Hungry Lions Chew on the Trailer for Dick Maas’ ‘Prey’

Here’s something we don’t get enough of: movies about killer cats slaughtering hikers. Seriously, the last time I saw a lion prominently in a grim film was back in 1996 when the underrated but pretty solid The Ghost and the Darkness landed in theaters.

We’re overdue for more lion terror.

Dick Maas (who gave us the awesome Saint) writes and directs Prey, a promising pic all about lions ripping silly humans to shreds. Yes!

Sophie van Winden, Julian Looman, Mark Frost and Rienus Krul star.

This one heads for Dutch screens in October. No word on a US release just yet.

Check out the trailer and poster below.

Synopsis: When the police discover the bodies of a slaughtered family living on a farm just outside of Amsterdam, they are clueless as to what happened. Lizzy, an attractive veterinarian working in the Amsterdam Zoo, confirms their suspicions; there must be a lion on the loose! And judging by the wounds of the mutilated victims, the lion must be big, strong, and vicious!

Several more gruesome attacks follow, and Lizzy is convinced there is a maneater roaming the streets of Amsterdam. She has trouble, however, convincing the authorities of the danger. When they finally set up a press conference to warn the public of the danger, their statement is met with disbelief. No one has seen the lion, and there is not much evidence of its existence. The public’s disbelief disappears when the lion goes on a murder spree in a streetcar full of people.

After a disastrous failed attempt by the nephew of the chief of police to hunt down and kill the lion, a friend of Lizzy’s, a famous English lion hunter, is flown in. The police are stunned to see that the man has only one leg and is confined to a wheelchair. Slowly their worries disappear when the man seems to know what he is talking about and the power wheelchair, equipped with snowmobile tracks, makes him almost as fast as a speeding lion.

Still, the authorities are not convinced of the lion hunter’s skills. They send in an Army squad, but their mission ends in more bloodshed – albeit not the lion’s.

Finally the lion hunter gets permission to hunt down the lion in his own way. He succeeds in tracking down the lion to a University building, and with Lizzy’s help he manages to kill the beast, losing his life in the process. When Lizzy accompanies her deceased friend in an ambulance to the hospital, the lion has one more surprise up his sleeve…