The Most Dangerous Game [The Hounds of Zaroff] ***** (1932, Joel McCrea, Fay Wray, Leslie Banks) – Classic Movie Review 1724

Directors Ernest B Schoedsack and Irving Pichel’s still haunting, potent and chilling 1932 horror thriller stars an inspired Leslie Banks as Count Zaroff, a mad Russian nobleman who arranges for a ship to be wrecked on his remote island where he can enjoy the hunting and killing of the surviving passengers.

Making a sterling, handsome, dashing hero in peril, Joel McCrea also stars as Bob Rainsford, who is washed ashore on the island after his luxury cabin cruiser crashes on a reef. He finds a fortress-like house, where the owner Zaroff at first seems to be welcoming. He also finds other shipwreck survivors Eve Trowbridge (Fay Wray) and her brother Martin (Robert Armstrong).

The left side of his face paralysed in World War One, Banks makes a superior villain and is haughtily, camply and sniffily creepy in the manner of Vincent Price, making a lip-smacking meal of the insane hunter who is soon stalking human prey on his island. He’s splendidly deranged.

Bob, Eve and Martin are now in big trouble, leading to some of Wray’s best King Kong-style screaming. She shows why she was the queen of the screamers. Banks is the show-stopping turn, but all the other actors are ideal too, with always underrated McCrea a fine leading actor.

This exciting, good-looking movie is imaginatively photographed in black and white by Henry W Gerrard, handsomely dressed by set designer Carroll Clark and stirringly scored by Max Steiner. Schoedsack directs in style and tops it off with a memorable great chase, and it’s all done and dusted in an incredibly spare and economical 63 minutes. The Jean-Claude Van Damme version Hard Target (1993) takes twice as long to tell the same story in the Nineties. Like the same team’s King Kong, The Most Dangerous Game has achieved the rare distinction of permanently maintaining its aura and iconic status.

Richard Connell’s prize-winning short story The Most Dangerous Game was first published in Collier’s on January 19 1924 and has often been remade, including A Game of Death (1945), Run for the Sun (1956), John Woo and Jean-Claude Van Damme’s Hard Target (1993) and Surviving the Game (1994) with Rutger Hauer. James Ashmore Creelman writes the screenplay, with Richard Connell credited for the screen story, which is one of the most anthologised short stories of all time.

The Merian C Cooper /Ernest B Schoedsack producer-director team plus stars Wray and Armstrong and composer Steiner were making King Kong simultaneously, filming this one in the daytime and Kong at night, with the same jungle sets. Two enduring antique classics for the price of one.

Noble Johnson plays Zaroff’s servant Ivan the Cossack – the earliest known instance of a black actor working in whiteface to play a Caucasian character. Steve Clemente, Oscar Dutch Hendrian, William B Davidson, James Flavin and Hale Hamilton are also in the cast.

The British title was The Hounds of Zaroff – the Count’s dogs are Great Danes borrowed from comedy star Harold Lloyd, with their fur darkened to look menacing. 

The failure of the original copyright holder to renew the film’s copyright resulted in it falling into public domain.

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© Derek Winnert 2014 Classic Movie Review 1724

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