My title for this review pretty much summarizes the plot of "Naked Fear" (hereafter NF). In case you are not familiar, "Naked and Afraid" is the Discovery Channel program that places men/women pairs in inhospitable environments without food, water, and clothes and observes their efforts to survive for 21 days. As for "The Most Dangerous Game", I think no explanation is necessary, since it has been such a constantly used premise. To be candid, I watched NF for free on Xfinity on Demand primarily because of its voyeuristic promise of extensive female nudity. I thought NF would be chintzy and stingy with the nudity, but it sure wasn't (including full-frontals). Despite its cinematic '70s atmosphere, TV-level production levels, and exploitative plot, NF also doesn't skimp on the tension, violence, and terror, which were unnervingly effective.NF's effectiveness comes mainly from Danielle De Luca's intense turn as Diana, a lovely, red- headed Texas woman who moves to a sleepy (make that comatose) New Mexico town to take an alluring job as a dancer. Gradually, she realizes that the dancing involves poles, G-strings, twerking and being in financial thrall to the scum who lured her there. Desperate to raise money to pay him off and to go back home, Diana most reluctantly agrees to "entertain" one of the habitual strip-club customers. Unfortunately, that turns out to be hunter Colin Mandel (J.D. Garfield).You see, Colin not only likes to hunt big game like elk and deer (whose stuffed heads get ample screen time). He likes to hunt humans. Naked female humans. He picks up prostitutes in town, takes them to his remote home, abuse and drug them, strip them, then dump them in the desolate New Mexico wilderness with a 15-minute head start to escape him. The beginning of the film shows one of Colin's victims failing "Naked Survival 101".Diana finds herself in the same predicament. Despite her fear, shame, and confusion, Diana proves to be quite a challenging, elusive quarry for the deranged Colin. Meanwhile, the new deputy in town, intrigued by the town's growing list of missing female persons (all strippers or prostitutes), tries to investigate Diana's appearance, but is thwarted by the apathetic town Sheriff (Joe Mantegna) who basically thinks it's a waste of police power looking for worthless hookers. Out here in the vast New Mexico territory, it's pretty easy for criminals like Colin to practice their twisted hobby and literally bury the bodies without anybody complaining. This seems to lower Diana's survival odds.Nevertheless, Diana has a stubborn will to survive, facing rapid rivers, a rattlesnake, rough terrain, scorching heat, and the dogged Colin. Can she make it out alive? Will she get her revenge? What effect does this ordeal have upon her?NF does a pretty good job in exploring one of the most terrifying situations a human could face (being defenseless in the wild) and showing Diana's realistic reaction to her situation. She is both fragile and tough, afraid and persistent, despairing and determined to beat the odds. She's a real trooper - both the character and the actress! The other characters in NF - including a camper and his two sons who offer temporary shelter to Diana- are basically forgettable window dressing. Your attention is focused upon Diana, and not only because she has a beautiful body.P.S.: Regarding Diana's fate, here's a small clue. In NF, Diana literally collides with a VW bus. One of the two panicked guys in the bus remarks, "She looks like Carrie after the prom."

A guy captures and hunts down prostitutes. How did this concept not get made in the 70s? Maybe because a very similar event actually happened in the 70s, but still surprising.Nevertheless, you're given this concept, and you naturally expect exploitation trash. It's actually way better than that, so maybe gets a higher score than it deserves just for so completely clearing the admittedly low hurdle of my expectations.--Minor spoilers-- There were some things that didn't make much sense. The woman is frightened and angry and confused, but still speaking English for the first day or two of her ordeal. Suddenly she's found by a hunting family, and she understandably freaks out, but then, even when it's clear they're trying to help her, she's unable to speak and tell them what's been going on. Really? Maybe this complete retreat into an animal nature would be easier to swallow if it was, like, months, up in the mountains, eating bugs and running from shadows.The killer seems like a pretty friendly guy, but everything that happens to him in this movie, he's got coming to him, and then some. Not very sporting of him to not leave the women shoes, at least. But I guess he really can't afford for any of them to get away.The ending was kind of amusing, and almost turned this whole thing into the 70s-style exploitation garbage I was expecting.

