The Most Dangerous Game

We invited Stephen Goldmeier over for another round of Lost in Criterion, little did he know that Pat and I were secretly planning to hunt him for sport! Of course since I'm a pacifist, killing Stephen may take awhile. In the meantime we discuss Irving Pichel and Ernest B. Schoedsack's 1932 adaptation of Richard Connell's short story The Most Dangerous Game.

Despite being made by men who detested drinking on film, big game hunting, and Soviets, The Most Dangerous Game struggles to find something to say beyond "killing people is bad unless they're bad (or Russian?)" and a strong warning against verbally tempting fate with one of the quickest turn-arounds on a "but that would never happen" in film history. It could have used more focus on a theme, or at least more pulp to distract from the lack of one.