THE MOST DANGEROUS GAME (1932), aka THE HOUNDS OF ZAROFF

Directors: Ernest B. Schoedsack, Irving Pichel

Writers: James Ashmore Creelman adapting Richard Connell’s 1924 short story

Producers: Merian C. Cooper, Ernest B. Schoedack

Cast: Joel McCrea, Leslie Banks, Fay Wray, Robert Armstrong, Noble Johnson, Steve Clemente (as Steve Clemento), William B. Davidson, Dutch Hendrian, (and uncredited cast) Phil Tead, Hale Hamilton, Arnold Gray, James Flavin, Landers Stevens, Wesley Hopper 

When a yacht crashes into a reef and sinks just off the South American coast, its lone survivor, Bob Rainsford (Joel McCrea), is washed ashore on a small jungle island. He makes his way inland to the castle of Count Zaroff (Leslie Banks). The Russian Count is an avid hunter and recognizes Rainsford as an author and hunting authority. The Count has two other guests who are also recent shipwreck survivors, siblings Eve and Martin Trowbridge (Fay Wray and Robert Armstrong). The cordial Count soon reveals that the lighted buoys around his island meant to guide ships past the reefs are moved to cause the vessels to crash and sink. Zaroff uses any surviving castaways on his island as human prey to provide a greater challenge for his hunting mania. 

The Flashback Fanatic movie review 

While the filmmaking dynamic duo of Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack were working on their elaborate and special effects-filled epic King Kong (1933) at RKO Radio Pictures, they decided to multi-task. They adapted the O. Henry Award-winning Richard Connell short story, “The Most Dangerous Game,” to be shot during pauses in King Kong’s lengthy production. They would utilize King Kong’s jungle sets and have four of its cast (Fay Wray, Robert Armstrong, Noble Johnson, and Steve Clemente) play roles in The Most Dangerous Game film during breaks in the King Kong shooting schedule. 

While this all seems like it might be biting off even more than King Kong could chew, Cooper and Schoedsack succeeded in simultaneously making two classic movies of pre-Code horror. Of course, King Kong is an innovative, effects-driven extravaganza with one of the most famous movie monsters of all time, while The Most Dangerous Game is an intense and compact thriller with one of the most memorable fiends in cinema history. 

The Most Dangerous Game film incorporates most of the details from Richard Connell’s short story and elaborates upon them. Most of the changes involve even more action, which also help to add a bit to the movie’s running time that still just barely steps over the hour mark. This is a film that doesn’t have a bit of waste. The only recess from danger is there to set the remote, exotic scene and establish the twisted motive that results in murderous sport. 

Another addition to Connell’s story for the film is a beautiful woman. As Robert Armstrong’s character of Carl Denham stated in King Kong, “The public, bless ‘em, must have a pretty face to look at.” We can’t complain when filmmaker Denham finds Ann Darrow to provide that pretty face for his film. Here in The Most Dangerous Game, we can’t complain when we get that same beauty provided by ’30s scream queen Fay Wray. However, Wray’s Eve Trowbridge is not just a romance plot device. Things are so frantic that there is not even time for Eve and Bob Rainsford to make goo-goo eyes at each other. She is there to act as a psychosexual kink in Count Zaroff’s hunting ritual. Zaroff intends to celebrate by using Eve as his prize once he succeeds in hunting down and killing Rainsford. Just as Zaroff needed to avoid boredom by choosing man as a more challenging prey to hunt, he also needs to refine his ritualistic pleasure even further with the reward of rape. 

Another pre-Code atrocity distinguishes The Most Dangerous Game. The film version makes explicit a grisly spectacle that is just hinted at by a single sentence in Connell’s short story. Once we enter Zaroff’s trophy room, there is no doubt that the Count is an obsessed madman. We know at that point that there is no reasoning with Zaroff. He makes the rules and will compel his guests to play. 

As Count Zaroff, Leslie Banks is one of my favorite villains. We immediately know from his eccentric manner, his weird castle in the jungle, and his intimidating servants that his hospitality may not be so comfortable. My favorite scene is Zaroff socializing with his guests as he is leading up to the subject of his “new sensation.” It is a wonderful tease of the horror to come. Banks is such a consummate fiend in this film that it is surprising he did not wind up typecast as only villains for the rest of his career. Just two years later, he would star as the hero of Alfred Hitchcock’s The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934). 

Bob Rainsford is an early starring role for Joel McCrea. Initially, the young man seems almost naïve, yet this is probably due to Rainsford not having the manner we expect of most action film heroes. McCrea’s Rainsford is free of swagger and cynicism, yet his experience as a hunter means he will be a worthy adversary for the bloodthirsty Count Zaroff. It is also much more satisfying to see the good-natured Rainsford’s change of attitude late in the film. 

