This is a submission for the “They Remade What?!” blogathon hosted by Phyllis Loves Classic Movies. Check out her blog for more remake related posts!
Richard Connell’s 1924 short story “The Most Dangerous Game” concerns a hunter named Rainsford who finds himself on the other end of the chase when he is marooned on the island fortress of General Zaroff, a madman who hunts humans for sport. Of course, the piece piqued Hollywood interest early on, leading to the famous 1932 Cooper and Schoedsack adaptation of the same name starring Joel McCrea, Leslie Banks, and Fay Wray. This film is the most well-known cinematic adaptation of the story, but Hollywood did not visit the well only once: there were two remakes produced in 1945 and 1956, A Game of Death starring John Loder, Edgar Barrier, and Audrey Long, and Run for the Sun starring Richard Widmark, Trevor Howard, and Jane Greer. Made in three very different decades of Hollywood moviemaking, how does each differ from the one before it? Let’s dive right in and find out!
Before we start, I will share the version I saw first. I found The Most Dangerous Game on YouTube about two years ago and just fell in love with it, snapping up the Criterion Collection DVD immediately. Now onto the review!
The Most Dangerous Game (dir. Irving Pichel & Ernest Schoedsack, 1932)
While some viewers perceive The Most Dangerous Game as a sort of trial-run for the more-famous King Kong due to the two films sharing a jungle set and actors, it is a fine piece of entertainment in its own right, one of the greatest productions in the early 1930s cycle of Hollywood horror and a marvelous example of economical storytelling in any medium.
The film begins the same way as the story: world-famous big game hunter Rainsford asserts that he is a hunter and that “nothing on earth can change that” right as his ship sinks. After surviving the fakest shark attack in the history of cinema (in one of the film’s most deliciously over-the-top moments, one of the crew is snatched by a shark and shrieks “Ohh— they got me!!” before finally being dragged under to his doom), he washes up on an island and wanders off to an ominous castle populated by Count Zaroff, a refugee of the Russian Revolution and hunting enthusiast, and his handful of servants, the most memorable being played by African-American film pioneer and character actor Noble Johnson. There he meets fellow castaways, the drunken Robert and the reserved Eve. Over coffee and cigars, Zaroff boasts of having found “the most dangerous game,” which he hunts on the island. Though Rainsford urges him for an answer, Zaroff won’t tell and sends everyone off to bed—everyone but the annoying Robert anyway, whom he wants to show his trophy room…
That night, Eve awakes Rainsford, worried for her brother’s sake and suspicious of Zaroff’s intentions. Wandering down into the trophy room and finding decayed human heads mounted upon the wall, they manage to cross paths with Zaroff, who has Robert’s body in tow. Turns out that “most dangerous game” he hunts are human beings. And unless Rainsford plans on joining Zaroff, he and Eve are going to be finding themselves in the jungle and on the opposite end of the count’s rifle.
Though some purists take issue with the embellishments of the 1932 screenplay, particularly the addition of a love interest, I rather like the way the filmmakers fleshed out Connell’s story. While I do miss the original story’s haunting and ambiguous ending, this is still an effective piece of writing and I think the changes make the 1932 an interesting variation on some of the original’s ideas. For one thing, Rainsford’s rather cold and worldly character is transformed into a genial if naïve young man, played to perfection by a young (and sexy!) Joel McCrea, whose ideas about the hunter/hunted relationship seem more a product of his youth than genuine hardness or lack of empathy. Fay Wray is ravishingly gorgeous and her character does display a little more intelligence than your garden variety damsel early on, but unfortunately once the chase gets underway, all she really has to do is scream and gasp whenever Zaroff’s around.
Leslie Banks’s Count Zaroff dominates the film. Simultaneously urbane and savage, genuinely menacing and campy as hell, he ranks among my favorite screen villains. Sure his Russian accent is as phony as that shark attack, but just listen to the way he delivers his lines with such relish (apparently they had two Russian language consultants on the set to make sure Banks pronounced things correctly, but his accent is pretty comical nonetheless). I cannot help but say them along with him with every re-viewing. “Hunting was beg-in-ing to BORE me!” “When I lost my love of hunting, I lost my love of life! Of love!” “Im-POSS-ible!” “Kill, then love! When you have known THAT, you have known ec-stasy!”
