inspectors71
This is Cornel Wilde's best film. It is a feast for those who look for Aristotle's Six Parts of Drama in a movie: 1. The plot is simple and understandable--a chase movie wherein everything seems lethal. Wilde plays a safari guide whose boss, a nasty, little, fraction of an Englishman, runs into a group of tribesman, and the fractional man manages to so insult the tribesmen that they return as a war party. They capture, then butcher the safari, and Wilde gets to be wild game.2. The characters are static (we never learn much), but there's real sympathy for both Wilde's character and the men trying to kill him (just look at the grief and anger exhibited when the hunters are picked off by Wilde or nature or each other or just plain bad luck). 3. The Naked Prey is a very intellectual movie, wrapped in a bloody loincloth. Because we don't know Wilde's history, nor do we understand the Africans' languages, we have to write our own scripts in our heads; it's a deeply thoughtful method of engaging the audience on a intellectual level.4. We hear pain and terror and glee in the voices and the words of the many characters. Wilde says a few words here and there; we identify him as American. The tribesmen hunting him, in an undecipherable language to Western ears, speak to each other in a completely understandable language, all because we have been frustrated and horrified and grief-stricken, too. The "diction" of the movie is up to the audience to create.5. Director Wilde uses three methods to evoke emotions from the audience with "music," whatever hits the ears of the audience, outside of diction. The first is by never being quiet--there always seems to be about a hundred different screams, hoots, clicks, and hollers from nature. Throw in the torment of scene changes going absolutely black and still--catch your breath because I'm going to swap you upside the head again when the light comes up--and you begin to feel some of the Wilde character's panic when he wakes up, aching from lack of food and water, exhausted from the hunt, and getting sick from all the little things that he's ingesting that will wear him out. The second is the juxtaposition of sight and emotion. We see Wilde get lucky killing one of his tormentors. We hate the monstrous sub-humanity of their gleeful desire to kill him, and we are set up to hate them when they take great relish in coming up with exciting ways to torture the hunting party at the start. Then we see one of the hunters find another young man, run through with a spear, and he screams in pain, sobbing while his brain tries to accept how quickly his friend has left this world. We instantly feel for this young man. It's startling how fast we change sides. Wilde does this again and again. Take sides. Show the emotions of both the killers and the killed, and it leaves the audience reeling and confused. Finally, Wilde gives us a thoroughly claustrophobic experience because he mixes the music of the tribesmen and the sounds of nature. They're almost interchangeable. It's smothering in its scariness.6. From the first moments of the hunt, with elephants being slaughtered, to Cornel Wilde's character scanning the horizon, close up and wide-angle, to the gleeful murder of the hunting party, to the mind-boggling vistas and close up beauty of the African scenery (and more than a few visual gross-outs and gag-inducers), the audience's eyes are locked on to the "spectacle" of the movie. It is visual super-glue. You can't stop looking at this train wreck of a chase. You want to look away, but you simply cannot.Which brings me back to my saying that of the three Wilde-directed movies, this is the most pleasing. There's trickery in Sword of Lancelot and Beach Red--he tries to come up with new tricks to wow the audience, and he has some success. In Naked Prey, the tricks blend together to give the audience a innovative and evocative experience. The Naked Prey really is in my top 25.It's that good.
Parker Lewis
I watched The Naked Prey awhile ago and I felt the tribe didn't give three of the party any real chance to escape. Really, one of them was plastered in clay and roasted alive...how could he escape? Another was feathered and tarred, and chased by the tribe and killed. He didn't have a chance!Another was tied up on the ground and faced a venomous snake! No way could he get out.Only Cornel Wilde had a hint of a chance to escape. Maybe the tribes folk looked upon him with more compassion relatively speaking. I would love to have seen the behind-the-scenes of The Naked Prey and how the American film crew interacted with the Rhodesian locals.
robertmckeon-1
I don't think it's being revisionist and viewing it purely through the lens of 21st century sensibilities to call this film trash. The cinematography is the only redeeming feature of this mondo-esquire adolescent film.There is a clear lineage between this film and shock films like Cannibal Holocaust. If you enjoy seeing footage of elephants being massacred, various animals attacking and eating one another, "savage" Africans executing people in various ways and laughing at it all the while, and a pathetic 50 year old white man outwitting and killing a bunch of inferior African pursuers then this is for you.For those of us who see this racist, gruesome, vanity project for what it is it will not only bore but leave a bad taste in your mouth. It baffles me how so many people think well of it. Mondo-light for the shock audience which doesn't have a strong stomach.
AppleBlossom
Cornel Wilde impressed me with this story of survival, not only did he star in it, he also directed and produced it. The action begins whereby a hunting expedition lead by Wilde comes across a group of tribal huntsmen. Through no fault of his own Wilde is forced to ignore the huntsmen's request for passage through their domain. While the expedition have set up camp the tribesmen lead a surprise attack and kill most of the party, bar a few 'white men'. The awful fate of those captured was an ingenious concept, similar to how the American Indians dealt with invading European 'white man'.Eventually Wilde has his turn of punishment and is given (really) a fighting chance than his other party members. He's stripped naked and sent running out into the wilderness…given a few minutes interval between tribesmen chasing after him. If caught he's dead!!! In such a country as Africa and in a time where civil wars and unrest between cultures were prominent, you can imagine the untold dangers. Not to mention the wild life and the terrain….makes one think on how vulnerable we all are without modern living. An extremely well orchestrated production and filmed on location, this film delivers an underlying message for all of us to take note. Well worth seeing.
