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The Most Dangerous Game (1932)
The Most Dangerous Game (1932)
1932 | Classics, Drama, Horror

"Made on the wonderful jungle sets of King Kong while that epic’s special effects were being finished, this is one of the great action-horror films and has provided a template for many “rich sicko” melodramas—the entire “torture porn” subgenre springs from the obsessions of its villain, Count Zaroff (Leslie Banks). Adapted from a short story by Richard Connell and codirected by Kong’s Ernest B. Schoedsack and character actor Irving Pichel, it has one of the most perfect plots in horror: a big-game hunter (Joel McCrea) changes his mind about how much fun his preferred sport is when he’s shipwrecked on an island where a mad Russian who’s grown tired of lesser game has opted to hunt human beings. Fay Wray, another Kong holdover, screams on the sidelines, and a pack of baying hounds provides additional menace."

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The Most Dangerous Game (1932)
The Most Dangerous Game (1932)
1932 | Classics, Drama, Horror
(Can't see that movie about people being hunted for entertainment as all the cinemas are shut, so went for this instead (the daddy of the genre).) Much mimicked pulp adventure movie. Big-game hunter survives a shipwreck but pitches up on the private island of an insane Russian aristo who hunts people for sport.

Slots very nicely into the development of early-30s genre cinema - the premise vaguely recalls Dracula, while many of the key personnel would go on to make King Kong the following year. Still stands up well as an adventure movie in many ways; above average script, some rousing set pieces, and an enjoyably extravagant performance from Leslie Banks as the bad guy. The short running time does count against it though (the hunt only gets underway in the final third of the movie). One of the progenitors of the modern action blockbuster, and a fine movie in its own right.