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Overview
The Most Dangerous Game has had quite a bit of influence in the horror world, and today we view it to add to our growing classic films. There’s a monster, but it’s not some scary beast or supernatural being. It may seem cliche now, but was a unique concept in media at the time.
Come check out this classic with us and then seek out all the remakes and influence by films.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Most_Dangerous_Game
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0023238/?ref_=ext_shr_lnk
https://www.facebook.com/HorrorLasagna
https://www.youtube.com/@horrorlasagna
Watch It
[archiveorg TheMostDangerousGame width=640 height=480 frameborder=0 webkitallowfullscreen=true mozallowfullscreen=true]
https://publicdomainmovie.net/movie/the-most-dangerous-game
YouTube
Transcript
Stephen: Okay. So I love that we do these side dishes, I must say, because when we get busy, but we need an episode, it’s like let’s do one of those real quick, because they don’t take as long.
And today’s is a really important one because it’s been referenced so often. It’s the most dangerous game which I’m sure everybody’s heard about. I hope not.
Rhys: Unlike the last one that we did the Carnival of Souls,
Stephen: right?
Rhys: This is one of those where. I it, I think it’s probably the earliest example of the most dangerous game genre in film.
Stephen: Yes. And in fact, the story I saw in the credits was a, an award, an O Henry Short Story Collection award winner.
Rhys: Richard Connell wrote the story.
Stephen: Yeah. I remember reading this long ago, but I, it is been a long time. I can’t comment at the moment on how accurate it [00:01:00] is. But it’s a, it is interesting. Like you said, it’s very first, there’s tons of examples out there.
You can look it up. The one that always comes to my mind is predator. Because essentially the whole predator film line is let’s go hunt a more dangerous game, yeah.
Rhys: The book was written in 1924. And the movie really seems to pretty track it pretty well. I think about the only thing, and this is, completely questionable to me, it always had a feeling of the film took place in an island off the coast of Africa, and in the book it was in the Caribbean, they don’t actually pin it down. So there’s really no way of saying that, Hey, this is right or wrong.
Stephen: Yeah. And I, and some of the newer examples, there’ve been several remakes, but there’s also some inspired by movies. But, and some of those, this, the movie’s still good, especially historical and looking up, horror movies that started everything.
But. If you’re just watching, you’re it is [00:02:00] a little rougher for today’s audience. It’s got a very slow buildup and even the action scenes aren’t. Like in your, heart beating, throwing the popcorn, jumping type scares or anything like that. They’re a little tamer than we’re used to now.
Though Fey ray, it seems like that was her thing. Get carried around by big apes, get hunted by people. She’s like the first scream queen almost.
Rhys: It’s true. And it’s really funny because this is like the ultimate in recycling. This was shot. On the same set as King Kong. Okay. With the same actress.
And they would film King Kong during the day and film the most dangerous game at night.
Stephen: Oh, that I didn’t? No. That’s awesome. Yeah. I the castle looked super, every early Dracula Frankenstein movie must have used that same castle set. It looked the same,
Rhys: it’s really interesting to me too, and.
Somebody smarter, smarter [00:03:00] than me could figure this out. But that whole thing with Count Zoff, he says, very interesting. And that might be the first time in film that you have that really exaggerated, very interesting villain thing front in there. Faye Ray legitimately does the whole kind of thing, which I’m sure that’s not the first time, but it’s you can look at this movie and just pull so many stereotypes out of it.
Stephen: Oh, yeah. And I loved the innuendos and the hint and the references to hunting, to being the prey. It’s almost every other sentence was something hinting a haha, you don’t know, and the audience, I’m sure, again, like we’ve talked about the first time seeing it’s oh my gosh that’s incredible.
Now today’s audience would be like, yeah, we get it. You’re going to hunt the guy. It’s
Rhys: gonna shoot people. All right.
Stephen: But I was looking at it and I’m like, it, the whole movie is. You could say a more political talk or commentary [00:04:00] on, predator prey. It’s all through the movie. First you got the sea bat, the guys battling the sea.
Then you got the shark battling the guys, which that’s funny too. ’cause only time I’ve ever seen a shark grab somebody under the water, yank ’em under with no blood or any, it was very tame. Shark attack,
Rhys: no teeth. It’s a, it’s an old shark.
Stephen: And then you got. Rich people against who they consider their lessers.
You’ve got man against man. You’ve got man against Dogs, man against Alligators, man against Elements. So the whole thing is. It, showing everybody’s a predator at one time or a prey at one time, or both at the same time. I just, I never realized, never thought of that in that story. It’s always been a guy, being, I’m going to haunt you, but there was a whole lot in there.
So a lot of these older films, I sometimes. I feel, and I think others may think the same way, that they don’t have the depth that today’s due. But I would disagree. A lot of them have more depth once you [00:05:00] watch ’em. And this is a great example of that.
Rhys: Yeah, and I think a lot of reasons why, we say that in the modern era is that the direction and the acting was a little over the top.
And again, they’re still recovering from the silent film era where you had to be over the top there dialogue to.
The story. The story was good when we read it. And if you don’t stray from that, you’re in good shape. And then the performances all in all, I thought were really well done
Stephen: yeah. Yeah. It, it was a good, it’s short. It’s, at the time there were a lot of movies this length, but it’s like an hour 10 hour five even.
Yeah. Yeah. But good movie, like you said, this is the original. Check it out. If you’re trying to do that, I, I wanna understand the horror genre. And like we always talk about, we even get comments on some of our clips and stuff. What is horror? Is this horror? What do you consider, this one, it’s got horrific elements, but is it, do I consider it horror?[00:06:00]
It touches upon it.
Rhys: And we’ve said before, it varies from period to period. It varies from person to person. Yeah. Leslie Banks who played the count, he survived World War I, so I don’t know that you’re gonna throw anything on a screen that’s gonna scare him more than what he saw.
Stephen: Exactly. That gave, that’s what Tolkien wrote, all the Lord of the Ring stuff about.
Rhys: Exactly.
Stephen: Yeah it is, it’s an interesting philosophical and, discussion at times on what is horror. But like you said, it changes in this again, at the time how horrible that somebody would hunt somebody like this for sport.
Yeah. Awesome. What’s coming up next, Steve? That’s a great question because I don’t even think I looked when I was setting things up. So we’ve got a list we can choose from. I don’t know what we may want. I don’t have my list up. I’m going to edit this. Actually I say I’m going to edit it and then I’ll leave it.
You never
Rhys: [00:07:00] do.
Stephen: That way people can laugh at us.
Rhys: It gives the AI more more stuff to work with.
Stephen: Yeah. You know the clips. Oh, we got Dar Golum. Alright. So I’ve never even seen this one. I just, when I was looking through public domain list, it looked good and sounded like it would be something we would watch. So there you go, Dar Golum and we’ve, we are.
Also coming up to the end of season five of our rewatch, which is a longer season than most. So it’s been quite a while. That’s true. And we’ve got a good bonus for that coming up. And then a really good next season six. Season six after that. Everybody stay tuned. We’ve got a lot coming up.
Rhys: Yeah. Don’t wanna miss a thing.
Stephen: No. All right, man. Catch you later. All right. Take it easy.
