The Most Dangerous Game

Directed by Irving Pichel and Ernest B. Schoedsack, The Most Dangerous Game follows Joel McCrea’s Bob and Fay Wray’s Eve as they’re hunted for sport by Leslie Banks’ psychotic Count Zaroff. It’s seemingly foolproof subject matter that’s employed to decent yet rather disappointing effect by Pichel and Schoedsack, as the filmmakers, armed with a screenplay by James Ashmore Creelman, deliver an erratically-paced endeavor that fares especially poorly within its sluggish, overly talky first half – with the emphasis placed on the characters’ chatty exploits within Zaroff’s expansive mansion. (It doesn’t help, either, that McCrea and Wray are forced into the confines of one-dimensional figures that remain woefully underdeveloped and Bob and Eve remain, as a result, awfully difficult to wholeheartedly sympathize with and root for.) There’s little doubt, then, that The Most Dangerous Game improves substantially as it progresses into a final twenty minutes focused entirely on the aforementioned hunt, as the inherently tense bent of the situation is heightened by Banks’ mustache-twirling performance and impressively stylish visuals – with the end result a passable piece of work that generally feels like it should be much, much better.

**1/2 out of ****