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.

A group of men are on safari. One of the party refuses to give a gift to a tribe they encounter. The tribe is offended, seizes the party, and one-by-one, kills all but one of the safari members in various creative and horrifying ways.

"The Naked Prey" was filmed on location in Southern Rhodesia (Zimbabwe). The initial version was set in the American Old West and more closely resembled the incident that inspired it; however, financial concerns persuaded Wilde to change the setting to Africa.

The change is interesting. On the one hand, it allows for the showing of more exotic scenery and animals, which surely adds to its appeal. But also, it changes the tribe from Indians to Africans. While in either way, the white man can be seen as the bad guy for his intrusions, it was probably easier to have Africans be the opposing force because they would not have lobbied as hard.