The decade’s most famous damsel in distress, Fay Wray, was in the midst of her five back-to-back panic attacks. Although she had a very long filmography, she is certainly most revered by horror buffs for the run of fright flicks she starred in from 1932 to 1933. Without a doubt, her King Kong role of Ann Darrow assured her film immortality, but her other four horror films are also great fun. Her beauty and charm can’t help but enhance everything she appears in. As Eve Trowbridge, she gives our hero Bob Rainsford even more motivation to try beating Count Zaroff at his own game. 

Fay Wray’s King Kong co-star Robert Armstrong really slays me as Martin Trowbridge. As Eve’s boozin’ brother, he is too blind drunk to see the hints of danger that his sober sister tries to warn Rainsford about. Since Martin is perpetually pickled, perhaps Zaroff’s plans for him are appropriate. 

If anyone that looks like Noble Johnson answers the door, you know you’ve got the wrong address. He played the Chief of the natives on Skull Island in King Kong. Here he’s also up to no good on Count Zaroff’s island as his mute, torture-happy henchman Ivan. 

Yet another Skull Island native is also moonlighting as Zaroff’s hired help. Steve Clemente was the Witch King in King Kong. He’s in cahoots with Noble Johnson here, as well. As Zaroff’s servant Tartar, knife-throwing specialist Clemente makes things just as dangerous inside Zaroff’s castle as out in the jungle. 

While King Kong is rightly lauded for its innovations in special effects, some of those techniques are also employed in this film to create the eerie and dangerous environment on Count Zaroff’s island. Even before the hunt is on, there is an ominous aura established in the jungle as we first view Zaroff’s castle. A lot of ingenuity is employed to turn the RKO sets into a deep and nightmarish jungle world. 

Max Steiner’s film score for King Kong was far more extensive than in most early talkies and prompted the industry to make music a more integral element in film production. Since Steiner also provided The Most Dangerous Game with a lengthy and effective score, I think it can be considered just as filmically innovative. This music was used in a film being made at the same time as King Kong, but was released one year earlier. 

This was the movie that introduced the man-hunting-man routine, which has been explored in many films since but never topped. With its perverse and psychotic villain, exotic and remote setting, efficient storytelling, and escalating danger, The Most Dangerous Game is worth tracking down.

MOON ZERO TWO (1969)

Director: Roy Ward Baker

Writers: Michael Carreras, Martin Davison, Frank Hardman, Gavin Lyall

Producer: Michael Carreras

Cast: James Olson, Catherine Schell, Warren Mitchell, Adrienne Corri, Oli Levy, Bernard Bresslaw, Dudley Foster, Sam Kydd, Neil McCallum, Joby Blanshard, Michael Ripper, Robert Tayman, Amber Dean Smith, Simone Silvera, Keith Bonnard, Leo Britt, Carol Cleveland, Lew Luton, Roy Evans, Tom Kempinski, Claire Shenstone, Chrissie Shrimpton, The Gojos (Michelle Barry, Sue Baumann, Brenda Krippen, Sally Graham, Jane Cunningham and Irene Gorst as the bar dancing girls), (and uncredited cast) Athol Coats, Tim Condren, Bill Weston, Martin Grace, Robert Lee, Freddie Earlie

By the year 2021, the Moon has begun to be colonized. Space pilot Bill Kemp (James Olson) has been using his ten-year-old spacecraft, Moon 02, for salvaging defective space satellites. Kemp is approached by Clementine Taplin (Catherine Schell) to help find her brother who has been prospecting on a claim he has on the Moon. Wealthy J.J. Hubbard (Warren Mitchell) also wants to hire Kemp. He needs Kemp to secretly fly to a sapphire asteroid that is approaching the Moon. Hubbard’s illegal scheme is to alter the trajectory of the asteroid to crash it on the lunar surface and claim the 6,000 tons of sapphire as his own.

The Flashback Fanatic movie review

The British movie company Hammer Films will always be renowned for their gothic horror classics. However, Hammer had always dealt with other genres before and after their trend-setting takes on Frankenstein and Dracula that began in the late 1950s. One of their more unusual and interesting deviations from what was expected of them was Moon Zero Two.

Serious science fiction was still a pretty iffy proposition for films in the 1960s. The now-revered Star Trek television series (1966-69) had only made it through three seasons because letter-writing campaigns by fans convinced the NBC network to stick with it. Stanley Kubrick’s classic 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) was not universally praised; many found it too slow, pretentious, or confusing. Even though the United States was about to claim a space race victory with the first manned Moon landing, many still found sci-fi too far-out.

Yet it would seem that the time was ripe for Hammer’s Moon Zero Two, which was promoted as the first “space Western.” Hammer was no slouch when it came to thrilling science fiction. After all, they had made the trilogy of Quatermass films that adapted the popular British television serials. The challenge this time around was making a film of futuristic adventure rather than contemporary sci-fi horror.

Director Roy Ward Baker was frustrated with Moon Zero Two. Although the film seems to have had a bigger budget than most Hammer productions, it was still not enough to fulfill Baker’s ambitions. I can appreciate what was accomplished in creating a setting that is entirely lunar-based. This poses enormous special effects challenges to overcome for a film of any budget. Aside from some scenes on the open lunar surface with actors’ movements ignoring the low gravity conditions, I think Hammer’s go-to guy for special effects, Les Bowie, manages things nicely.

