Scorsese Raves About It


'Naked Prey' is airing on TCM in February 08, and Martin Scorsese has selected it for his movie column in that month's issue of ACCESS DIRECTV magazine (I got an early look at the draft copy). He calls the film "remarkable" and draws a favorable comparison to "Apocalypto."

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Should be the other way around Marty, Apocalypto compares to The Naked Prey!

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Gotta love Marty. Even more laughs are to be had with Roger Ebert's two star review of the film from 1967 ...

http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/19670614 /REVIEWS/706140301/1023

Leave it to a liberal to ruin all the fun by pointing out how utterly improbable of a scenario the film is. I actually admire the film and agree with him at the same time -- It's odd how the real expert on survival in exotic locales always turns out to be a white guy. It's a great movie but Jungal Trash: White Europeans travel to darkest Africa to have all sorts of fascinating adventures while the natives carry the luggage. Here we see that they can't even chuck a decent spear, don't know to look up when slinking under a low-hanging branch, and only have one applied skill which is how to kill respectable white folk in disturbing ways that justifies the hero killing as many as he can.

Dammit, he may have a point, but it's still a great movie.

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"Leave it to a liberal to ruin all the fun ..."

So true. Notice Ebert's review attributes motives to Wilde and his co-producers (motives he cannot know) based on race alone. Perhaps Ebert has a similar problem with "Lawrence of Arabia" (Arabs); or "Moby Dick" (animal rights)not forgetting that Moby seemed to win out in the end and was, suspiciously, a "white" whale; or the survival capabilities of Captain Sir Richard Francis Burton in the same Africa, circa 1850. The spice of any drama, especially an adventure drama, is in its improbabilities. Ask Shackleton, or Colter (the man whose real-life adventures in North America "The Naked Prey" is based upon) about the improbabilities of survival in an unfamiliar and dangerous environment. Of course, Wilde was white. Sorry, he couldn't do anything about that. And, his audience was, probably, 90% white (something else he couldn't do anything about). The continent is Africa with a population consisting of, principally, blacks (certainly in the mid-nineteenth century when the film is set). This mix makes for an interesting and, even, gripping adventure story about one man against other men - dealt with in this film with equal respect and admiration - in a dangerous and hostile environment. Believability is, as always, the issue and, for me, "The Naked Prey" comes off with better than passable believability.

Maybe, if we can get critics like Ebert, who I have known from college days (U. of I.), to set aside their obsessions about race, we can all sit down together and enjoy a film who's focus is on universal themes -- including courage, endurance, tradition, and mutual respect -- regardless of race.

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I also wonder if Ebert would have had a similar reaction if the film had been set in the American west and enacted the basic story that served as the inspiration to the plot. Since the ordeal actually did happen any objection to the story set as it really happened would be more revealing than his objection to the African setting, which baits right into that liberal white man's guilt.

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I seem to remember Henry Fonda out-running the indians in DRUMS ALONG THE MOHAWK, which was directed by the liberal John Ford. Anyway, what's with this "leave to a liberal" crack? Leave it to a conservative to say something dumb!

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"...by the liberal John Ford."

Liberals then were quite different from liberals today. JFK was a liberal then, but he couldn't get the nomination today if his life depended on it.

"...what's with this 'leave to a liberal' crack?"

Hmmm . . . must be that "right-wing conspiracy" thing we heard so much about . . . before the confession.

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>>The closest a pansy like Ebert ever came to the "wild" was going to the local flower shop.

So what? Like you have to be a musician to criticize a bad rock album. Ebert's comments were fair. What was that quote from "Zulu?" A Zulu regiment can run fifty miles and then immediately enter battle. Here we see one warrior run out of puff and collapse while whitey is still going strong. He sneeks up on them, beats them in one to one combat (yeah, just like the urban jungle) and suddenly manages an instantaneously improvised forest fire that mysteriously doesn't keep burning for miles. Maybe it suddenly went out in awe of the great white tour guide? How many of them does he kill? And in the final chase the warriors are yards behind him and then suddenly there's a cut to wider shot and they're suddenly about a mile behind him and he's past them through some trees.

I first saw this when telly was black and white. I think it's been hiding from embarrassment ever since.

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Out of the many annoying comments here yours is probably the worst. Yes I think the world and art would be better if the consumers just consumed and left the artists to critique each others work (we don't do it with science - they have their rules it's called PEER REVIEW). Just coz you can dress yourself doesn't make you a fashion designer, just coz you drive a car doesn't make you a mechanical engineer. Criticize away, in the end it's all just a prejudiced, singular and thoroughly unqualified opinion (including everything Ebert says - he ratifies the publics false authority on film). This is just all a phenomena of the internet age, which film (art) is older than, will out live and will always be more powerful. Without both good and bad art and entertainment being made the masses wouldn't have anything to talk about, apart from maybe what your not doing about the economic/political storm coming.

