The Most Dangerous Game

A yacht strikes a reef and sinks; Rainsford, a hunter and the only survivor, reaches a nearby island. On it stands a chateau, and in the chateau Count Zaroff. He is courteous, hospitable and keen on hunting. Then he explains what he hunts: the people he lures ashore by wrecking their ships. The film is not interested in adventure. It is interested in the hunter becoming the hunted: Rainsford defends hunting animals at the start, and Zaroff carries his own argument to its logical end. That argument is the real body of a sixty-minute film. The form is early sound horror: fogged sets, swamp, hounds. It was made in the same years and at the same studio as King Kong; the sets built for Kong's island were used here at night, and Fay Wray appears in both. Irving Pichel and Ernest B. Schoedsack directed, from Richard Connell's story of 1924. The story has been adapted into countless films, series and plays since, and this first screen version set the mould for all of them. Joel McCrea plays Rainsford and Leslie Banks plays Zaroff. Who it is for: viewers who like classical-era thrillers and short genre films. Who it is not for: anyone after depth. The film runs sixty minutes, its characters are thin and its female character exists only to be in danger.