Cornel Wilde impressed me with this story of survival, not only did he star in it, he also directed and produced it. The action begins whereby a hunting expedition lead by Wilde comes across a group of tribal huntsmen. Through no fault of his own Wilde is forced to ignore the huntsmen's request for passage through their domain. While the expedition have set up camp the tribesmen lead a surprise attack and kill most of the party, bar a few 'white men'. The awful fate of those captured was an ingenious concept, similar to how the American Indians dealt with invading European 'white man'.

Eventually Wilde has his turn of punishment and is given (really) a fighting chance than his other party members. He's stripped naked and sent running out into the wilderness…given a few minutes interval between tribesmen chasing after him. If caught he's dead!!!

In such a country as Africa and in a time where civil wars and unrest between cultures were prominent, you can imagine the untold dangers. Not to mention the wild life and the terrain….makes one think on how vulnerable we all are without modern living. An extremely well orchestrated production and filmed on location, this film delivers an underlying message for all of us to take note. Well worth seeing.

Boy, this is about a simple an action story as you're going to find, but it works, and has its interesting moments. Almost the entire film is devoted to a safari guide/hunter being chased (for the kill) by members of a angry tribe. Those tribe members had been insulted by an obnoxious member of the safari group and this good-guy guide (Cornell Wilde) has to run for his life.

Along his escape for survival, we, the viewers, are treated almost to a National Geographic-type tour of the African jungle with many wild animals, crocodiles, poisonous insects, snakes and - the most species of them all: naked women!

The film looks dated here and there but it's now over 40 years old. There is not much English dialog in here, but it's not needed.

It never ceases to amaze me how many reviewers immediately resort to the racism angle when critiquing a film, for whatever reason. Watching "The Naked Prey", the idea just never crossed my mind. Maybe it's because I'm from the Baby Boomer era and wasn't inundated with the white guilt message that seems so prevalent today.

Another idea I see expressed in the reviews by a lot of folks is how inconceivable it would have been for white man number one (Cornel Wilde) to consistently evade his trackers throughout the story. Well, maybe being a guide for hunting parties played into some of that; it's not like this was his first day in the jungle.

But I seem to be digressing. The main point I want to get to is that the film just wasn't very interesting to me, again in counterpoint to a lot of the enthusiastic reviews for this picture. When the point of a story is to see how someone evades pursuit for an entire hour and a half, well that doesn't constitute much in the way of excitement for this viewer.

There were some entertaining moments however. The scene of Cornel Wilde chasing after a prairie hen was pretty amusing, but the one where he tried to spear a small lizard about six inches long was downright hilarious. Probably the most interesting aspect of the picture for me was catching the law of the jungle at work in scenes of a lion taking down a wildebeest, the cheetah in a running argument with a baboon, and that one really weird scene of a larger toad eating a smaller one! I wouldn't have believed that one if I hadn't seen it. Oh yeah, and the white vulture which wasn't albino was pretty cool. The film makers must have been pretty lucky to come across that one.

And what was simply stupefying to me was to see that this picture got a Best Writing Nomination for a movie written directly for the screen. Perhaps I'm missing something here that another viewing might help me out with but that's not likely. I fast forwarded enough the first time I watched the picture, I don't need to do that all over again.