John Carpenter is the mind behind many classic horror movies, and his unmade 1970s script Prey bears striking similarities to Wrong Turn. While Carpenter seems to have quietly retired as a director - having not helmed a film since 2010's The Ward - his legacy as a filmmaker was long ago assured. John Carpenter is most well-known for his horror work, although he's dipped into many genres, including sci-fi, action, romance, drama, comedy, and often a mix of multiple genres, such as sci-fi/horror masterpiece The Thing or sci-fi/romance Starman.
From the late-1970s to the mid-1990s, Carpenter would turn out a steady stream of movies, many of them iconic classics, some with devoted cult followings, and of course, a few misfires too, as is true of almost every director. Still, Carpenter's style and creative voice are so unique and prevalent throughout his work that even lower-level Carpenter is often still worth watching. While Carpenter's biggest hit is obviously 1978's Halloween, his career didn't start there, having already directed 1974's Dark Star and 1976's Assault on Precinct 13 by then.
John Carpenter also wrote several films in the 1970s he didn't end up directing, and Prey, if it had actually been made, would've been one such product. It's a shame Prey didn't come to pass, as it's a departure from the other horror movies Carpenter made, at least to an extent.
John Carpenter's Unmade 1970s Movie Prey Could've Been Wrong Turn 30 Years Earlier
It's unclear exactly when John Carpenter wrote Prey, outside of some time in the mid-1970s. He co-wrote the script with James Nichols, his assistant director for Assault on Precinct 13. According to an excellent breakdown of the unproduced screenplay by the Masters of Carpentry podcast's blog, the late Bob Clark was in the mix to direct Prey. Clark also directed the early slasher Black Christmas, which was a direct inspiration to Halloween.
Prey's actual story centered on three female friends, including a survivalist and designer of outdoor equipment, a local TV reporter, and a housewife and mother who just wants to escape her normal routine and have an adventure. They head up a treacherous Appalachian mountain in Tennessee called Mount Tobias, and while the climb itself proves challenging and exhausting, the real horror begins when they're abducted by a family who are the last remnants of a Confederate colony that fled away from civilization after the Civil War. The women are tortured, two are almost sexually assaulted by a member of the mountain family in an attempt to breed, and two are later killed. Only Kathy, the housewife and also an avid runner, survives the ordeal.
While the evil, disgusting mountain family in Prey aren't cannibals, it's definitely not hard to see the parallels between them and Three-Finger's mutant backwoods family in Wrong Turn. Both clans only hunt near their home, only target the lost and vulnerable, and both have shunned modern society entirely. The fact the story centers on a group of friends in a remote rural location with no quick means of escape is also similar. Interestingly, Prey lines up even better with 2021's Wrong Turn reboot, which also featured a colony that retreated into the mountains around the Civil War era while dropping the cannibalism aspect entirely. It's also a bit similar to Wes Craven's cult classic The Hills Have Eyes, and one wonders if John Carpenter didn't move forward with Prey due to feeling like he was beaten to the punch.