues to fight off the mercenaries to get back to his wife Jaimey. Hogan uses Danton's family against him, angering Danton. After storming the mercenaries' training camp, Danton destroys all traces of Hogan's mercenaries.
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- Cameron Mitchell as Jamie's father
- Troy Donahue as Don Michaelson
- Ted Prior as Michael "Mike" Danton
- Fritz Matthews as Lieutenant Thornton
- David Campbell as Colonel Hogan
- Leo Weltman as Hillbilly Will
After The Winters Group helped finance David A. Prior's previous film Aerobicide, Prior formed Action International Pictures with executive producers David Winters and Bruce Lewin, and producer Peter Yuval. Their first projects were Mankillers and Deadly Prey. Both movies were shot back to back in and around Riverside, California.
Retired US Army soldier Don Michelson acted as a technical advisor, with part of the film being shot in his American Military Museum outside South El Monte, California,[2] Troy Donahue's character used his name in the film.
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Deadly Prey was first screened at the American Film Market in November 1987. In the Philippines, the film was released by Solar Films as Born to Kill on February 4, 1988.[3][4]
Home media
The film was officially released on DVD and Blu-ray in 2015.
The film review aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes lists only one review, on the North Carolina alternative newspaper Mountain Xpress.[5] Reviewer Ken Hanke describes it as "yet another of the seemingly endless barrage of cinematic knockoffs of Richard Connell's short story, "The Most Dangerous Game" also influenced by First Blood (1982), and concludes that it is "all quite ridiculous, but might be good for a laugh if you’re in the mood for ineptitude on an unbelievable scale".
A sequel entitled The Deadliest Prey was released on November 1, 2013.[6]
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