Hunted (Yet More People Hunting People)

If the UK hadn’t banned fox hunting, it might have saved these working-class thieves a lot of trouble. Naturally, these upper crust hunters turn to hunting people as a way to keep their traditions alive. That might sound extreme, but the Manhattan DA wouldn’t even prosecute them for it, as long as they kept their hunt to the subway platform, forcing them down to the level of tacky proletariat killers. Indeed, the hunters find there is a lot of fight in their prey during the course of Tommy Boulding’s Hunted (a.k.a. Hounded, a more descriptive title), which opens tomorrow in Los Angeles.

Leon thought he was done burgling high-class estates after raising enough money for his brother Chaz’s uni tuition, but he agrees to one more job. They were supposed to pilfer a ceremonial hunting knife, but it was a set-up. Suddenly, they wake up in a field with a pack of hounds baying after them. Katherine Redwick, her distinguished father Remington, and her hot-blooded brother Hugo intend to introduce her twit nephew Mallory to the hunt, using them as a substitute for the fox.

It seems like just illegally hunting foxes would be easier and cheaper to cover-up than hunting people, but apparently this is a long-standing Redwick tradition. It keeps the uppity lower classes in their place, as the loaded, class-conscious dialogue makes ridiculously obvious. Listening to the Redwicks will make any reasonably grounded viewer roll their eyes, but the rest of the film is competently executed. It just lacks style, originality, and inspiration. Frankly, it deserves a non-descript title like Hunted.

The Most Dangerous Game—Again, but More Traditional

Richard Connell was a highly successful writer during his lifetime, but he looks like a one-hit wonder today, because his only work still widely read is his famous man-hunting-man short story. It has been modernized, riffed-on, and ripped-off dozens of times by genre and exploitation filmmakers. For that reason, screenwriter-director Justin Lee earns some points for staying relatively faithful to Connell’s story for a new, period adaptation of The Most Dangerous Game, which opens tomorrow in theaters.

Big-game hunter Marcus Rainsford has dragged his son Sanger along on his latest hunt, as an ill-conceived attempt to treat his PTSD stemming from the younger man’s service as a WWII sniper. Unfortunately, their steamer crashes on the reef off Baron von Wolf’s private island reserve, with the help of one of his mines.

Initially, the Baron is thrilled to host an esteemed hunter like Rainsford’s father, but when he refuses to participate in von Wolf’s literal man-hunt, the mad man kills him in front of his son’s eyes. Then Rainsford fils is forced to become the prey, along with a pair of brother-sister captives. For Rainsford, von Wolf is especially repellent, because he is a senior German military, who disappeared after the war.

Although Connell’s original story was set in the 1920s, the post-WWII era is still somewhat traditional, matching that of the second film adaptation, Robert Wise’s A Game of Death. Despite the frequent revamps and reboots, the story still works better in a period setting, when transcontinental travel necessarily resulting in long periods without outside communication.

Unlike possibly every other film adaptation, Lee’s screenplay reverts to Connell’s original name for his protagonist: “Sanger.” Some changes have been made to the hunting action, but Sanger Rainsford’s method of escape in the story is instead used to explain the presence of a survivor, living guerilla-style in the jungle, so the film still feels consistent to its roots.

The Original Most Dangerous Game

Richard Connell’s frequently anthologized short story finally went into the public domain this year, but it has been ripped off for decades. Tell me if you have heard this one before: there is a bad guy who enjoys hunting people for sport. It is not just Bacurau that just opened or The Hunt due to be released this week that “borrowed” this idea. There has also been Hard Target, Surviving the Game, 31, Preservation, Black Rock, Carnage Park, Turkey Shoot (and its remake, Elimination Game), The Tenth Victim, and The Prey that basically riffed on the same people-hunting-people gimmick. That makes this an opportune time to revisit the film that (officially) adapted Connell first, way back in 1932: Irving Pichel & Ernest B. Schoedsack’s The Most Dangerous Game, which airs tomorrow on TCM, for those of you in quarantine.

Dashing young celebrity big-game hunter Robert Rainsford was enjoying a cruise with friends until their yacht foundered on the reef surrounding a remote island. It turns out the captain was correct to suspect the safety buoys had been moved. Alas, that would be the late captain. Only Rainsford eludes the sharks swarming their wreck, making it to shore, where he stumbles into the gothic fortress of Count Zaroff.

At dinner, he meets Eve Trowbridge, another shipwreck survivor, who took refuge with the Count, along with her drunkard brother Martin and two sailors that are now suspiciously missing. Since the Count recognizes the famous Rainsford, he invites him to join him hunting “the most dangerous game.” Of course, that would be man. When the horrified Rainsford refuses, he is forced to become the prey instead. The stakes will be particularly high for this hunt. If Rainsford survives until sunrise, he wins his life and the right to leave with Trowbridge.

Dangerous Game was produced “pre-Code,” but it is still pretty cagey when it implies what Zaroff intends to do to the lovelly Trowbridge once he bags Rainsford’s head, but it is pretty easy for modern audiences to infer. However, the film’s pre-Codeness is vividly clear in the early grisly engine room deaths we see when Rainsford’s ship goes down, as well as the trophy heads Zaroff keeps in bell jars. This is an old movie, but for genre fans, it is surprisingly cool.

Frankly, Joel McCrea should be better remembered than he is. In his day, he was a big movie star, whose charisma could carry a film. He also had sufficient comedic timing to hang with Robert Benchley in the criminally under-appreciated Hitchcock film, Foreign Correspondent. Being the leading man is rather thankless business in a film like this, but McCrae is admirably energetic as Rainsford. He also has some decent screen chemistry with Faye Wray.