Directors: Irving Pichel and Ernest B. Schoedsack
Screenplay: James Ashmore Creelman, based on the short story "The Most Dangerous Game" by Richard Connell
Starring: Joel McCrea, Fay Wray, Leslie Banks, Robert Armstrong
Running Time: 63 minutes
Genre: Adventure, horror
Big game hunter and celebrated author Bob Rainsford (McCrea) is shipwrecked on a small island. The island turns out to be owned by sinister aristocrat and fanatical hunter Count Zaroff (Banks), who is entertaining two other shipwreck survivors, Eve Trowbridge (Wray) and her brother Martin (Armstrong). It soon turns out that Zaroff has grown bored of conventional hunting and has set up on this island in order to hunt "the most dangerous game": human beings. Zaroff deliberately engineers the shipwrecks so he can hunt the survivors to the death, keeping the heads of his victims in his underground trophy room.
Based on the famous 1924 short story by Richard Connell, this is an interesting old horror-adventure tale, based on the disturbing and popular horror trope of human hunting. This was shot at night using the jungle sets from King Kong (1932), with several of the same behind the scenes personnel, as well as actress Fay Wray, who appeared in both. Despite only being an hour long, the film does seem to drag in places, with a lot of stilted dialogue, although it does kick into life during the hunting sequences. Joel McCrea provides the square-jawed heroics, Leslie Banks is satisfactorily oily and sinister as the villain of the piece, Robert Armstrong provides the comedy relief as Fay Wray's drunk brother, and Fay Wray starts off with quite a strong character, who seems to be wise to Zaroff's evil intentions right off, but by the end she doesn't really have much to do except run around screaming and being carried off by burly henchmen. It is definitely dated in some of it's attitudes, also the fact that the hero is a big game hunter. Some of the special effects have, inevitably aged poorly, such as the shipwreck sequence at the beginning sometimes looking as if it was filmed with a toy boat in a tank, which is probably was. Some of the action is quite well staged though, and if you can get past the problematic elements, as well as the awkward pacing, it is quite enjoyable. A word of warning though: There are scenes where dogs die, so animal lovers beware.
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