Let’s get ‘Naked’
Posted on January 15th, 2008 – 9:04 AMBy Randy A. Salas
The Naked Prey comes out today on DVD — finally. If you missed it Sunday, here’s my review of the new disc from the Criterion Collection.
Cornel Wilde runs for his life in The Naked Prey.
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Cornel Wilde’s 1966 film has a devoted cult following and has rightly been praised for its original presentation and influence on later films, but it doesn’t get much loving these days. The film, set in 19th-century Africa, follows a safari guide whose hunting party is captured by a warrior tribe after an embarrassing incident in which the guide’s client offends the tribe’s leader. Each of the party’s members are tortured and killed in bizarre ways. The fate of the guide, who’s played by Wilde, is to be stripped and given a small head start before the tribe’s young warriors hunt him down.
Among the film’s innovations: little dialogue, no translations for the foreign languages that are spoken, incredible widescreen photography with long and complex single takes, a score composed mostly of drumming, and daringly graphic violence considering the time of release. Wilde, who was in his mid-50s then, also was remarkably fit and actually ran for miles and miles during filming.
Several readers called and emailed me to share their enthusiasm for the film’s release on DVD.
One woman, who had seen the film twice, expressed chagrin that Wilde isn’t more widely known, especially considering his earlier Oscar nomination for the Chopin biopic A Song to Remember. She couldn’t believe my anecdote about DVD officials at Paramount, the studio that made The Naked Prey, not knowing their own film. Fans truly are lucky that Criterion licensed the film for DVD release.
Roy from Hopkins called to give me a “big bravo” for writing about one of his “top two films in that category,” which had been out of his mind for a while until reading my review. He pointed out that fans might also like the 1981 prehistoric epic Quest for Fire.
John H. wrote to say that he had never seen the film but wanted to do so after reading about it. But, he added: ” I have one quibble, and it’s your hyping of the plot’s ‘originality.’ From the description, Prey is a thinly veiled remake of The Most Dangerous Game, tossing in a few twists to a story that predates it by decades.”
I had actually mentioned The Most Dangerous Game in my first draft but cut it for space. But John is confusing what I wrote. I noted that the film scholar who does the commentary track on the DVD (not me) called The Naked Prey “one of the most original and influential American films of the 1960s.” Since The Most Dangerous Game was filmed in the 1930s, there’s no problem with his statement. Besides, his comment applies more to the way the picture was filmed and presented more than anything else. But even though The Most Dangerous Game (a great movie!) came first, The Naked Prey is based on historical fact that precedes both films — an incident in which a guide for the Lewis and Clark expedition was stripped and hunted down by Blackfoot Indians in North Dakota. The stories of the two films have a broad man-hunting-man theme, but their presentations and other circumstances are much different. The film scholar goes into that a little bit, too, on the disc.
John F. called from Minneapolis to say, “I couldn’t agree with you more that it’s not a racist film. I always felt it was just a story about a guy who was in a bad situation and was trying to get out of it. And those who were trying to hunt him down were, in the end, honorable people themselves. They were playing by their own rules. I look forward to getting my hands on a copy and watching it over and over and over.”
Speaking of getting the DVD, you might have trouble finding it in Twin Cities stores. (Big surprise.) Best Buy’s website, for example, shows it being available only at its Blaine and Richfield stores, for $33. Your best bet is to order online. Amazon, Deep Discount and DVD Planet have it for less than $30 shipped.
