Some film tropes get wheeled out so often they create their own furrow. Perhaps that’s why the timeworn premise of “man hunting man” has evolved into its own disreputable but seemingly indestructible mini-genre. This year has already seen the deferred release of scattershot satire The Hunt, a button-pushing thriller from the Blumhouse production line in which snooty US liberals kidnap and stalk blue-collar “deplorables” in a customised paddock sited far from flyover country.
Being exposed to Jean-Claude van Damme’s violent 1993 bayou showdown Hard Target at an impressionable age means I’ve always had a soft spot for films where characters find themselves hunted for sport. These killer games of hide-and-seek usually involve sniper rifles, some bushcraft ingenuity and at least one overconfident antagonist in fancy combat gear realising just a little too late that there is a reason why most supposed sportsmen stick to hunting animals. (They don’t shoot back.)
Drill down through all these lethal cinematic safaris – including the Ice-T-starring Surviving the Game in 1994 or sci-fi variants like Predator in 1987 – and you eventually hit the bedrock. The Most Dangerous Game is a brisk and at times brutal B-movie that usefully codified some of the comforting rituals of a good cinema manhunt, notably batting around some quasi-philosophical theories about the charged relationship between predator and prey.
It was the first screen adaptation of Richard Connell’s award-winning 1924 short story – a pop sensation when it was originally published – and for the most part sticks closely to its source. Rather than diving headlong into the jungle, the first half is essentially a claustrophobic gothic horror story.
Notorious big-game hunter Robert Rainsford (Joel McCrea) is the sole survivor of a shipwreck in shark-infested waters, eventually washing up on a mysterious island’s shore. There he discovers a gloomy-looking castle lorded over by exiled Cossack count Zaroff (Leslie Banks) and his towering mute man-servant Ivan (Noble Johnson). Zaroff’s fastidious and self-regarding manner paired with a larger-than-life henchman feels like a proto-Bond double-act: squint and it could be Moonraker’s Hugo Drax and Jaws. In one of the film’s rare comic moments, stony-faced Ivan is ordered to smile and delivers a robotic death’s head grin.
The tuxedoed Zaroff is a brittle but seemingly gracious host, eager to wax lyrical about his lifelong search for new hunting challenges and the prized Tatar war bow mounted on his wall. Over vodka shots, Rainsford meets fellow castaways Eve (Fay Wray) and her lush brother Martin (Robert Armstrong) but their dinner party smalltalk is underpinned by a palpable sense of unease, particularly whenever Zaroff’s off-limits trophy room is mentioned.
After the loquacious Martin goes missing, Eve recruits Rainsford in the wee small hours to find out exactly what lies behind the stout trophy room door, and their discoveries are surprisingly gruesome (this was before the 1934 Motion Picture Production Code tamped down some of the industry’s trashier instincts). With poor Martin definitively out of the picture, Zaroff challenges his fellow hunter Rainsford to survive in the island wilds with little more than a woodsman’s knife and a head start.
The second half of the film comprises a tense stalking sequence as Rainsford and Eve contrive to outwit Zaroff as he tracks them while wielding his prized Tatar war bow. Even almost nine decades later, it remains a sturdy, punchy little tale that actually becomes even more enjoyable when you realise how much it overlaps with another cinema benchmark. In a thrifty move that Blumhouse would surely appreciate, the impressive jungle sets of The Most Dangerous Game were also used for King Kong a year later, while the overlapping cast and crew included stars Wray, Armstrong and Johnson, producer/directors Merian C Cooper and Ernest B Schoedsack and screenwriter James Creelman. King Kong may still be held up as a timeless classic, but its screen sibling has arguably inspired more imitators, be they doggedly faithful or opportunistic cash-ins.
Connell’s original short story passed into the public domain on 1 January this year, which perhaps explains why there is an unloved new version starring Liam Hemsworth and Christoph Waltz on the fledgling Quibi network of bite-size content. The 1932 screen adaptation has been out of copyright for years but I particularly enjoy rewatching it via the free Voleflix site, a nifty portal that reframes YouTube videos of public domain movies as if they were part of some cool retro streaming hub. But hunting down the original isn’t just taking in some schlocky B-movie. Like the title’s own double meaning, it offers valuable lessons about both the history of cinema and the human condition.
The Most Dangerous Game is available on YouTube and Amazon Prime in the US and UK
