The Prowler
Short description
The Prowler is a 1981 American horror film set in the small town of Avalon Bay. The story begins in 1945, when a graduation dance ends in violence: a figure dressed as a soldier kills a young couple, and roses are left behind. The killings lead the town to stop holding its graduation dance for decades. Roughly thirty-five years later, a student named Pam MacDonald organizes the first such dance since the earlier tragedy, and a killer dressed like a soldier begins targeting teenagers once more. Sheriff George Fraser and Pam's boyfriend Mark London are drawn into the search as the attacks continue.
Joseph Zito directed the film, his first feature in a run of genre pictures that continued with Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter, Missing in Action, Invasion U.S.A. and Red Scorpion. Neal Barbera and Glenn Leopold wrote the screenplay, and David Streit and Zito produced. The cast includes Vicky Dawson as Pam, Christopher Goutman as Mark, Farley Granger as the sheriff and Lawrence Tierney as Major Chatham, among 21 credited performers.
Made on a budget of about one million dollars, the film was released in November 1981 and runs 89 minutes. It has a rating of 5.8 out of 10 on TMDB from 266 votes, while a critics' rating stands at 5.5 out of 10 from eight reviews, placing the two closer together than is typical for the slasher films of its era.
What's left behind the scenes
- The fireplace from which Joy Glackum's character's corpse falls was a prop. It could be moved, which significantly facilitated the filming process.
- The shot in which the Stranger places a flower on the head of the character played by Lisa Danshet, while Pam, played by Vicky Dawson, changes in the next room, was originally intended for the scene of Danshet's character's murder, but was inserted into another part of the film to add more tension to the overall atmosphere.
- The production of the film cost $1 million, and AVCO Embassy Pictures offered $750,000 for the distribution rights. The offer was rejected.
- Director and producer Joseph Zito revealed that he disliked the sets seen in the photos from the album of the character played by Joy Glackin, as well as the tombstone, so much that he seriously considered not releasing the film on DVD. To him, the sets seemed utterly unconvincing and fake.
- The hotel building where the prom scenes were filmed was completely white, but it was decorated with streamers for the shoot. During filming, it began to rain, and the paint from the streamers ran, staining the white building; as a result, it had to be repainted after filming concluded.
- While working on Cindy Ventraube (who played Lisa), Tom Savini overdid it with the dye, and the actress's skin turned a vivid beet-red. The dye didn't wash off for three days.
- The makeup artist and special effects coordinator for the film was Tom Savini, who had just finished working on William Lustig's slasher 'Maniac' (1980). Savini himself wore the Stranger's costume and appeared in the scenes where the character committed murders. He later worked with Joseph Zito (director of 'The Stranger') on the horror film 'Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter' (1984), assisting Ted White (who played Jason) in the killing scenes.
- The cemetery scenes were indeed filmed at a cemetery on Halloween night in 1980, and there really was a grave that had been dug for someone's burial.
- The scene where the Stranger kicks Cindy Ventraub's character in the face took 18 takes. The leg used to strike the actress's face was made of rubber.
- The Stranger's plaster mask was created by Farley Granger and Tom Savini. For the final scene, Granger's entire head was covered in plaster, which he disliked immensely as the actor suffers from claustrophobia. Savini then actually fired a sawed-off shotgun into the plaster head, and according to him, the shot blew half the head away.
- The Stranger was played by three different people: assistant director Peter Giuliano (who stalked the victims), makeup and special effects artist Tom Savini (in the gory murder scenes), and Farley Granger (in the final scene).
- In 2014, it became known that the film "The Prowler" was re-released in some theaters in North and South Carolina in the spring of 1984 under the title "Pitchfork Massacre." Who the distributor was, and how they obtained the distribution rights (or if they obtained them at all), remains unknown.
- Applying makeup to the actors generally took a very long time, so the entire filming schedule was adjusted to accommodate the completion of this process.
- Farley Granger was cast in the role of the sheriff only because he attended the same acting classes as the wife of one of the film's investors.
- The house of the character played by Lawrence Tierney was actually a museum. The furniture inside was antique, and the homeowners only allowed the minimum number of crew members necessary for filming to enter.
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