Naked Prey [Criterion Collection]

Cornel Wilde's idiosyncratic adventure epic The Naked Prey has earned a cult following thanks to its wild, no-holds-barred action sequences and unapologetic embrace of man at his most savage, and the film's admirers will doubtless be pleased with the new DVD release of the film from the Criterion Collection. The Naked Prey has been given a widescreen transfer to disc in its original aspect ratio of 2.35:1, letterboxed on conventional televisions and enhanced for anamorphic play on 16x9 monitors. In addition to respecting the film's CinemaScope framings, on this disc the bold colors are rendered in all their oversaturated glory, and this is the next best thing to seeing a fresh print projected on a mammoth screen. The audio has been mastered in Dolby Digital Mono, and the quality is quite good, though time has been a bit kinder to the images than the location sound recording. The dialogue (what there is of it) is mostly in English, with optional English subtitles but no multiple language options. Bonus materials include a lively and informative commentary track from Stephen Prince, a short profile of John Colter (the trapper whose escape from Blackfoot Indians inspired the film) read by Paul Giamatti, the original theatrical trailer, and isolated cues from the original musical score by musicologist Andrew Tracey, accompanied by an essay by Tracey. The accompanying booklet also features an appreciation of the film by critic Michael Atkinson and a reprint of an article from the October 1970 issue of Films and Filming in which Wilde talks about his career as a director. Too self-consciously intelligent to be standard action fare and too visceral for art cinema, The Naked Prey exists somewhere in between, but at its best the movie is wild and satisfying stuff, and this DVD allows the movie's virtues to shine bright.