Where to watch Prey of the Jaguar
3 Stars
When his wife and son are brutally murdered by a fugitive drug lord that he helped put behind bars, former Special Ops agent Derek Leigh vows to avenge their deaths. After mastering lethal fighting skills at the hands of a martial arts instructor, he assumes the identity of The Jaguar – a vigilante superhero from his son’s drawings – and with nothing more to lose, sets out on a fierce, one-man blood hunt to bring the criminals to final justice.
The first time I saw Trevor Goddard on-screen as Kano in Mortal Kombat (1995), I found him to be an absolutely magnetic presence. This was later confirmed by his scene-stealing; he walks away with the movie, to be honest, work in Men of War. After those intense performances, I expected to see Trevor Goddard pop up as the lead villain, or at least a top henchman, in an A-level studio action film starring opposite one of the genre’s big names. That never happened, and Goddard died of an overdose in 2003. So that makes the few projects he appeared on worth seeking out.
I had overlooked Prey of the Jaguar when it arrived on the shelves of video stores back in 1996. The VHS box cover art is atrocious, and worse, it has literally nothing to do with the movie. And who the fuck is that guy on the cover? It’s certainly not Trevor Goddard or the film’s actual star, Maxwell Caulfield. No, it’s some dark-skinned fella who appears to be half-human and half-jaguar. Which has absolutely nothing to do with the movie contained within. And the movie itself is a fun, albeit low-budget, attempt to create a new superhero.
In fact, the movie plays like the pilot of a show that never went into production. The opening act breezes by and nicely sets up the Jaguar character’s relevance in pop culture. It reminds me of when Peter Weller’s Alex Murphy character in Robocop (1987) is trying to emulate the quick-draw style of the fictional TV character that his son idolizes. Maxwell Caulfield, who looks a bit like Val Kilmer, is the revenge-minded father turned costumed avenger. Director David DeCoteau does a nice job staging the film with the obvious limitations in budget. I wish the story hadn’t used every troupe of the era and had given Steven Vincent Leigh more to do than just stand in the background of the scene’s Goddard. Prey of the Jaguar is a nice surprise and deserves to be revisited by fans of 1990s action cinema.
Directed by: David DeCoteau
Written by: Rory Johnston (story), Rory Johnston, Bud Robertson, Nick Spagnoli
Starring: Maxwell Caulfield, Stacy Keach, Linda Blair, Trevor Goddard