It's a difficult film to judge because it's a cheaply made story of a pretty young woman kidnapped by a lunatic and set free, naked, in the wilds of New Mexico to be hunted down like any other prey. It's a familiar enough story. "Run of the Arrow," "The Naked Prey," "Run For the Sun," and "The Most Dangerous Game" come to mind, though the published versions reach back farther than that. Come to think of it, it's almost time for another crack at it, isn't it? But, despite its meager budget, its use of non-actors in all the important roles, and the general sloppiness of its construction, it has odd moments in which someone -- the writer or the director -- managed to transcend the mundane foundations of the narrative.I'll give two examples of their NOT doing anything new with the story and one example of at least some slight evidence of imagination.In all dumb horror movies, there is an axiom. The dead body must come back to life. To be truly effective it must come LEAPING back to life. Okay. Danielle De Luca, naked and exhausted, climbs the scaly face of a bluff and disappears over the corniche. The maniac, J. D. Garfield, slings his rifle and climbs after her. Just as he is about to reach the top, she rises above him, holding a boulder over her head, shouts something like, "Eff YOU, you effing effer!", and smashes the rock on his head. He tumbles to the road below in a shower of stones and lies there, his rifle at some distance. Is he dead? Is he even out of the picture? Are you kidding? Of course the sensible thing for De Luca to have done was to slide down the face of the cliff, grab the rifle, and pump a few rounds into his head but, given the dead-body-lives prerequisite, I don't know for sure that that would have stopped him. It hardly slows him down later when she bites off his ear and stabs him. And when she runs him over, she had to do it twice to get the job done. (These lunatics are hard to snuff.) Example number two of thoughtlessness in the narrative. At the very end, ten months after she's escaped from the hospital (with at least one compound fracture and untold hollow organ injuries), we see a De Luca more attractive than ever as a prostitute picked up by an agreeable trick. He stops the car in a dark lot and turns to her with a big grin. But she pulls a pistol and puts it to his forehead. "S****," he says in a resigned tone before she blows his brains out the window. She walks off with a satisfied smile into the night. The scene provides a bloody but implausible ending, unless you hate men. What an improvement it would have been, while retaining the same message, if the scene had shown us De Luca moping over a drink in a bar, being approached by a man, then moving away with a horribly pained expression on her face. The wounds she's suffered will never heal.Now I've gone on for so long with the two lousy examples that I've almost forgotten the good one I'd intended to describe. Yes. It comes gliding back to mind. After De Luca's pursuit through the wilderness, she steals a Volkswagen bus from a couple of drunken, wisecracking teen-aged boys. She manages to drive into the city before finally collapsing behind the wheel. But instead of the speeding van smashing through a fence or a supermarket window, it slows down and rolls to a stop, gently bumping against a sign post. Maybe, as a bonus point, I should add that De Luca's nudity is never really exploited either. There's nothing erotic about a naked and bruised woman stumbling awkwardly through thickets on bloody feet. The effect is that of viewing a corpse before the mortician has had a chance to pretty it up.There is one conclusive, profoundly moral message that can be drawn from this catchpenny effort. Danielle De Luca looks good naked. As Scaramouche says, "You may have lost Diana on the highway, but look, there is Aphrodite in a ditch." She's attractive enough, though she can't act any better than some kid starring in a high school play in Rocky Mount, North Carolina. Nothing to be ashamed of. But why -- in the middle of this vast wilderness, not even within shouting distance of the nearest human being -- does she keep holding her hands and arms over her forbidden parts? Modesty is a virtue, true, but even virtue can be carried too far.

A psycho lets naked women loose in the wilderness so he can hunt them down like animals. This thriller, inspired by the actions of Alaska serial killer Robert Hansen, is nothing to write home about, but it's not as bad as one would expect. It draws elements from such films as "The Most Dangerous Game," "The Naked Prey," and "I Spit on Your Grave." The only familiar face here is Mantegna as the sheriff. De Luca, spending much of the film completely disrobed, is not bad in the lead role. There is a lot of nudity, but it's presented rather tastefully. The film doesn't know when to roll the final credits; there are too many climaxes.