The Naked Prey (1965)

[Scottie]

The Naked Prey (1965)

Glamorous leading man turned idiosyncratic auteur Cornel Wilde created in the 1960s and '70s a handful of gritty, violent explorations of the nature of man, none more memorable than The Naked Prey. In the early nineteenth century, after an ivory-hunting safari offends a group of South African hunters, the colonialists are captured and hideously tortured. A lone marksman (Wilde) is released, without clothes or weapons, to be hunted for sport, and he begins a harrowing journey through savanna and jungle back to a primitive state. Distinguished by vivid widescreen camera work and unflinchingly ferocious action sequences, The Naked Prey is both a propulsive, stripped-to-the-bone narrative and a meditation on the concept of civilization.

SPECIAL FEATURES

• Restored high-definition digital transfer, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray
• Audio commentary from 2007 by film scholar Stephen Prince
• "John Colter’s Escape," a 1913 written record of the trapper’s flight from Blackfoot Indians—which was the inspiration for The Naked Prey—read by actor Paul Giamatti
• Original soundtrack cues created by director Cornel Wilde and ethnomusicologist Andrew Tracey, along with a written statement by Tracey on the score
• Trailer
• PLUS: An essay by film critic Michael Atkinson and a 1970 interview with Wilde

Cover by Michael Boland

[The Great Owl]

Outstanding!

There's a scene in this movie that gives me nightmares, but I'll still be upgrading my Criterion DVD on day one.

[SeanJoyce]

Originally Posted by The Great Owl

Outstanding!

There's a scene in this movie that gives me nightmares, but I'll still be upgrading my Criterion DVD on day one.

Is it the

[Show spoiler]roasting over the spit

?

[Arch Stanton]

Really good film but the elephant hunting scenes are brutal. Would probably just skip that when I watch it again.

[The Great Owl]

Originally Posted by SeanJoyce

Is it the

[Show spoiler]roasting over the spit

?

Yep. *shudders* That pushes my fear buttons more than most things that I've experienced in cinema, although it's not a viscerally graphic scene.

[RockySullivan]

Finally! Great movie that I've had on my wishlist seemingly forever - and a Criterion to boot. Now I just need all the missing Errol Flynn movies and all will be right in my world.

[Member-222782]

I've been wanting to watch my DVD copy for ages but held out hoping for an upgrade and here it is. I hope Element of Crime isn't too far behind.

[eddyw78]

I love this movie and already own the UK release from Eureka. I would double dip though despite the transfer on that version being excellent as it is pretty much barebones.

[Hoke Moseley]

Haven't seen this.

I'm intrigued though...

[atfree]

Originally Posted by RockySullivan

Finally! Great movie that I've had on my wishlist seemingly forever - and a Criterion to boot. Now I just need all the missing Errol Flynn movies and all will be right in my world.

Errol Flynn? Who's that? Says (apparently) Warners and Criterion. It's a crime that over a decade into BD that only a small handful of his films have made it to BD.

[SeanJoyce]

Originally Posted by The Great Owl

Yep. *shudders* That pushes my fear buttons more than most things that I've experienced in cinema, although it's not a vicerally graphic scene.

Yeah, it's definitely one of those

[Show spoiler]deaths where your imagination is far more effective than what's actually shown. What an unfathomably horrific way to go. The description of Aaron Eckhardt's death in The Missing is a similar stomach-churner.

Anyhow, I'm an enormous fan of this film but I'm pretty stodgy about upgrading my Criterion DVDs, having only done so in several instances. The package would have to REALLY bowl me over.

[oildude]

YES!!! Finally, after years of having this in the top 3 of my wishlist for Region A Blu-ray releases. I am speechless.....doin' happy dances all day after reading this great news!

This movie is brutal. I first watched it on television as a kid in the mid-1970s. It scared the crap out of me back then and I have never forgotten it. I caught it right after it began while channel surfing one afternoon during summer break. I watched a few minutes and got pulled right in. This was my introduction to Cornel Wilde, who since that day early in my movie fan career has become one of my favorite actors.

Luckily I was in my bedroom watching it on my own TV because I am sure if my mom had seen me viewing this on the living room set she would have turned it off and sent me outside (this was back in the days before video games when kids actually spent the whole day outside in the summer...unless they were inside glued to the TV watching exciting entertainment like this).

Here is the official trailer. It is narrated almost like one of those nature shows I used to watch in the 1970s....the voiceover kind of reminds me of Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom, except Marlin Perkins gets tortured to death while Jim Fowler has to run through the brush butt naked.

The Naked Prey - Trailer - YouTube

[Aclea]

I was never allowed to watch this one on TV (or Charlton Heston's The War Lord for that matter). To be fair, my parents had a point...



‘A hundred years ago, Africa was a vast, dark unknown. Only a few explorers and missionaries, the ivory hunters and the infamous slave traders risked their lives on its blood-soaked trails. Gleaming tusks were the prize and sweating slaves, sold by their own kings and chiefs in the ceaseless tribal wars or seized by slavers. The lion and the leopard hunted savagely among the huge herds of game. And man, lacking the will to understand other men, became like the beasts, and their way of life was his.’

