The Most Dangerous Game

The Most Dangerous Game (1932, RKO Radio, dir. Irving Pickel and Ernest B. Schoedach, story by Richard Connell and screenplay adaptation by James Ashmore Creelman, 63 min, PG) is one of the most famous early film adaptations of an adventure story, in this case a story often found in high school literature anthologies and used as an example of how to write exciting fiction. The story is a bit hyperbolic and campy, and in one place the evil Count Zaroff (the alternate title is “The Hounds of Zaroff” and Zaroff is played by Leslie Banks) (in the story) goes on a racist tirade that sounds shocking to modern readers. The accepted title of the movie and story is a pun: the game is a pursuit, and the game is man himself, because of the possibility of “brains over brawn.”  Shipwrecked on an island, Rober Rainsford (Joel McCrea) finds the Count’s haunt, along with a potential damsel in distress, Eve Trowbridge (Fay Wray). The evil Count explains the hunt and that Rober (and the damsel) will be prey—after Eve finds the skull of her brother. The second half of the film comprises the chase, and at several critical points Rober has to figure out how to get out of trouble with the environmental jungle resources around him (for example, the “Malay Tiger Trap”). The Count sends the hounds after him, and Rober, at the critical point where he has to jump into the water (he had better be able to swim well, and help her swim against a current), he uses the attack dogs to his advantage. Finally, he confronts the Count in the chateau for a spectacular climax.

The film had David O. Selznick as an executive producer (seven years before “Gone with the Wind”). The black and white photography in the chase scenes is spectacular in its abstraction; one feels that one is watching a woodcut in animation. The fog and the swamps and the alligator are especially delicious to watch. The story does not necessarily say that brains is always more important than strength; rather that the must go together. One wonders if this film helped inspire the modern show “Smallville” on TheWB (the way the teenage Clark Kent is developed, as rather like Rainsford). The Count seems to map out to Tony De Mera in the NBC soap opera “Days of our Lives” where the island sequences are similar (the likeable CIA agent character Patrick would correspond to Rainsford). This material is often taught in high school English and also in film school as a major example of adaptation (where the screenwriter changes the story to increase its box office appeal). The story is all popcorn and has some holes, yet today it is more interesting to professional filmmakers than it is to the kids. See also Apocalypto, link below.

This film figures into the story of the 2007 thriller from David Fincher, Zodiac (see below).