The Most Dangerous Game: A Precursor to the Modern Action Film

If you were one of the few people who didn’t read The Most Dangerous Game in high school English class, let me give you a little rundown. Written by Richard Connell and published in 1924, the short story tells the tale of Rainsford, a well-known big game hunter who has fallen overboard and desperately swims to the private island of Russian expatriate Count Zarroff. Zaroff is an avid hunter as well– a man so adept at killing that he has become bored with the sport. To combat this boredom, he tells his unwilling guest that he stocks his island with the most cunning animal of all– man. Knowing Rainsford from published accounts of his hunts, Zaroff offers the shipwrecked hunter a chance to join him on his next hunt. After Rainsford denies the invitation, claiming the hunt to be barbaric, Zaroff decides that instead, Rainsford will be his next prey. Simple, well written and paced neatly, nearly 100 years later the story is just as thrilling as ever.

A story like this is absolutely golden material for movie adaptations, and there have been several over the decades. The most recent entry was released in 2022, starring Casper Van Diem of Starship Troopers in the role of the Russian aristocrat, renamed Von Wolff in this iteration. However, the version I am talking about today is one of the first adaptations– 1932’s The Most Dangerous Game.

One thing that should be said is that many movies from this time period have a stiffer nature to them. It was the early days of film, and sound was even newer, with the first movie to use sound, The Jazz Singer, debuting only four years earlier in 1928. Thus, actors and filmmakers were making up the rules as they went along. Many productions from this time feel as though they are recorded stage plays, with static, boring camera work and more dramatic acting. Plots were also typically more  dialogue-heavy. While that is not a bad thing, this formula is much different from the shiny, sleek movies audiences are used to today.  While The Most Dangerous Game does incorporate the archaic elements of its time period, the camera work is noticeably more dynamic than other films of the era, and the action scenes are still thrilling decades later.

Staying fairly true to the original short story, the 1932 film finds Rainsford, played by Joel McCrea, Shipwrecked instead of having fallen overboard, the only survivor of a terrible “accident” in shark-infested waters. He manages to avoid the sharks and make it to shore, where he stumbles upon Zaroff’s abode. 

This time, though, he is not the sole visitor to the Cossack Count. Brother and sister Eve and Martin Trowbridge have also found themselves stranded on the banks of Zaroff’s isle, where they have been waiting for two weeks for a trip back to the mainland. Luckily, the count has graciously allowed the guests to share his home. He is particularly starstruck by Rainsford, whom he again knows from his hunting books, as in the short story. However, something on the island isn’t right.

As the evening wears on, Eve (played by the incomparable Fay Wray) pulls Rainsford aside and tells him that she suspects the Count of keeping them on the island on purpose. She states that two sailors who had survived with her and her brother had disappeared; she suspects the Count has something to do with it. This is later confirmed when Rainsford and Eve catch Zaroff with the dead body of Martin, whom he has hunted. He offers for Rainsford to join him on his hunt of the most dangerous game, and when he refuses, well– you see where this is going. With Eve in tow, Rainsford does his best to outwit the Count in the tiny patch of jungle around them.

The Most Dangerous Game is noticeably more fast-paced than many films of this era. The intense game of cat and mouse between the hunter and the hunted is tense and exciting, genuinely communicating the desperation of the situation. As the suspense mounts, one can see the film  inventing the building blocks of the modern action flick. In addition, the special effects are still impressive today; the mounted human heads in Zaroff’s trophy room are gruesome and disturbing, and shown in their full, taxidermied glory. The jungle sets are beautiful, tangled messes of vegetation and vines that feel vast and intimidating while still being beautiful to behold, even in black and white. Interestingly, some of these sets were reused from another Fay Wray film– King Kong, which had been released the year before. 

The Most Dangerous Game features stellar performances from the entire cast, including a particularly fun Zaroff portrayed by Leslie Banks. It could be argued that this is one of the earliest examples of the “Evil European Mastermind” trope that would become so prevalent in franchises like Die Hard and the James Bond films– Banks even dons a sharply cut goatee for added evil emphasis. He walks the line between silly and scary like it’s a tightrope, and his is one of the best iterations of Zaroff to touch the silver screen. 

Available on Youtube for free, The Most Dangerous Game is a fast-paced, short watch, clocking in at just 62 minutes. An easy film to count among the classics of the golden age of Hollywood, The Most Dangerous Game is an underrated gem that belongs in any collection worth its salt.