Cornel Wilde is ‘Man,’ and Man is The Naked Prey. How tough is Cornel Wilde? Not only could he star in a film that sees him chased across a hostile environment by murderous tribesmen but could direct it as well in a primitive location in terrible conditions while seriously ill. While not the world’s greatest actor he’s the right physical presence for the part: there’s something primal enough about him to convince as the kind of man who, when spattered with the blood of an enemy, just rubs it in rather than brushes it off. Indeed, Wilde was even planning to make a sequel decades later while dying of cancer.

Based on John Coulter’s escape from Blackfoot tribesmen during the Lewis and Clark expedition and originally intended as a Western before South African tax breaks prompted a change of locale, it’s a simple story well told. Wilde is leading an ivory hunting safari that, thanks to callous employer Gert Van Der Berg, falls foul of Ken Gampu’s tribesmen, who later attack them and deal out various imaginative tortures and deaths to all except Wilde, who shows no fear. Reasoning that because he looks like a lion, he deserves a lion’s death, they give him a chance: stripped naked and completely unarmed, they’ll give him a head start before chasing after him and killing him. Only their prey is far more resourceful than they imagine, and what was intended as a quick kill becomes a long manhunt through a savage landscape.

It’s not a new story, even in 1966: the manhunt movie had been a sporadic staple since The Most Dangerous Game and the same true story it was based on had served as partial inspiration for Run of the Arrow ten years earlier while in more recent years its done service in First Blood and Apocalypto. Yet it’s rarely been done this well. It’s also surprisingly ahead of its time, anticipating Peckinpah in the village children play-acting each of the executions and, most surprisingly, avoiding much of the racial stereotyping of the day. The tribesmen aren’t supermen – they run out of breath as well, get thirsty, argue among themselves and even want to go home. And while the tribe do delight in (probably) invented tortures, it’s not without cause, and Wilde isn’t that far removed from them. Allan Quatermain in all but name, the film clearly sets ‘Man’ apart from his white business partner – he only kills for ivory, not for sport and isn’t interested in going into the slave trade for easy money - and just before the attack, Wilde makes a direct link between Wilde’s sense of hearing and Ken Gampu’s sense of smell. Both men rely on their senses for survival, acutely aware of their surroundings. It's a story where it’s survival not just of the fastest and the fittest but also the one who can adapt most to their environment - and their environment is not a pretty picture here. Its depiction of nature as a savage and unsentimental battlefield where its kill or be killed today seems like a pre-emptive two fingers to Terrence Malick’s recent work

Pared down to the bone – there’s no characterisation as such - and played in deep focus throughout, it may not be the greatest adventure film ever made, but it’s a damn good one.

The extras on Criterion’s DVD aren’t that plentiful but are good: soundtrack cues, a reading of an account of John Coulter’s real-life escape, original trailer, booklet including an interview with Wilde and a good audio commentary despite the odd mistake (The Most Dangerous Game wasn’t made in 1936). The 2.35:1 widescreen transfer was especially good for itsday so it'll be interesting to see if there's a noticeable improvement over Eureka's Blu: unlike the US TV prints, the film is uncut in both Criterion and Eureka's versions.

[ravenus]

In case anyone needs a second recommendation, my opinion after watching the 2015 Eureka blu-ray:

I got interested in the film when I read the synopsis, which reminded of Mel Gibson's Apocalypto, a film I tremendously enjoyed. Sure enough, Cornell Wilde's survival drama looks to me a definite precursor to the later film, even though it is not as kinetically propulsive. Here Man (specifically White Man, played by an incredibly well-built Wilde) is given chase in the African wilds by a tribe of native warriors out for his blood. Apart from a few lines in the beginning, the film is entirely lacking in English dialog and none of the lines spoken by the African characters are translated, putting this film squarely in the perspective of the white man. The cat and mouse games played between Wilde and the natives are pretty well depicted, apart from clumsy heavy-handed symbolism in the form of cuts to instances of animal fighting. These hamper the pace, are mostly taken from stock / second-unit footage and even have a different look depending on the source (sometimes 16mm). But the bulk of the movie remains engaging, and the visuals are supported by a throbbing percussion based score and native chanting/singing, which keeps you rooted in the setting.

[javi92]

Doesn't look like enough of a reason to double-dip on the Eureka.

[ravenus]

^I'm probably not. The Eureka disc had a nice video discussion by a Cornel Wilde biographer who gave quite a bit of insight into the making of the film and Cornel's health during that point of time.

[JezelleGHartman]

This movie looks amazing! Never saw it but day one for sure

[Shivapashupati]

Originally Posted by SeanJoyce

Is it the

[Show spoiler]roasting over the spit

?

I remember a similar scene in another movie. Just can't remember which movie it was. Also taking place in Africa, I believe.

[SeanJoyce]

Originally Posted by Shivapashupati

I remember a similar scene in another movie. Just can't remember which movie it was. Also taking place in Africa, I believe.

Not sure if you've seen The Naked Prey, but

[Show spoiler]they didn't just roast a guy over a flame; they covered his entire body in clay and stuck a funnel in his mouth so he could breath. It wasn't until the clay hardened and he resembled a statue that he was placed on the spit...the idea being that the process of being roasted alive would be slowly protracted. Just deliriously macabre.

[SoundFlyk]

I really enjoyed most of this film. But it lost a bit of it's authenticity when the chase began and the director threw in the Hollywood actors who looked like modern, urban guys instead of actual native looking dudes. Just a small inconsistency I found.
I will probably not be double-dipping here and keep my Eureka spinning.