I'll acknowledge that in 1966 it was pretty daring to offer this movie to audiences used to watching Doris Day movies. But it doesn't pass the sniff test and ends up being just another ooga-booga African demonization flick pretty much like those made in the previous decades. The narrative is loaded with offenses, faults, and cop-outs as putrid as anything the thirties offered. They should have hired an ethnographer because this is still awfully silly.
We only get savages or noble savages in African movies, never anything more complex, never anything in the middle. Here we get "savages" in a thinly veiled 'study' of the white mans fear of the brutality of black culture. Cooking a human mudman? Chasing a human chicken? The snake face bite? How many times has this tribe needed these tricks that they have such an assortment of bizarre tactics to deploy at a moments notice?
The hunt. The natives are surprised when the they find the first warrior dead? Well what happened the previous times they ran a live quarry against a slowly released team of hunters? Killing the first guy is the only option the prey has.
This is an absurd movie. Want to watch a great wordless movie, just rent Koyaanisqatsi.
We only get savages or noble savages in African movies, never anything more complex, never anything in the middle. Here we get "savages" in a thinly veiled 'study' of the white mans fear of the brutality of black culture. Cooking a human mudman? Chasing a human chicken? The snake face bite? How many times has this tribe needed these tricks that they have such an assortment of bizarre tactics to deploy at a moments notice?
The hunt. The natives are surprised when the they find the first warrior dead? Well what happened the previous times they ran a live quarry against a slowly released team of hunters? Killing the first guy is the only option the prey has.
This is an absurd movie. Want to watch a great wordless movie, just rent Koyaanisqatsi.