Naked Fear

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 .

Let's do the negatives first. The repeated shots of the animal heads is trite and repetitious. And the ending is trite. And some of the supporting cast is awful. The Indian, for example, is truly wooden. I thought Joe Mantegna was miscast. He did a decent job, but the strain showed. Miss De Luca is very skilled, and shines in the non-horror scenes. I would like to see more of her. The movie is genuinely suspenseful and well paced. And, yes, Miss De Luca looks lovely in her stripper scene. The chase scenes in the wilderness are effectively planned: the tension is high enough that we hatdly notice the nudity. Sum: not at all a waste of time.

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

I seldom watch horror movies - natural disasters such as volcanoes, tisuni, hurricanes or earthquakes, together with violent crimes, serial killers and terrorist suicide bombers, provide enough real horror to make any fictional additions redundant. This leaves me no time for films about aliens, imaginary new diseases, and monsters from the deep or the swamp. Once I would have included many films featuring man's inhumanity to man in this no-no category, and some friends felt I was squeamish in my movie selections. This changed when Cecil DeMille's "The Sign of the Cross" was again released after many years on the forbidden list. Although the scenes from the Roman Arena may be tame by the standards of modern horror films with their digital sequences of human bodies exploding into pieces, this film involved the viewer in the lives of the characters in a way that only a few Directors still can today and I reacted with abhorrence. Later I realized DeMille was reminding us how little human nature had changed over the past millennium. Historically speaking most people today live in a very stable society and only by remaining continually cognisant of the depths to which the human ego can drive our behaviour can we hope for this to continue. Roman civilization was a long lasting stable society in which citizens lived in relative security under the rule of law. Romans came to appreciate that in order to maintain this it was necessary for every citizen to be aware of the sheer horror of the alternative, and this need was met by gradual evolution of public entertainment in the Arena from poetry readings to barbaric exhibitions of violence. For us today horror films in movie theatres serve the same purpose as the gladiatorial contests of the Roman Arena.

So much for psychology, discussed here only to help differentiate between horror and sleaze in our entertainment. If you enjoy good sleaze it is irrelevant and unhelpful - this was written for the many reviewers who have condemned Naked Fear for being downright sleazy, which it is not. It is the story of a girl who is raped by a madman and then set loose naked in a forest knowing that she has a 15min head start after which he hunts her down for "sport", and shoots her before she can tell the police. Films about people being hunted in this way go back a very long time but "The Most Dangerous Game", filmed concurrently with the original King Kong over 70 years ago, is still far the best (see my review in this database). I well remember the sense of shock and horror I felt when I first saw it. It had very well controlled changes in pace, well rounded characters - not just cardboard cutouts - and many carefully planned details, even down to the knocker on the door of the villain's home. By comparison, the many remakes have all been relatively crude. Of them, Naked Fear, released in 2007, is probably the best. It is based on the story of Robert Hansen, an Alaskan who raped and hunted 15 girl strippers in this way before he was caught. There are always a few men who use the services of prostitutes, but still feel they are so disgusting that the girls should be killed. Making us aware of how far a hypocritical attitude towards violence to prostitutes has permeated into our society was one of the objectives of this film, and there is no reason for calling it a sleazy remake of TMDG just because the victim was a girl who was stripped before she was hunted. This not only provides a link to real events, greatly increasing its sense of reality, but also adds to the horror viewers feel when they see the totally unprotected victim being released into a forest replete with sharp twigs, thorny shrubs, and dangerous wildlife. I doubt if any viewer can watch it without sensing how impossible it would be to flee effectively under such a handicap. No doubt Danielle de Luca was provided with some sort of stick on soles for her feet during the filming, but she was still very brave to accept such a role and I greatly admire her for doing so.

Although a few badly lit night sequences leave the viewer guessing, the quality of this film comes closer to that of TMDG than most (if not all) of the other remakes released over the years, with its powerful final sequence effectively showing the deranging impact such encounters have on any victims who survive. The introductory sequences are long enough to give depth to the characters, and the actual hunt sequences are not overextended lasting about 20min with Diana clothed again and, perhaps more important, something round her feet for the last five of them. But at 108min overall this film remains too long, and does not maintain the tension achieved by TMDG which had the tautness of a 63min film. Its ending was overlong, overdark and overdrawn - the main climax was the scene on the rocks, the remainder was probably designed to fend off sexploitation charges. Overall I rate it at a solid six.and recommend it to everyone who enjoys horror films - particularly anyone believing these films require mythical monsters and or supernatural events to create real horror.

One may hope films dragging such subject matter out from under the curtain of obscurity may make it much less likely that characters such as Robert Picton (believed to have fed the bodies of more than 20 girls he killed to the pigs on his farm) can operate for so long before their atrocities are revealed.

"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.