MAKSQUIBS CINEMATHEQUE: THE NAKED PREY (1965)

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Wednesday, December 26, 2018

THE NAKED PREY (1965)

Grimly compelling even at its most awkward, Cornel Wilde stars & directs this ethnological chase pic as the leader of an African Safari (late 1800s?) who must run for his life after the ‘Great White’ elephant/ ivory hunter who hired him refuses to pay token tribute to the native tribe who live on the territory. A decision he quickly regrets as the hunting party is soon captured, tortured & killed (in gruesomely imaginative ways; one becomes a clay cooking vessel), with only Wilde (singularly fit & suitable for sport @ 53) given the honor to act as naked human prey for the bravest tribesmen to hunt. It’s not quite an African version of THE MOST DANGEROUS GAME, but pretty close; with Wilde mostly getting away with this film's far more realistic tone and sustaining atmosphere & a consistent level of acting from his largely amateur cast. One superb sequence stops running to watch in horror as a small village is attacked by a band of local slavers (fellow Africans?). And if Wilde occasionally drops the ball technically, as in a fumbled firewall sequence, no one can say he didn’t put it all on the line here.

DOUBLE-BILL: Filmed multiple times, the 1932 version of DANGEROUS GAME, filmed on sets also used for KING KONG/’33, remains the one to go for.

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A last thought before we go.

Well, enough from me. But before we sign off, here's a great quote from Emile Zola's L'OEUVRE (THE MASTERPIECE), which is about painting rather than the yet to be invented medium of film, but which points a fine critical eye toward the whole idea of art criticism. It's a good, if chilly, thought to keep in mind, especially when you surf the net.

"Has it ever struck you that posterity may not be the fair, impartial judge we like to think it is?

"Suppose the artist's paradise turned out to be as nonexistent as the Catholics, and future generations prove just as misguided as the present one and persisted in liking pretty pretty dabbling better than honest to goodness painting. There are some accepted masterpieces for which I myself wouldn't give a twopenny damn.

"Classical training has given us a wrong view of everything and forces us to acclaim as geniuses a lot of fellows who are no more than well-balanced, facile painters, while what we might really prefer is the work of more emancipated but less even artists known only to an initiated few. Immortality at present depends entirely on the average, middle-class mind and is reserved only for the names that have been most forcibly impressed upon us while we were still unable to defend ourselves...

"Perhaps that's the sort of thing that's best left unsaid. It's certainly the sort of thing that gives me the shudders!"- Emile Zola