That last quote reveals one aspect of the character invented by the screenwriters: Fay Wray isn’t just there to scream and look jaw-dropping. Zaroff pretty much states outright he cannot indulge in the pleasures of the flesh without killing something first (“One passion builds upon another…”), that he, as Bruce Eder puts it in his excellent commentary for the Criterion Collection, “links killing and hunting with sex.” With his hungry gazing and excited reaction at the sight of Eve in that tattered dress, it does not take much speculation to surmise what Zaroff plans on doing to her after the hunt. And that’s not even mentioning the almost orgasmic delight on his face which comes about after he believes he has killed Rainsford (notice how he lights up a cigarette afterward too).
Though this film is often sold as an adventure flick a la King Kong, The Most Dangerous Game fits neatly into the early 1930s cycle of Hollywood horror. Zaroff’s castle is a gothic hunting lodge in which Dr. Frankenstein or Dracula would be right at home. The parlor where Zaroff and his guests indulge in coffee and conversation is dominated by a large staircase and tapestry depicting a vicious-looking centaur with a half-nude woman swooning in his arms. And then there’s the infamous trophy room, where human heads are either hanging mummified upon the wall or pickling in a jar. Apparently more of the trophy room was supposed to be shown, with a proud Zaroff showing Rainsford the maimed bodies of his most noteworthy victims stuffed and on display, but the disgusted reaction of the preview audiences had the studio reaching for the scissors right away.
The famous jungle set is no doubt artificial, but that enhances the sense of claustrophobia. The lighting therein is evocative of a Gustave Dore illustration. While its use in Kong has made it so iconic, I always felt it was never more foreboding than in this film.
The Most Dangerous Game’s finest moments are in the last half-hour of its runtime, when the hunt begins and Rainsford and Eve must fight to survive the jungle terrain, Zaroff’s bow and rifle, and finally a bloodthirsty pack of hounds (which were on loan from Harold Lloyd!). These scenes are tense and well-edited, perfectly complimented by Max Steiner’s heart-pounding score. Contrary to popular belief about the cinematography of the early sound period, the camera is quite fluid as it follows McCrea and Wray through the dense jungle foliage. I really dig that one close-up of Zaroff’s face as he’s in pursuit of his prey, an expression that’s both hilariously over-the-top yet perfect in showing how focused he is on coming for the kill.
Overall, The Most Dangerous Game is essential for pre-code lovers and highly recommended for everyone else. Unpretentious, entertaining, and well-crafted, it stills stands as grand fun after eighty-plus years. And being a well-made Hollywood flick, is it any surprise it was remade more than once?
A Game of Death (dir. Robert Wise, 1945)
After the moral guardians of the nation cracked down on Hollywood in 1934, RKO was unable to re-release The Most Dangerous Game due to the much stricter enforcement of the Hayes Code, which took issue with the film’s less than subdued content. Thus in 1945, a remake under the direction of Robert Wise was put into production and released in the fall of that year.
The plot clings close to the 1932 adaptation with some differences: the Russian Count Zaroff is now the German Erich Kreiger, no doubt due to the film’s production coinciding with the end of World War II. Rainsford is still a big game hunter who maroons on Kreiger’s island lair, makes friends with a sibling duo, Robert and Ellen, and then finds himself and Ellen hunted by Kreiger and his hounds. Noble Johnson reprises his role as the mute manservant, only this time he looks like a cast member from Disney World’s Pirates of the Caribbean ride. Robert Clarke is an additional servant who is perhaps the least threatening henchman in film history, coming off as mildly disgruntled and praying his eccentric boss will give him a raise.
This version is the least regarded of the three adaptations, most likely due to its being an uninspired and almost shot-for-shot redo of the 1932 production. I would love to offer a revisionist opinion, but in this case, the popular consensus is right: A Game of Death is inferior to The Most Dangerous Game in just about every area, coming off as bloodless and dull. For one thing, the look of the film is pedestrian (save for the footage borrowed from the 1932 original). Zaroff lived in a gothic castle repurposed as a hunting lodge, complete with atmospheric lighting emphasizing greys and shadows. The mise-en-scene made the place feel huge. In comparison, Kreiger’s island abode is cramped, small, and overlit, not nearly as foreboding.
