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telegonus — 14 years ago(September 02, 2011 01:35 PM)
I love this film, Spike.
It never seems to age, always holds my interest, still thrills and chills despite my having seen it dozens of times. Even the film's flaws,the romance, for instancedon't take away much from its impact. There's so much to look at that the little things that might annoy don't. If something about
The Most Dangerous Game
bothers you, wait a few seconds and something really good will happen. Of its type, this is one of the best. Its type being the survivors of a shipwreck, plain crash (fill in the blanks) winding up on a desert island, literally a desert, or some remote place, and how they survive and, of course, how they live or die. John Farrow's
Five Came Back
isn't quite in the same league with this one but it's pretty darn good, may even use some of the same jungle sets (though it seems that RKO didn't use them much after 1933). The Pichel-Schoedsack picture has a strange, wry elegance to it, as if happening in another world or maybe another universe. The people are real, the setting so remote and forbidding as to feel unreal. Yet its terrors are real! -
telegonus — 14 years ago(September 06, 2011 01:55 PM)
So many nice touches in
The Most Dangerous Game
: the way the ship wrecks, burns, explodes, feels real.
Noble Johnson's peasant trying to smile
when Zaroff orders him to do so in Russian.
Zaroff's servant's knowing grin when his master refers to what he is going to do with the spoils of his (presumed) victory over Rainsford (Fay Wray) in terms of food rather than overt sexual innuendo.
And, of course, not only the grisly trophy room (which we actually see very little of,much of this scene was cut before the film's release) and all references to same for the remainder of the film.
The interior of the castle ("built by the Porta-geeze").