MovieChat Forums > The Naked Prey (1966) Discussion > haunted for fourty years by scene

haunted for fourty years by scene


I saw this great movie when I was a boy who knew nothing about the art of film.
There is an image that has stayed in my mind ever since I first saw it.
When the hunters are taken captive, one of them is tied, elbows and knees, to a stick. He covered in clay and then roasted alive over a fire.
I have never been able to shake the 'horribleness' of seeing it.

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likewise. I saw this movie in the mid sixties when I was young lad and thought it was gruesome. I have looked for it on video or DVD for a number of years without luck and so I'm looking forward to the impending release. By the way I thought Mel Gibson 'pinched it' for his Apocalypto.

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I caught it on TCM a few years ago uncut and I agree with you guys. I can sit through a lot of gore and violence but that sequence was so sick that I was horrified. What really bothered me is you see the straw sticking out so he can breathe. Just the thought of a guy being roasted alive has never left me. I saw the whole film and can't really remember it--but that scene has never left me.

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I agree as well. I've never forgotten that scene although there are some other pretty horrible ones as well, including if I rememeber rightly someone being spat at by a cobra...

Also agree completely that Mel Gibson must have seen this and 'borrowed' the plot for his film.

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The cobra didn't spit at him, it bit him on the face. Ouch!

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Actually, I think the Cobra bites him in the eyes (they're propped open with toothpicks or something like that).

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Actually, I'm watching the movie and I can add that his eyes are NOT propped open as he does blink. However, he is lying on his stomach and there is a rope around his forehead that is keeping his head raised off the ground. I can see how that might make it look like his eyes are propped open, but they are not.

I honestly can't say if the snake bit his face or his hand, it is so fast. It looks like blood near his eye after the snake bites, but there looks to be some blood there even BEFORE the snake bites.

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The clay guy scene in "The Naked Prey" has creepily stuck with me for over fifty years. There's also a horrible impaling scene in "Shaka Zulu" where a guy is lifted up and lowered asshole-first onto a long spear.

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During the French and Indian War, a favorite way for natives to kill European colonists was to truss up a victim hand to feet, insert a fire harded pole into the rectum, and then pass it through the body and out the side of the neck. They were good at this and usually managed to miss the major organs and arteries so the person didn't die from truama or blood loss. The person was then slow roasted over an open fire with the bodies left on display to be found by would be rescuers. Death often took hours. Humans have figured out all sorts of gruesome ways to kill each other. Once upon a time we had to do it up close and personal but today we can do murder from a distance so we never get to see the look of abject terror in the eyes of victims or the faces of extreme sadness on the victim's friends and relatives. I wouldn't say we've progressed very far.

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Didn't they have a scene like that in Last of the Mohicans? Right before the last showdown, the one English guy offers himself as a consolation death and trades himself for Daniel Day-Lewis' character, before Day-Lewis' mercifully shoots him from a distance, they show him being propped up over a fire. Granted, they didn't show anything too gruesome (well, not in that sequence anyway), but was that the execution method you're talking about?
Harsh. But hell, so were the times. Well, ARE the times.

"But, hey, that's me, I could be wrong."

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I find it interesting that the two races of people most adept at torture are Black Africans and Native Americans, yet whites are always touted as being so brutal. It's also interesting that the race coming in at #3 for sadisticness, the Japanese, claim to have learned a lot of THEIR torture techniques from the Native Americans as well.

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You might want to check in on the European fun they had in the reign of Terror or the Inquisition some real fun toys. And the Nazis were pretty creative too
Mans ability to treat others knows no limit.

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I tend to agree. If you can think of it, it's probably been tried.

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Vlad The Impaler (now known as Dracula) Used that very technique on just about everybody in Romania and area. A real nice guy! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vlad_the_Impaler

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I agree with you absolutely, that image is very hard to shake off. When I first saw it 40 years ago I too was bothered for days. But it has lasted for years in the back of my mind. Each time I see it I am shaken all over again.

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The purpose of the scene is to incite the audience into a catatonic state of horror at how savage and inhuman the natives are, thereby eliciting our approval of their being killed off like pop-up targets once the film moves into high gear. Sounds like they did a good job.

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I knew when I saw the subject heading for this string of comments which scene you were going to refer to. Me Too! the guy looks like he's coated in shake-n-bake. The guy who gets it at the hands of the laughing women with the pointy sticks isn't easy to watch either. The whole concept of the glib westerners being killed off so early in a 1966 film still shocks.

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Weird--me too--horrified by the scene and knew exactly which scene the post referred to! I actually grew up in Rhodesia (it's Zimbabwe, now), and one of our neighbors was a Matabele doctor who claimed to have actually seen something like this happen to a thief in his village when he was a young boy. Don't know if it's true or not, but it makes this scene even more disturbing to me--mainly because it is such a torturous death.

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God this is weird. I was just looking at a post on the britmovie site asking about greatest British gangster movies, and someone mentioned "Naked Runner". "Hang on", thinks I, " surely they don't mean "Naked Prey" and of course a quick check showed they didn't - BUT it got Naked Prey back into my mind and it must be 30 years since I saw it on tv and immediately THAT scene came to me. I remembered how back then it had haunted me for days and days and so on the offchance I thought I'd check on here. Lo! and behold you've been discussing that very scene over the last few days. Strange how things pan out.
But yes, it just shows how powerful it was...

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This was truly one powerful film. I've never forgotten the cooking scene either.
But the revenge was sweet!

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It's Feb 1st & I'm watching this movie right now; they just did the horrific cooking scene...which was far worse than the cobra bite in the face which was next& Cornel's running for his life. Folks need to get off the race issue about the white man winning out. If you watch Animal Planet & any nature show,you know that a pouncing or chasing predator can inspire their prey to new heights of escape skill. The predator's running for it's meal & the prey's running for the only life it has. There are gazelles that escape from cheetahs. Check out the famous "BATTLE AT KRUGER" video on Youtube where buffalo rescue a calf from a lion pride. Same with people. The world's full of accounts of people getting out of horrific situations involving enemies, both animal & human ( they're the worst!)because they're fighting for ther LIVES. That happens amomg people of every race,creed & color on earth. Think quick,outsmart the enemy, or die !

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surprised to see so may have the same reaction.
just want to mention that the only time I have ever come close to the same feeling was in the beginning of the tommy lee jones flick "the missing" when the husband, I think it was, is discovered suffocated in a cowhide hanging over a dead fire. You don't see it happen but the implication of the horror is almost as visceral.

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What really horrifies me is the $30 to $40 Criterion is asking for the DVD! I simply rented it from Netflix.

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Crazy how many people felt the same exact way I did about that scene. I knew exactly what seen your were refering to by the Subject header.

Never been able to shake that scene, and it has been forty years for me as well. The movie was captivating to me and I remember it as a simple, but great flick.


I'm selling a kidney. Will take competitor's coupons.

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Crazy how many people felt the same exact way I did about that scene. I knew exactly what seen your were refering to by the Subject header.

Never been able to shake that scene, and it has been forty years for me as well. The movie was captivating to me and I remember it as a simple, but great flick.


I'm selling a kidney. Will take competitor's coupons.

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