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What an awesome comment...you literally are asking for people to just consume things and to think about them at all. Way to strike a blow for mindlessness!

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Of course, Wilde was white.

I didn't think he was the first time I saw this.

He may be white but he is well tanned.

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Just think, the last 10 years of your life will be under a Democrat president.

Life is pain. Anyone who says differently is selling something.

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I didn't read the review yet but even when I saw this as a kid I had a hard time believing a white American could beat the pursuers at their own game and in their own arena. Seems highly unlikely to me but I still love the movie.

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It's the "highly unlikely" element that makes it gripping, as in many dramas.

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Ebert failed to point out that the tribesmen finally HAD him and were ready to deliver the death blow, but he was bailed out by the gunmen at the fort.

It is also an egregious mental blunder to assume that absolutely NO Westerner has ANY chance, WHATSOEVER, in beating the odds faced by Wilde's character. It's plain enough that he wouldn't have survived had it not been for the vast over-confidence of his hunters and their gross under-estimation of him.

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I agree, Ebert's review is completely idiotic. It's as if he hadn't even seen the film. Wilde's character is not a civilized English chap, as Ebert would have us believe, but a guide in Africa who knew his way around. It's a truly insulting piece of criticism, and I usually like Ebert.

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What you say does seem to be true about their makeup and it was a type of frontier life for certain! I don't remember the Wilde safari leader character being identified as a farmer. ?

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Thanks for that, I'll pay more attention next time I watch it. I just watched Breaker Morant (great film) for the first time and was especially interested because it dealt with the Boer War so I could get somewhat of a feel for the Boers in the possible connection with them and the Wilde character in The Naked Prey.

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The Boer were as tough and scary as they come.

The Selous Scouts in the Rhodesian war were mainly white and they were ran around in the bush, unsupported and outnumbered, managing to cause something like a majority of ZIPRA/ZANLA casualties. So clearly whites have been deeply involved in bush badassness for some time.


"Did he say 'Making f-ck'?"

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Leave to a Conservative to politicize EVERYTHING. WTF does Liberal or Conservative have to do with rating this Film ? The film IS improbable in many ways, but it's still VERY enjoyable. Also, you'll be interested to know that Scorsese, who raves about this Film, is a Liberal Democrat.

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I like Ebert, I find myself agreeing with many of his reviews. I'm from the Philippines, so maybe it helps that I'm not white. But I find it rather ridiculous that native Africans are quite incompetent here. They're fat & tire out much faster than the protagonist. You have to remember, these are people who grew up as hunter gatherers, they walked barefoot everywhere, this was the life they knew from the time they were born. Yet here, they are out of shape couch potatoes compared to a white hunter.


I think Apocalypto was far more realistic than this. Especially when you read about the early encounters on how physically fit early hunter gatherers were.

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Well, to me, none of the pursuers looked like "couch potatoes". The Man, also in pretty good shape, got a head-start and was fleeing for his life. The pursuers were looking for a kind of tribal status. The dynamic in this, as in most other dramas, involves the unorthodox, or rare -- what makes the drama uniquely engrossing -- "Can he do it against such odds?"

It may be more satisfatory to you to have your expectations more solidly affirmed in a documentary or an anthropology book than in a story (based on an actual incident, equally unique) created to entertain a general audience . . . and make a buck in the process.

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It seems like the white protagonist had very good odds as we see no threat whatsoever from the lame hunters who were after him. Mister fatty sure got tired quickly. This is a big contrast to the villains or pursuers in apocalypto, as they are shown to be quite formidable & threathening hunters.

Lol. Funny how any criticism against this film is responded by a 'go watch a documentary' verbatim. Is that the only recourse you have? Relax. It's just a film. It's not even The Godfather sort to get all wired up about.



Global Warming, it's a personal decision innit? - Nigel Tufnel

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Hmmm . . . it seems to me "go watch a documentary" makes a better than average rejoinder to your criticisms here. Comforting to know I'm not alone in that.

Your unplugged and, finally, relaxed correspondent

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Hi, Vicky, long time no see!

Cornel Wilde and Burt Lancaster were among a select few Hollywood actors who, along with their acting skills, possessed the sheer physicality to be capable of portraying characters such as Wilde's safari guide / human prey character. I just don't know of many others who could have done a more convincing job in this role than Wilde. And when you consider how the tribesmen were sizing him up, feeling his musculature, etc., the conclusion I can't help reaching is that the hunters were looking forward to the challenge presented by their "naked prey." So I've never had a credulity problem with the premise of the rare white man who is able to give his indigenous warriors / hunters a run for their money.

Okay folks, show's over, nothing to see here!

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JFC, must you f-ing wing nuts make everything about politics? Bet you've enjoyed the heII out of the last eight years.

Life is pain. Anyone who says differently is selling something.

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He should rave about it. "Naked Prey" is an incredible film..a genuine masterpiece..

"IMdB; where 14 year olds can act like jaded 40 year old critics...'

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