His companions have died brutally: one baked alive in clay, another tarred and feathered, a third killed by a venomous snake. Yet this man, the guide for an ill-fated safari, is stripped naked, given a small knife, and allowed to run.

Run!

After a few hundred yards head start, the hunters follow.

Never has the phrase "single minded" been more apropos than in discussing Cornel Wilde's The Naked Prey. Nearly devoid of dialog for the majority of its running time, the film is simply a chase -- a beautifully filmed, heart-pounding chase across the savannahs of Africa. The pace is relentless and real time, the surrounding wilderness sparse and beautiful but also deadly. How long can one man run? If he lasts more than a day, where will he find food? Water?

Loosely based upon the true story of John Colter's run from the Blackfeet Indians in 1809, Cornel Wilde's The Naked Prey is set in the Colonial Africa of the 1860s. Wilde plays a guide who leads a hunting party (led by hunter Gert Van der Bergh) across the veldt in search of big game. The party, passing through a local tribe's land, is told by tribal members to offer a gift. Van der Bergh refuses and the hunting party is accosted and it's members tortured and killed. Only Wilde (as "The Man") is allowed to live and run. While he is out of shape, he is clever and not only survives for several days but manages to kill several of his pursuers. But how long can he last?

Wilde, born Kornel Weiz in Hungary, appeared in a number of 1940s noirs and romances before directing adventure and war films of which The Naked Prey is his best known. As an actor, he is an imposing figure -- intense, rugged -- but believable. While Wilde was an athlete (he made the Olympic fencing team) as a young man, he was sick (and in his late forties) when The Naked Prey was made. His condition charges his performance with a heightened realism. (Forget the movie, can Wilde survive this!?) Many moments appear unscripted and Wilde (with cinematographer H.A.R. Thomson) perfectly captures the beauty and brutality of the environment bursting with brambles and thorns and sheer outcroppings.

The film (written by Oscar-nominated co-writers Clint Johnson and Don Peters) was originally intended to closely follow John Colter's story, but Wilde shifted the action to Africa. While a number of critics have reviewed the film as nothing more than an offensive white male fantasy (based largely on the change in setting), the movie could reasonably have been set anywhere and been just as powerful. Charges of racism seem ignorant in light of the sympathetic portrayal of the tribal hunters -- all South African actors.

Like Clouzot's Wages of Fear, Cornel Wilde's The Naked Prey is a film about survival. It is a classic example of conflict distilled down to its very essence. Yet unlike Clouzot's artfully existential meditation, Wilde's film is primal and raw -- there are no political wrinkles or philosophical asides, just the bitter taste of unfiltered experience.

The Criterion DVD includes a commentary track from Stephen Prince, a reading by Paul Giamatti of the 1913 "John Colter's Escape," which inspired the film, and Wilde's original soundtrack cues written for the film.