Themes: Flight of the Innocent, Stranded, Mind Games
Main Cast: Joel McCrea, Fay Wray, Leslie Banks, Robert Armstrong, Steve Clemente
Release Year: 1932
Country: US
Run Time: 78 minutes
MPAA Rating: NR
Plot
The first of many official and unofficial screen versions of Richard Connell's The Most Dangerous Game was put together by producer Willis O'Brien and directors Ernest B. Schoedsack and Irving Pichel in 1932. Leslie Banks stars as loony Russian count Zaroff, a renowned big-game hunter who tires of stalking animals and begins hunting down the "most dangerous game"-human beings. Luring unwary victims to his remote island, Zaroff wines and dines them, gives them a few hours' head start to run into the jungle, then hunts them down with rifle and bow and arrow. As his grisly trophy room demonstrates, Zaroff hasn't missed yet. Shipwreck survivors Joel McCrea and Fay Wray are Zaroff's latest quarry. "First the hunt, then the revels!" declares Zaroff, casting a lecherous eye towards the wide-eyed Ms. Wray. The original Connell story had no heroine, but who wants to watch Joel McCrea lose most of his clothing while scurrying through the jungle? The Most Dangerous Game was filmed on RKO's standing King Kong sets during a lull in the production of that classic film, utilizing most of the Kong personnel (actors Fay Wray, Robert Armstrong, Noble Johnson, Steve Clemente and Dutch Hendrian; producer O'Brien; director Schoedsack; composer Max Steiner). While the plot has been reshaped and recycled many times since 1932, RKO's only official remake of Most Dangerous Game was 1945's A Game of Death. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
Review
This classic horror film stars Leslie Banks in a tour-de-force of pure evil as the sadistic Count Zaroff, who waylays shipwrecked boats on his foggy island then unleashes his vicious dogs and hunts humans in the jungles for sport. Robert Armstrong and Fay Wray are among the prey and would be reunited the following year for co-director Ernest B. Schoedsack's wonderful King Kong, while the other co-director, Irving Pichel, would go on to act in Dracula's Daughter. The timeless adventure story has been copied many times, decades later by John Woo in Hard Target (1995), but few of the remakes compare to the somewhat tatty but effective original. ~ Robert Firsching, All Movie Guide
Because it was so inexpensive to make, costing only $200,000, The Most Dangerous Game made more profit for RKO than the very expensive King Kong did.[1]
The 1932 film was referenced in the plot of the 2007 David Fincher movie Zodiac. Jake Gyllenhaal's character recognizes quotes from the film in letters from the Zodiac Killer sent to the newspaper office where he works.
Quotations
"He talks of wine and women as a prelude to the hunt. We barbarians know that it is after the chase, and then only, that man revels. You know the saying of the Ogandi chieftains: "Hunt first the enemy, then the woman." It is the natural instinct. The blood is quickened by the kill. One passion builds upon another. Kill, then love! When you have known that, you have known ecstasy."
— Count Zaroff
"This world's divided into two kinds of people: the hunter and the hunted. Luckily I'm the hunter. Nothing can change that."
— Bob Rainsford
Notes
^ Robert Osborne, Turner Classic Movies broadcast, 27 March 2008.
