The Most Dangerous Game

1932 adventure movie

Rating: 15/20

Plot: Bob, a famous big game hunter, is having a blast hanging out with his friends on a boat, drinking cognac and saying profound things like "There are two kinds of animals--the hunters and the hunted. Luckily, I'm the hunter and nothing can change that." But then his boat explodes and sinks, and all of his friends drown or are eaten by sharks. Oh, snap! Luckily for Bob, he washes ashore on the island of Count Zaroff. He's a hunter as well, so they have all kinds of things in common! Things are going along swimmingly until Count Zaroff tells Bob that he's going to send him out into the wild so that he can hunt him, ending their friendship before it even gets started.

And it's a 1930's film, so you know exactly how it's going to end. I don't feel bad about giving away too many details up there because the poor dialogue in this (and the title) makes it fairly easy to figure it all out really quickly anyway. The problem in this movie are the same problems I have with the short story, one of the worst I've ever read. The story's kind of cool although very unrealistic. All the scenes that take place on the boat are a hoot. The camera tilts at one point (you know, because the boat is sinking), and the characters all flail in different directions, some while emitting girlish screams. Then, you've got some shark stock footage and a classic line--"Oh! He got me!"--screamed by a guy who the shark just got. And Robert Armstrong's portrayal of a drunk guy, sort of a cross between Harry Caray and a low-budget W.C. Fields, is absolutely terrible. Unlike the short story, this has a lot of redeeming qualities. The second half of the film (the part with all the huntin') is exciting enough, and the jungle they're racing through (King Kong's jungle actually) and Zaroff's pad are ideal settings, creating a nice atmosphere for the adventure story. I really liked the guy who played the evil Count Zaroff, a guy named Leslie Banks, even though you could put (see Leslie Banks as Count Zaroff in The Most Dangerous Game) after a definition of "hammy performance," chewing up the scenery with teeth that could rival those of any actor. Joel McCrea and Fay Wray (I think she was in King Kong, too) are fine in typical 1930's roles, and the music, although nearly constant, is pretty good. The best thing about this is the duration. At just over an hour, this doesn't really waste any time with extraneous details. It gets to its point, has the characters run around for a bit, and then ends. The short story, if I'm remembering correctly, is just the opposite. That thing seemed endless. The world would probably be a better place if Leslie Banks would devour every last copy of that short story.