The Most Dangerous Game (Irving Pichel & Ernest B. Schoedsack, 1932)

The Most Dangerous Game packs a lot into just over an hour: shipwrecks, shark attacks, decadent mansion lounging, the hunting of humans for sport, dog attacks, crossbow attacks, knife attacks, possible romance, drunken buffoonery, murder, fights that turn into epic wrestling matches, daring boat escapes, an alligator, and piano playing.

The efficient, confident, and exciting Game was surprisingly co-directed by two people, the team of Irving Pichel, a character actor who had never directed before (he went on to direct several mainstream Hollywood films in parallel to his acting career), and Ernest B. Schoedsack, a pioneering cinematographer, cameraman, and documentary filmmaker who had also recently directed a couple of adventure movies, one of them with the man who would become his usual filmmaking partner, Merian C. Cooper. Schoedsack and Cooper would co-direct King Kong the following year. (Cooper and Schoedsack are the Powell and Pressburger of giant ape and high adventure movies.)

Both filmmakers' backgrounds leave an imprint here, with a shared emphasis on performance and image. The actors have a lot to do and Schoedsack gets the opportunity to show off some breathtaking camera movements and difficult trick shots. It's a good-looking movie with lots of atmosphere and menace.

You're probably familiar with the story and its many adaptations (including Ernest R. Dickerson's '90s version, Surviving the Game, with Ice T in the Joel McCrea role against a whole team of hunters including Rutger Hauer, Gary Busey, Charles S. Dutton, and F. Murray Abraham). Sticking closely to the source, a Richard Connell short story published in Collier's, The Most Dangerous Game opens with Bob (Joel McCrea), a famous big-game hunter, surviving a yacht wreck and ensuing shark attack. He ends up at the swank island digs of a fellow big-game hunter, Zaroff (Leslie Banks), where he meets Zaroff's creepy servants and two fellow shipwreck survivors, Eve (Fay Wray) and her drunken, buffoonish brother Martin (Robert Armstrong). Zaroff is a bit of a mysterious weirdo (and his trophy room is locked), but he's a gracious host until he reveals his plan of hunting Bob for sport. What a buzzkill.

The rest of the film concerns Bob and Eve's plan to survive the night, with Zaroff in hot pursuit, and it's a still-thrilling blend of action and horror that's as fun for me on this third viewing as it was the first time I saw it in a film history class in college 20+ years ago. It's a great example of the economical, action-packed, '30s high-class B-movie. I wish Hollywood still made tight, efficient 63-minute genre films instead of the green-screen pummel and bloat spectacles of today, but I'm clearly outnumbered. I may even like this one more than King Kong (or maybe it's just that the racism is more muted here, though I wish Fay Wray had more to do than scream and follow McCrea once the chase begins, especially since she's such a sharp character inside the house).