The Most Dangerous Game

Wow, has THIS story been filmed a zillion times! This time was the first.

By RKO Pictures, from this Wiki link, public domain.

The Most Dangerous Game (1932). Grade: B-

Something’s amiss, the yacht captain thinks. Are those lights in the distance quite where they’re supposed to be?

He’s concerned enough that he interrupts the rich party pals below. “These are some of the most jagged coral reefs and shark-infested waters in the whole sea!” The captain suggests going the long way ‘round; he’s pooh-poohed.

Then a hunky young hunter explains that a hunt’s just as fun for the animal as the human, saying of a tiger he killed: “take that fellow right there, for instance. There never was a time when he couldn't have gotten away, but he didn't want to. He got interested in hunting me. He didn't hate me for stalking him, anymore than I hated him for trying to charge me. As a matter of fact, we admired each other.”

So… nothing happens, and the voyage continues, and everyone has a great time. The End!

Richard Connell’s 1920 story (it’s in the public domain now) has been the starting point for dozens of movies. Two I remember enjoying quite a bit are Cornel Wilde’s 1966 The Naked Prey and John Woo’s 1994 Hard Target. It’s pretty short, and pretty simple; rich madman enjoys hunting humans for sport. Inserting the names of expensive wines and things readers of Men’s Adventure magazines would have gobbled up: “let me congratulate you. Not many men know how to make a Malay man-catcher. Luckily for me I, too, have hunted in Malacca…”

It wouldn’t surprise me if Connell’s story wasn’t also part of the template for Bond villains; the rich maniac has burly, unspeaking henchmen, like Oddjob in Goldfinger. And exotically ethnic; here, they’re Cossacks (played in the film by Noble Johnson and Steve Clemente, as non-Cossack as their names suggest). Connell’s description:

“‘A simple fellow, but, I’m afraid, like all his race, a bit of a savage.”

“Is he Russian?”

“He is a Cossack,” said the general, and his smile showed red lips and pointed teeth. “So am I.’”

This sort of silliness can work in a film if you’ve got a good, hammy actor with a fun face to pull it off. Co-director Ernest B. Schoedsack has that fun actor in Leslie Banks. Per Bruce Kawin in the Criterion booklet: “Because of a war wound, most of the left side of Banks’s face was paralyzed; Schoedsack exploited that by showing his right profile in civilized, social scenes and saving the left side, or the full face, for the startling moments when the masks are off and the hunt is on.”

Naturally, such a foreign monster (Banks was English) must be pitted up against hale and hearty good-ol’-fashioned Americans. So here we have Joel McRae and Fay Wray. Wray, of course, would soon have her famous role in King Kong; that movie uses the same “jungle set” we see here, and has the same filmmakers.

It’s simple, ridiculous fun, and the predictability adds to how enjoyable this is. Even if you don’t know the story, or any of the many variations/ripoffs, you’ll be able to basically guess what’s going to happen. The baddie’s gonna lose, McRae & Wray will escape together. There’s gonna be chases. Once we see hunting dogs, we know they’ll be involved. Those dogs are actually pretty scary-looking! (The British release was titled The Hounds of Zaroff.)

Dangerous Game is nice and zippy at 62 minutes. A preview version was 78 minutes, and featured something I’d have loved to see. Before our rich maniac reveals his wicked plan to victims, he shows them his “trophy room” full of human heads. Supposedly, per the IMDb Trivia page:

“The trophy room scenes were much longer in the preview version of 78 minutes; there were more heads in jars. There was also an emaciated sailor, stuffed and mounted next to a tree where he was impaled by Zaroff's arrow, and another full-body figure stuffed, with the bodies of two of the hunting dogs mounted in a death grip. Preview audiences cringed and shuddered at the head in the bottle and the mounted heads, but when they saw the mounted figures and heard Zaroff's dialog describing in detail how each man had died, they began heading for the exit - so these shots disappeared.”

That’s how it was in the pre-Hays Code days; basically, the only restrictions on filmmakers were what might upset audiences too much. There’s still some pretty grisly stuff hinted at, here! When the yacht at the beginning gets in trouble, we see a boiler’s temperature go well over 400 degrees and watch superheated steam spraying over screaming sailors; the boat blows up and bodies fly everywhere; sharks gobble gobble two shipwreck survivors. Sparing McRae, because… because the plot, that’s because.

Oh, and what the Evil Villain plans for Wray: “Only after the kill does man know the true ecstasy of love.” Wray is terrific at looking spooked here, and fun when she’s trying to subtly warn the slightly slow-uptaking McRae how batty their host is. Wray would be largely out of movies by the end of the 30s, but did a lot of work in television. She’d live to be 96, and her autobiography was called On the Other Hand, which is a cool title.

Director Ernest Schoedsack sounds like he had a helluva life. The guy was a war photographer during WWI, and helped refugees escape subsequent regional wars. He traveled the world doing film and photographic work. He met future wife Ruth Rose on a trip to the Galapagos Islands; she co-wrote the script for King Kong. They’d be married for just over 50 years. And Schoedsack was a really good-looking fellow!

Dangerous Game is solid, dumb fun. Except for one moment right at the start; my heart always fills with dread at the words “Music by Max Steiner.” I’ll probably have “Theme From A Summer Place” stuck in my damn head until I die, but do I REALLY want it taking up space in there? Can’t I have more Herb Alpert, or something? But no. We’re less in charge of our brains than we think we are…