The Naked Prey spills more beauty, blood and savagery upon the screen than any African adventure drama since Trader Horn. Squeamish viewers will head for home in the first 20 minutes or so, when Producer-Director-Star Cornel Wilde swiftly dooms three last-century white hunters and a file of blacks, attacked and captured by a horde of warriors from a tribe they have insulted. One victim is basted with clay and turned over a spit, another is staked out as the victim of a cobra.
The only survivor is Wilde. In a primitive sporting gesture, the natives free the courageous white man without clothes, weapons or water—and with ten stalwart young spearsmen poised to track him down. Hunted now, the hunter begins to run, and Prey gathers fierce momentum as a classic, single-minded epic of survival with no time out for fainthearted blondes or false heroics.
Through snake-spitting jungles, across parched plains and into badlands withering under spidery trees, the desperate man plays hide-and-seek with his pursuers. Starving, he eats raw snails, shrubs, serpents. Trapped, he sets fires in his wake, or fights. Finally, days later, as he crawls to the safety of a mission fort, the white man waves toward the underbrush. The warriors' resolute leader (South African Actor Ken Gampu) salutes in return, and both men quit the field with honor.
Against the surreal landscapes of Mozambique, Bechuanaland and Transvaal, Director Wilde unfolds this simple tale with elemental force, and acts it accordingly. His natives are not the usual faceless blacks but human beings whose capacity for violence the hero quickly matches. In the script, sparely written by Clint Johnston and Don Peters, a few scraps of English dialogue and African dialect count for less than the surprise of a snapping twig or the insistent throb of drums, injected into the bloodstream of the film like so many shots of adrenaline. Without insulting modern Africa, Naked Prey writes the wild poetry of its past in raw colors.