Starring: Cornel Wilde, Ken Gampu, Gert van den Bergh, Bella Randles, Morrison Gampu, Sandy Nkomo, Fusi Zazayokwe

The dog-days of August are upon us… Time to shed those warming layers – tear the sweat-soaked raiment of societal structuralism away – freed to take chase with The Deuce in hot hunt of… THE NAKED PREY!.. “Audience” and “film” finally fused –  stripped bare… surrendered… together sentient in a Sun-flooded fever of image! Sound! Movement! Emotion!.. STEAMY!!

With a minimum of “set-up”: obnoxious privilegeds on a paid-for South African safari stupidly disregard their guide’s guidance and get met with more than a mouthful of malice from those whose land they’re looting… leaving said guide the last man standing – or rather running – for his life… as The Naked Prey!!

Mid-latish career for the handsomely hunkish one-time swash-buckling “Matinee Idol” Wilde – here doing double-duty before and behind the camera… One of a handful of highly idiosyncratic, generally down-beat directorial efforts.. this for which he somewhat re-invents not only himself – here bearded haggard scraggly gaunt and sinewy – but also as well the idea of what a “mainstream” “Hollywood” “Action-Adventure” movie could be made up of: also haggard scraggly gaunt and sinewy (and bearded?? why not!)… Independent from explanations, contextualizations, judgmentals… base and basic… A crucible of brutal sensualism nearing the “experimental” in its lean meanness… Confident in its nearly dialogless universality and fervent digging toward a humanity-wide cry for compassion… with THE NAKED PREY, Wilde forges the basics of movie-making’s beginnings into a gut-stab mold-breaking modernism… A wonder to behold! Behold on tight with The Deuce!!

PREY‘s Paramount Pictures promoted the pic’s New Embassy Theatre premiere with a “nationwide beauty contest” –  the “winner” of which to be tiaraed that opening night: “Miss Naked Prey“!??! Preposterous?!!? Perfect!??! Prey-tell – which of you Deucies be brave enough to dare vie for such a title?? Because – believe or not… ’tis indeed… by night’s end – one of YOU (in actual theatrical attendance) will be crowned!!