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

?

[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.

[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

[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.

[Arch Stanton]

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

[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.

[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.

[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...

[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

[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.

[Schu]

They might have looked like that to you, but they weren't.