The Prowler is a 1981 slasher horror film directed by Joseph Zito, written by Neal Barbera and Glenn Leopold.
The film follows a group of college students in a coastal California town who are stalked and murdered during a graduation party by an apparent World War 2 veteran who killed his ex-girlfriend in 1945. Filmed in late 1980 in Cape May, New Jersey, The Prowler was independently distributed by Sandhurst Releasing Corporation. It was not a major commercial success, only ranking 135th overall in the box office that year and grossing less than $1 million, especially because in some international territories, the film was released under the title Rosemary’s Killer in a version that censored most of the graphic scenes.
The film has also been compared to the slasher released in the same year with a really similar plot, My Bloody Valentine, which I have already reviewed.
The cast for this film has Vicky Dawson as Pam MacDonald, Christopher Goutman as Deputy Mark London, Lawrence Tierney as Major Chatham, Farley Granger as Sheriff George Fraser, Cindy Weintraub as Lisa, Lisa Dunsheath as as Sherry, David Sederholm as Carl, and several more smaller roles.
Critic Stephen Deusner of The Washington Post has interpreted the film as a “A sly, strange statement about the stakes of war.” and cites the film as transgressive due to its depiction of a war veteran being the Villain. The Prowler is thematically linked to several other slasher films including The Burning (1981), in which psychological trauma plays an important role in the acts of murder committed.
The film dealt with severe censorship due to the gory special effects from Tom Savini. The German version of the film gets rid of all the gore scenes, including the revelation of the killers identity and even changes all of the sound effects, replacing the daytime soundtrack with bird sounds, the nighttime soundtrack with cricket sounds, and Richard Einhorn’s score with synthesizer music by an uncredited musician.
Like My Bloody Valentine, The Prowler is a great film, but they have almost identical plots, just different settings and characters, even the motivations for the killers are nearly the same, but I feel like The Prowler is more fleshed out, because as a World War 2 veteran he must have some PTSD, rather than the My Bloody Valentine killer was just overly jealous.
