Welcome back to Dark Corners Streaming.
Available on Amazon Prime, 1932’s The Most Dangerous Game
is best known as the film made alongside King Kong,
using many of the same sets, crew and cast,
and with their director/producers Ernest B. Schoedsack and Merian C. Cooper,
arguing over whose turn it was to film the increasingly exhausted Fay Wray.
But this connection does sometimes overshadow what a genuinely good film
The Most Dangerous Game is,
surely the best of the many official and unofficial adaptations of Richard Connell’s short story,
‘The most dangerous game; what could it be’
some of which we have reviewed for regular Dark Corners.
If you’ve somehow missed this story; big game hunter, Bob Rainsford,
is in a shipwreck and is washed up on an island,
where he finds a castle, the home of another big game hunter, Count Zaroff.
‘Here on my island I hunt the most dangerous game.’
And there are hints as to what that might be.
‘There were 4 of us a week ago’
Zaroff is already playing host to Fay Wray’s Eve and her drunk brother Martin,
played by Kong star Robert Armstrong.
‘Vodka, that’s the stuff’
Despite their suspicions they cannot go anywhere as the Count has a collection of dangerous looking servants
including the Cossack, Ivan, played by Noble Johnson,
who is the native chief in Kong,
and this is a rare instance of an African American actor playing in ‘white-face’.
This section is almost like an old dark house movie,
creepy and tense,
but a trip to Zaroff’s trophy room changes that.
The second half of the film is a cat and mouse chase as Zaroff hunts Bob and Eve.
Though it is only Bob he plans to kill, having other plans for Eve,
‘Kill, then love. When you have known that, you have known ecstasy.’
the sort of stakes that could only exist in a pre-code film.
This section in particular is fantastically shot.
Static dialogue scenes had been crowbarred into Cooper and Schoedsack’s The Four Feathers
against their wishes and the pair were adamant that here they would use silent film techniques,
with a mobile camera, fast editing
and inventive shot choices.
Originally Zaroff was to use a leopard for hunting but it proved dangerous
so the production borrowed a pack of Great Danes from comedian Harold Lloyd,
although one of them still bit actor Leslie Banks on the backside.
‘but how appalling’
To be fair, Banks’s performance as Zaroff can be over the top
but it can also be genuinely menacing.
And Zaroff is meant to be psychotic following a head injury from a cape buffalo.
‘It still bothers me sometimes’
The Most Dangerous Game is not the masterpiece of King Kong,
but it was never really intended to be,
it’s a first rate example of thriller technique.
Just over an hour long it never feels rushed,
building tension and atmosphere before the breathless set-piece of the second half,
and still finding time to say something meaningful
about the fine distinction between what we choose to identify as savagery and civilisation.
‘Outdoor chess Mr. Rainsford’
It’s a great little film.
Thanks for watching.
Are you a fan of the Most Dangerous Game
and what other versions of this oft-told tale have you seen? Let us know in the comments below.