The first screen adaptation of Richard Connell's short story, "The Most Dangerous Game" was Ernest B. Schoedsack and Merian C. Cooper's side hustle to "King Kong" (1933), employing much of the same cast, crew and sets for one film during the day and for the other at night. One of the greatest and most influential films ever made, a landmark that irrevocably and utterly changed filmdom, technically and thematically brilliant, and it remains culturally iconic to this day are things one could say about "King Kong." "The Most Dangerous Game" isn't bad, either, though.
"Listen here, you fellas. This world is divided into two kinds of people--the hunter and the hunted. But luckily, I'm a hunter, and nothing could ever change that."
Clearly this team was at the top of their game. It seems they decided to take it easy with something effective and snappy to come down from their more ambitious labors of the daylight project. Immediately after Joel McCrea's famous last words quoted above, he and the rest of his shipmates are tossed into shark-infested waters. He survives only to take shelter under the home of another hunter, this time another man, Count Zaroff, with a creepy performance by Leslie Banks to go along with the name and his sport of hunting men (in addition to the prospect that he'll rape Fay Wray's damsel in distress afterwards). So, we get a battle of wits and brawn, as well as a chase, on some jungle and swamp-filled island.
Nothing more required, it's some well-paced action and with a score from Max Steiner, to boot, that has proved popular and influential in its own right, as Connell's story has been continually remade and reworked in other motion pictures. Some streaming channel has recently tried to lure subscribers with a version starring Christoph Waltz, and there's "The Hunt" (2020), for which its most dangerous game appears to have been establishing when and where to release it, but this wilderness hunt also reminds me of action movies such as those starring Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger, such as some of the "Rambo" and "Predator" series.
"Listen here, you fellas. This world is divided into two kinds of people--the hunter and the hunted. But luckily, I'm a hunter, and nothing could ever change that."
Clearly this team was at the top of their game. It seems they decided to take it easy with something effective and snappy to come down from their more ambitious labors of the daylight project. Immediately after Joel McCrea's famous last words quoted above, he and the rest of his shipmates are tossed into shark-infested waters. He survives only to take shelter under the home of another hunter, this time another man, Count Zaroff, with a creepy performance by Leslie Banks to go along with the name and his sport of hunting men (in addition to the prospect that he'll rape Fay Wray's damsel in distress afterwards). So, we get a battle of wits and brawn, as well as a chase, on some jungle and swamp-filled island.
Nothing more required, it's some well-paced action and with a score from Max Steiner, to boot, that has proved popular and influential in its own right, as Connell's story has been continually remade and reworked in other motion pictures. Some streaming channel has recently tried to lure subscribers with a version starring Christoph Waltz, and there's "The Hunt" (2020), for which its most dangerous game appears to have been establishing when and where to release it, but this wilderness hunt also reminds me of action movies such as those starring Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger, such as some of the "Rambo" and "Predator" series.