November 19 movie: The Naked Prey. Gripping adventure movie starring Cornel Wilde as a Boer alone in the wilderness, trying to escape a group of Africans determined to hunt him down and kill him. A word of warning: there's an incredibly violent scene early on where Wilde's party (I think they're ivory hunters) are captured by the Africans and tortured to death, with only Wilde escaping. I think it's the most grotesque thing I've ever seen on TCM. I'm not going to describe it because frankly, I haven't been able to get it out of my head and I see no reason to inflict that on you. But just to give you an idea, the commenters on IMDB were all in agreement that this movie must have been a major inspiration for Apocalypto.
Anyway, once we got past the horrifying torture scene, the movie was exciting. If a bit silly, that Cornel Wilde could successfully evade a half-dozen African hunters on their own territory. Apparently the movie is largely based on the true story of an American pioneer who escaped from Native Americans, but Wilde couldn't afford to make that movie, and then he got the opportunity to work in South Africa so he retooled the script for the new location. Also, there's a lot of animal death in the movie (everything from elephants being shot to a python killing an iguana to a big toad eating a little toad) but it was all stock footage. So yes, those animals did all die, but none of them were killed for the movie.
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