SanEat A film with more than the usual spoiler issues. Talking about it in any detail feels akin to handing you a gift-wrapped present and saying, "I hope you like it -- It's a thriller about a diabolical secret experiment."

Ava-Grace Willis Story: It's very simple but honestly that is fine.

Quiet Muffin This movie tries so hard to be funny, yet it falls flat every time. Just another example of recycled ideas repackaged with women in an attempt to appeal to a certain audience.

Dana An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

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.

Dalbert Pringle If you ask me - This 1966 "man-as-the-hunted" picture certainly could have been a helluva lot better. It really could have.It also could have been a helluva lot shorter, too. (Like, by about 30 minutes, I'd say) And it also could have used some subtitles, because almost no English was spoken since most of the characters ended up being African tribesmen who spoke their own lingo.Set in the wilds of Africa in the 1800s, Naked Prey not only starred Cornel Wilde as the story's principal character, but it was also directed by him, as well.Yes. I will admit that Naked Prey was very well-photographed (the many shots of African wildlife were excellent), but, with that aside, its story was just a little too predictable to hold this viewer's undivided attention for its 96-minute running time.Naked Prey's biggest problem (which rendered its story far from being believable) was that Wilde's character was just a little too resourceful for a white man who was stuck in the life-or-death predicament that he was.As a result of his apparent cunning he was able to repeatedly beat and out-fox all of the highly-skilled natives of jungle-land who were in hot and heavy pursuit of him. And even though he was being constantly trailed for a week, non-stop, he managed to survive with almost no food at all.

Jonathon Dabell The Naked Prey is a suspenseful and very well made film from 1966. For its era it contains some surprisingly savage scenes, but thankfully none of them are gratuitous or exploitative. Another surprise is the extraordinarily low amount of dialogue in the film. Since the advent of sound I can think of very few films with as little dialogue as this one. Yet even without words, it comes across as a compelling film – a true example of film as a visual medium, with a thoughtful mix of panoramic vistas and intense close-ups. There is a bit of sound – some African drum scoring for the dramatic scenes, plus a very organic and natural background hum throughout – and it is used very cleverly and sparingly to maximise impact.A group of white hunters on a 19th century safari offend a local tribe by refusing to exchange gifts with them. The safari manager – known simply as The Man (Cornel Wilde) – warns that this is not wise, but he is ignored by his clients. Later the tribesmen attack the safari party and take its members prisoner. One by one the white hunters are killed – some are hacked to pieces, one is bitten by a snake, one is encased in clay and roasted over a fire. The only one left alive is The Man. He is to be used for sport – the tribesmen strip him naked, give him an arrow-shot distance head start, then pursue him like a wild animal into the blisteringly hot African bush. What follows is an epic struggle to stay alive, as The Man attempts to outrun and outwit his pursuers. But the longer he lasts, the more his survival instincts become primitive and barbaric.Cornel Wilde shows an impressive eye for detail as the director of this film, and as actor he is convincing as a man simply desperate to remain alive. The role seems physically demanding, and Wilde is equal to it. There is inevitable violence – and it definitely isn't for the squeamish – but it is done tastefully and realistically within the context of the story. Where The Naked Prey loses out slightly, for me, is in the sparseness of its characterisation. There's a lack of depth to the pursuers and the pursued, perhaps deliberately, which just makes it that little bit harder to "feel" anything for them as real people. But the spectacle of the hunt is certainly vivid enough, and Wilde's overwhelming desire to stay alive is captured very clearly. A blink-and-you'll-miss-it scene at the end – where the Leader of the Hunters and The Man exchange a salute of mutual respect – is wonderfully done. This is a very atypical product from 1960s Hollywood, and one which should be seen by anyone with an interest in the "visualness" of the film medium or anyone who likes a rattling good adventure flick.

ElijahCSkuggs Being a very big fan of Apocalypto I eventually (my brother actually did) stumbled upon The Naked Prey. A flick that Apocalypto shares many similar ideas with. I'm sure there have been films between the two and possibly a film that came before The Naked Prey that tackles similar premises and/or ideas. But nevertheless, I jumped at the chance to check out The Naked Prey as soon as I got the chance. And I'm glad I did.The Nakey Prey is about a unique individual; an ivory hunter with a heart of gold. Our lead character, known as The Man, is working together with a drunken money hungry fool to collect ivory, aka kill elephants. By the way, you do see Elephants die, so that's a downer. Anyways, not long into the film the Man and his traveling team of hunters and helpers are wrangled up and tortured and some, killed. This is when the story of Apocalypto comes into play. The Man is now set loose for our Pursuers to use as game. But obviously things don't go as planned. It's pretty simple, but is one of my favorite premises for an action/adventure film. I love it, and if you do too, then you should also check this flick out.The film is basically silent throughout, as our lead barely talks once he's on the run. You hear the pursuing bushmen speak to one another but, the movie isn't subtitled so you're not in the know of what they're actually saying. Though, it doesn't take a genius to understand what they're saying to one another though. It's all done very well. The pursuers and our lead all play their parts as good as you basically want them to, and there's even a bit of sly humor thrown in.My only "gripes" to the film is sometimes there is a lull in pace. I would have loved some more intense chases, which there are a couple, but not enough for this bum. And I also thought the scenes of all types of animals fighting with one another was slightly over done. It just felt like the movie was trying to get deep too often. At points I was also wondering if they were going to show every dangerous animal that lived in Africa. No hippos, unfortunately. But this is a minor gripe, as a animal buff it was cool seeing rare footage of animals.So if you dig Apocalpyto, chase flicks, solid classic adventure films, this is one flick that you should seek out. Definitely worth it. It's also worth it to see the car in the background driving in the middle of the bush.