A Presa Humana

This was better than an empty dessert. By that I mean, I went into this thinking it would just be an average, silly, exploitive film with gratuitous nudity and not much of an original plot. I got the nudity and a lot more substance. Yes this theme has been done before but there were many surprising twists and shocks that usually are taboo in films like this. This was a psychological thriller for sure . There was the cliché. The usual suspect, the well to do pillar of the community , and of course negative traits of hookers and strippers. The usual fare ,setting the plate , for an all familiar film. The tension was there, check. The twists were there, check. Fine acting, check. The ingredients were there and then some. The movie, I felt, did a fine job of establishing most of the characters and showing their true selves ... Negative and positive. The realness was there. I will not give away the ending, only to say you will not be disappointed. Enjoy .

In the intro we see a naked woman out in the fields while a stranger shoots at her. He's hunting her like an animal.

The lovely Diana arrives in a small New Mexico border town for a job. Little does she know it's to be a stripper. She has no money and is now indebted to the "talent agency manager". She has to share a room with a fellow stripper who's also a prostitute at night and a junkie.

Parallel to this story we meet the local law enforcement, the corrupt Sheriff and his hunting buddies, as well as the new deputy who arrived from LA. The local cops are corrupt and the new guy is not quite used to that.

Diana's salary as a stripper doesn't really amount to much. Junkie stripper tells her all the ways she can make more money- take off more clothes, interact with patrons, and offer other services. At first Diana isn't interested but she needs the money so she gives it a try. It yields her more money and the night she meets a patron and drives away with him she ends up changing her mind about offering him other services. But he won't have none of it. He ends up kidnapping her.

Next, she wakes up out in the desert nude...as prey for our hunter. He gives her a 15 minute head start. He catches up with her but he likes a challenge so he doesn't make it that easy for himself. And Diana, is also a bright girl. She tricks him and escapes from him repeatedly, bloody and bruised. Eventually she gets the upper hand and runs into a family camping, the dad and his two teenage sons, who are stunned to see a mostly naked girl who now is in shock. Dad does the right thing and leaves to get help. But the hunter isn't done yet. Nor is Diana.

Naked Fear is an excellent movie for what it is- a well-done B movie with a great story and good acting. Of course seeing the lovely Danielle De Luca run around naked for a good while doesn't hurt a bit. Her performance overall is remarkable, downright award-worthy, given what she has to go through. It obviously suffers from B-movie weaknesses- low budget, not so good acting by secondary characters, an unpolished look indoors, etc. It's a tad bit too long, certain things could have been cut out or shortened. At the same time another victim should have been added, just to make our villain more despicable.

The movie succeeds at presenting the hardships of small town life and the risks of trying to make it elsewhere pretty well. And it does so without being condescending and offensive. You do end up empathizing with the main character. The movie is never exploitative but manages to humanize our characters and give the story a lot of meaning. Naked Fear is admirable for the risks the filmmakers took and how they managed to deliver their vision perhaps without compromise.

"Rated R for terror and violence, nudity throughout" - perfect line for your average snuff movie.

Yet, this movie has a bit more quality. The nudity is non-pornographic. The sexuality shown is sometimes erotic, but not perverse.

The plot: Sadistic killer versus innocent, naive, girl. Seen often before.

After the first 10 minutes I thought of giving this a 4 out of 10 or less, for its stereotypes, standard patterns of story development and rather bad acting and camera work. But as the story developed, it actually became an entertaining movie. I thought the naive girl was believable in her actions, and somehow the camera and sound work seemed to improve as well. Even the nudity was fitting in without being exploiting.

I try to avoid spoilers in the first comment for this movie, so I just try give you an idea of what you might like about it: You don't have to turn away every other scene thinking: wow, this is stupid, why in world would he/she do that? Meaning it's mostly believable. And it's not explicit - meaning that even thought this movie contains cruelty, it does not show it off with lots of gore. It's quite subtle at it.

It's still your basic thriller with some mild horror elements mixed in. No greatness in the dialogues or in the action scenes (well, the ending line it great). I found it enjoyable, only the acting of the supporting cast and the sound sometimes irritated me. I'd recommend this to anyone wanting to see a not-too-violent thriller with some depth and a few surprises.

When visiting Germany I came across the Naked Fear box, it was ultra cheap so I picked it up and only seen part 1 I wasn't disappointed. Being a horror buff I wouldn't really classify it under horror but more under a thriller. The reason is simple, it's all about being hunted by a killer.

This flick is really a slow starter, it takes around 40 minutes before it turns into what the title says. The first 40 minutes you start to know Diana (Danielle De Luca), a girl going to a town without any money. So she needs money and only can do it by stripping in a bar. But that doesn't bring in real cash so she also do men after stripping until she come across a nice guy. It's from that point that this flick turns into a horror. But not that much blood is shown, it's all about running away from the hunter. Diana is being hunted in full nudity. It's weird that in the strip club she doesn't reveal anything but once in the woods she shows it all.

the whole story reminded me of two real cases, serial killer Robert Hansen who also kidnapped prostitutes and let them run in the forest to be hunted down, the second case is that of Aileen Wuornos.

A rather good flick, you just want to know how it going to end. It never bored me although that some acting was bad and a few editing mistakes like then she has bruises on her leg and the next shot they are gone or the first victim when buried you can see her breath while she's supposed to be death.

Gore 1/5 Nudity 4/5 Effects 2/5 Story 3/5 Comedy 0/5

Along with the mindset of the Dangerous Game it also reminded me of an old movie called Naked Prey.

The naked runner scenes didn't hurt to keep attention-span while the plot developed, they were done well and didn't make it a back room movie. There are a few spots of twist and it wasn't totally predictable.

Aside from just her looks, Danielle De Luca did a really good job and the landscape scenery was nice. Don't know why they put Joe Mantegna in a bit part though.

The ending seemed a bit out of place but I guess they wanted to try to change her role as not defenseless.

All in all, worth a watch.