Being a Hayes Code era picture, A Game of Death also does away with the more objectionable elements of the original, so don’t expect to see Rainsford breaking someone’s back or partaking in any other sort of enthusiastic violence. As for the sexual aspects, Kreiger does exhibit an unhealthy interest in Ellen, reusing Zaroff’s “ecstasy” spiel and giving her longing glances every now and then; however, as with the violent stuff, don’t expect Kreiger to have the same hungrily deranged look in his eye that Zaroff gives Eve once he thinks the game is won or for him to ask his servants to bring her down from her prison for a post-victory “celebration.”
To call the performances second-rate would be too cruel, but not a one of them is particularly strong. John Loder’s Rainsford is much less interesting than McCrea’s for a variety of reasons. While McCrea came off as a callow young man with a character arc, one who will bear scars from his encounter with Zaroff even if he did win the day and get the girl in the end, Loder is a mature adult, a white-hatted hero if there ever was one and just as boring as you’d expect him to be from that description. Nothing really flaps him. When McCrea discovered what “the most dangerous game” was, he became indignant and horrified at the “logical conclusions” of his own ideas about life and death. Loder is mildly shocked, but otherwise unruffled. Audrey Long’s Ellen, while strikingly pretty, is completely wooden, lacking the likeability Wray brought to the already threadbare Eve.
Edgar Barrier gives the best performance in the film as Kreiger. He’s not nearly as charismatic or fun as Banks’s Zaroff, but he does give Kreiger a low-key sense of menace and culture. His best moment comes when he believes Rainsford sees eye-to-eye with him on the natural order of things; the ecstatic expression on his face as he speaks of murdering other people is chilling. Still, even he has a lot of moments where he’s just phoning it in and when he flatly says lines from the original production, you cannot help but hear Banks’s enthusiastic delivery in the back of your mind. In fact, when he gives the whole “hunting was beginning to bore me” speech, his delivery is so uninteresting that only the background music is able to liven the leaden exposition up. (Speaking of music, I’m really missing Max Steiner; A Game of Death’s soundtrack is so stock, I couldn’t even hum it even five minutes after I finished the movie!)
The biggest changes in this version are Robert’s characterization and an added middle sequence preluding to the big chase. Armstrong’s Robert is an irritating drunk who slurs his words and gets in everyone’s personal space. When he’s killed by Zaroff, we aren’t too sorry for him, but his death does establish our villain as a monster and build up sympathy for Eve. While Russell Wade is inoffensive as Robert, he isn’t nearly as memorable and overstays his welcome, leading us to the flabby middle section of the movie. Instead of killing Rob and getting us to the chase, A Game of Death decides to have the heroes discover what Kreiger’s “game” is ahead of time and then plot an unsuccessful escape mission. It’s such a waste of time and kills the pacing.
That’s not to say this film is a total clunker: Wise’s direction is capable (though his talents were put to much better use in The Body Snatcher with Boris Karloff, also released in 1945), Barrier is an entertaining enough villain, and on its own merits, it is a passable if poorly paced thriller. But whether judged on its own or in relation to The Most Dangerous Game, the big issue with A Game of Death is that it just isn’t that impressive. Not a single shot or performance haunts you the way the earlier film did. Its finest moments are taken straight from the 1932 picture and none of its own offerings enhance the story in any way. This one is at best a competent programmer.
Run for the Sun (1956)
Run for the Sun’s behind the scenes stories are more discussed than the film itself, particularly the one about Jane Greer contracting a tropical disease that nearly killed her. Not being a fan of 1950s Hollywood cinema, I confess I was not looking forward to this version. Reviews of the movie did little to comfort me, with many a critic and viewer finding the film mediocre, though it does have a small group of fans. That said, I was pleasantly surprised at how much I enjoyed the film, though it does share a great deal of flaws with A Game of Death, flaws which keep Run for the Sun from being as effective as it could have been. Unlike A Game of Death, Run for the Sun stands on its own two feet apart from The Most Dangerous Game. It owes much more to the 1932 movie than it does Connell’s story, thus justifying its position as a remake, but it fleshes out the story to an even greater degree than the earlier film, giving the romantic subplot a good deal of screen time.
