After a shipwreck, three passengers from a ship manage to reach a castle on a remote island, where the sadistic Count Zaroff (Leslie Banks) lives. He invites them to stay there and use them as prey in a terrible manhunt. But one of the castaways, Bob Rainsford (Joel McCrea), is a seasoned hunter and, accompanied by Eve (Fay Wray), he will try to survive at all costs…
Directed by the Pichel-Schoedsack duo (one year before King Kong), The Most Dangerous Game is a film with a disturbing atmosphere and ambiguous sadistic overtones, one of the great films of the ‘horror cinema’, carried by a quality editing and excellent performers (Leslie Banks in particular). Many of those who worked on this film would meet again a year later for the first and legendary King Kong film.
There are several remakes of this film, from Robert Wise’s A Game of Death (1946) to Roy Boulting’s Run for the Sun (1956).
subject: Richard Connell
script: James Ashmore
photography: Henry W. Gerrard
music by: Max Steiner
mounting: Archie Marshek
scenography: Carroll Clark
costumes: Walter Plunkett
other titles: THE MOST DANGEROUS GAME, LA CHASSE DU COMTE ZAROFF, CACCIA FATALE
color: Bianco & Nero
taken from: Novel by Richard Connell
production company: RKO