The Naked Prey

A safari party moves through Africa. They are after ivory. On the road they meet a tribe. Custom requires a gift. The owner of the party refuses and treats the men with contempt. The tribe watches them. The next day they are attacked. Everyone is killed. One man is left alive; the tribe gives him a chance. They strip him, leave him unarmed and tell him to run. The hunters come after him. There are hundreds of kilometres to cover and he has nothing. Cornel Wilde directs and takes the lead; Gert Van den Bergh and Ken Gampu are in the cast. It is an American production, made in 1965. It was shot on location in southern Africa with local actors. The narrative gives almost no room to dialogue; the lead speaks very little and the pursuers speak their own language, untranslated. The matter it treats is survival; the film looks for no justification and gives the event as a chase. The narrative does not show the hunters as one dimensional; the pursuing group has its own relations and losses. Its starting point is a story told in America; the screenplay moves it to another continent. Nature footage cuts in like documentary and the animal material is held long. The film's outlook is contested today; the narrative is framed from the colonial period. Its limit is that outlook; the narrative is simple, the characters undefined, and the frame troubling. Who it is for: viewers who like survival films and sixties adventure. Who it is not for: it is harsh, its outlook dated, and the ending cold.