The movie starts off with journalist Katherine “Katie” Connors landing in Central America. Her mission: get the scoop on the long-lost adventure novelist Mike Latimer, who she’s tracked to a remote Mexican fishing village. Finding him there and striking up a friendship with her target, the two get more than they bargained for when they fall in love, though Mike is unaware of Katie’s true motivation for seeking him out. Once Katie learns that the reason for Mike’s reclusiveness was being betrayed by the woman he loved, she finds herself unable to use his misery for an editorial and attempts to return to New York; however, Mike says he wants to fly her to Mexico City in his plane first, an offer which she reluctantly accepts.
The trip goes about as well as can be expected when one is living in a movie based off “The Most Dangerous Game”: the plane runs out of fuel, causing them to crash land in the middle of a jungle. The injured travelers soon find themselves in the care of Run’s two versions of Zaroff: the English Browne and the Dutch Anders, who live in a hacienda nearby. While the house is cozy and the food is great, Katie does find it rather odd that attack dogs prowl the estate every night and Mike is shocked to find their plane has gone missing. More complications ensue when Mike discovers Katie’s true identity, though once he realizes their hosts are escaped war criminals, he’ll have to learn to trust her again as they flee for their lives in the jungle beyond.
Ironically, the most effective aspect of Run is the love story between Mike and Katie. Understated and mature, the romance feels integral to the characters and not like an afterthought. Continuing on that note, Widmark’s Mike is the best character in the movie. He was certainly given a more developed character to play than either McCrea or Loder and Widmark plays him with enthusiasm and depth of feeling. Greer is game as the reporter who gets in over her head, though sadly she becomes little more than window dressing once she and Widmark crash land on their way to Mexico City. I will say that I felt the first thirty minutes of the film were more interesting than anything in the jungle: perhaps Run might have been better had it been a character study of this reclusive and creatively dried-out Hemingway-ish author than a redo of “The Most Dangerous Game.”
And that’s the weird thing about Run: what should have been given the most attention turns out to be the least interesting aspects of the production: the villains and suspense. Unlike Zaroff and Kreiger, Browne and Anders are not enthusiastic big game hunters chasing the hero and heroine for the thrill of the chase. They want Mike and Katie dead solely because they know they are Nazi war criminals. That’s not nearly as chilling as a privileged nutcase who views other people as prey and expects the hero to share his pathology. Even more unfortunate is that neither Howard nor van Eyck do much to make their characters interesting nor do they ever come across as especially threatening.
While the earlier versions had a nightmarish atmosphere, Run never reaches the same levels of excitement. The action sequences are few and not edited that well. We see the obligatory bloodthirsty hounds, but they never feel like that much of a threat. The villains are so overconfident and incompetent that they aren’t that scary either, and you never feel Mike and Katie are in danger for even a moment. While it’s nice that the filmmakers went on-location to shoot the jungle sequences, we never get that same sense of claustrophobia found in The Most Dangerous Game or even the watered down rendition of that in A Game of Death. Thus the final third of the movie, what should be the highlight of the film, turns out to be a major anti-climax.
While I think Run for the Sun isn’t as bad as some have claimed and would even argue it is in some respects underrated, it is uneven. The screenplay should have either focused on the character elements or the suspense-filled “Most Dangerous Game” plot, because when trying to juggle the two, nothing gels. Widmark’s performance and the romance with Greer do make it worth a gander though.
Conclusion
These three films are only the most well-known adaptations. There have been countless others which operate more on the plane of Run for the Sun, using Connell’s outline. Bloodlust!, Surviving the Game, and The Pest are only a few of the latter day adaptations which use the idea of people hunting people for their basic plot. The influence of the story also lives on in novels like Battle Royale and The Hunger Games.
Throughout this post, I think it’s pretty clear I feel that in the case of The Most Dangerous Game movie adaptations, you just can’t top the original. While I’ve heard some people decry the 1932 The Most Dangerous Game as melodramatic or silly in comparison to, say, Run for the Sun, I have to just say that’s part of what makes it so much fun. And while it embellished upon the original short story, it still manages to keep its storytelling economical and its pacing pitch-perfect. Combine all that with striking visuals, breathless action, a great villain, and pure 1930s gothic horror atmosphere, and you have a magnificent piece of entertainment which has weathered the better part of a century quite well.
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