The Most Dangerous Game (1932), dir. Ernest B. Schoedsack/Irving Pichel, RKO Radio Pictures
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RKO already had the sets for King Kong built, so why not shoot another film at the same time? And why not use Richard Connell's short story?
A yacht is sailing through the South Seas. The boat is carrying a hunting party, led by renowned outdoorsman Bob Rainsford (Joel McCrea), but they are behind schedule. Taking a shortcut ends in the boat tearing itself apart on a shallow reef with only Rainsford surviving.
Finding himself on one of the nearby islands, Rainsford is shocked to find a castle and furthermore, there are people! Creepy people, but the people nonetheless.
The first person he encounters is Ivan (Noble Johnson), but the silent Cossack just glares at him. His condition is explained by his employer, Count Zaroff (Leslie Banks). The count was a Russian nobleman, who split before the revolution and has devoted himself on this island to his great passion-hunting.
Zaroff introduces Rainsford to the others. It seems those reefs around the island are rather nasty, and Bob's ship wasn't the only one wrecked. Just last week four people washed up on the same shore.
Martin Trowbridge (Robert Armstrong) and his sister Eve (Fay Wray). There are two more, but Zaroff has had them running around in the bush so much no one's seen them in a week. When the drunken Martin takes up Zaroff's offer for a hunt, Eve and Bob break into the locked trophy room to find out just what it is Zaroff has been hunting...
Wonderful and economic. Short but nothing is wasted and shockingly gruesome for 1932. Zaroff is a creep but Banks plays him with an undercurrent of menace in every scene.
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