While the costume and set design in retrospect seems so very ’60s in its mod and pop art influenced vision of the future, it was also still far removed from the contemporary. Many later films took any edgy contemporary affectation of fashion and then based the aesthetic of their future upon it. You probably can’t find more than a few future-oriented sci-fi films of the 1980s that have not been influenced by what was being shown in MTV music videos. Was “badass” punk and new wave fashion supposed to be relevant decades or even centuries in the future? And don’t get me started on contemporary catchphrases used in future scenarios…

I enjoy the survival considerations that are raised throughout Moon Zero Two. There is a lot of effort put into making us understand this alien setting and its dangers. To man the Moon is a new and very hostile frontier. Man does not belong on the Moon. His technology and movements are always coping with an environment that he can’t survive without great preparation and caution. Those considerations settle us into the practical reality of this sci-fi setting.

What still makes Moon Zero Two relevant science fiction is that it demonstrates that human nature does not change. Even in the space age future, people will still have ambitions that can lead to avarice. That seems to be expressed by the funky animation during the opening credits. While I think that intro has a tone completely inappropriate for this film and was just a means of making sure that this flick seemed hip to a young audience, it actually spells out that, even on the Moon, corporate greed and development will flourish without regard to the concerns of any nation.

Two years before starring in one of the best science fiction films, The Andromeda Strain (1971), James Olson plays the space pilot hero Bill Kemp. He is the first man to land on Mars and wants to be the pioneer who travels to still more planets. However, the current commercial interests of “the corporation” are focused on the profits to be made by ferrying passengers back and forth between Earth and the Moon. Since the company will no longer employ Kemp as a space explorer and he refuses to be a passenger pilot, he uses an old space ship to privately perform space salvage operations with his partner, Korminsky (Oli Levy). Olson’s Kemp has a resigned attitude that can occasionally be stirred into irritation, but he always seems controlled. This is probably a good attitude for a space pilot to have. Kemp is also refreshingly free of the posturing that heroes of any genre must display in films these days. He has some humor and nerve, but no snark and bullyboy antics.

I suppose a frustrated space explorer biding his time until he gets another chance to make history can cope if he’s got someone that looks like Adrienne Corri to land on. As Elizabeth Murphy, she is the Moon’s Bureau of Investigation official that has been assisting Kemp’s liftoffs in more ways than one. Because of their relationship, Murphy has been overlooking the risks of Kemp’s aging Moon 02 spacecraft. I really like Corri in this role and wish she played a much larger part in the story, but her few scenes are memorable. This feisty actress had a long career on stage, television, and film. Corri appeared in a few other Hammer films and may be best known as the unfortunate Mrs. Alexander who is assaulted during a home invasion in Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange (1971).

Catherine Schell appeared as a Bond girl the same year in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (1969). In the 1970s she would have the recurring role of Maya in the second season of the British television series Space: 1999 (1975-77). In Moon Zero Two, Schell is the beauty that makes Bill Kemp’s moon buggy a lot cozier. As Clementine Taplin, she appeals to our hero to take her to find her out-of-touch brother on his claim of Moon land. Since tempers have flared between Bill Kemp and Elizabeth Murphy, we suspect that Clementine will provide the lunar Lothario an opportunity to carve a new notch on his fun gun.

As is the case with many Westerns, commercial opportunities in a new frontier motivate the principal players, cause conflicts, and reveal the villains. Warren Mitchell, as wealthy industrialist J.J. Hubbard, is the unscrupulous mastermind causing all the dust-ups on the Moon. While he always seems jovial, we realize that he is a smug and evil opportunist that manages to win people over with the prospect of profit. Even our hero Bill Kemp is willing to assist Hubbard in his sapphire-asteroid-salvaging scheme until murder tactics ensue.

Big Bernard Bresslaw is Hubbard’s ineffectual henchman Harry. Since Bresslaw had a long history as a comedic actor, it’s possible that he may have been originally intended to be played just for laughs. Wisely, that is not quite the case. While Kemp seems to always get the upper hand on Bresslaw’s Harry, the big thug still demonstrates his cold-blooded obedience to Hubbard on a couple occasions to remind us that anyone is dangerous when they’ve got the gun. 6’7” Bresslaw was a prime contender for the role of the monster that was ultimately played by Christopher Lee in Hammer’s The Curse of Frankenstein (1957).

Moon Zero Two was not well received by critics or the box office. It’s extraterrestrial setting and legitimate attempts to portray the action and dangers in space and on the Moon may have been hard for an audience to relate to. Dealing with those aspects realistically may not always translate into mile-a-minute thrills, but I found this far more involving than many later sci-fi action-fantasies with no ideas claiming to have a vision.

Hammer Films’ Moon Zero Two was an interesting attempt to extrapolate a possible future from the space exploration developments of the day and draw the all-too plausible conclusion that man will still behave in the new frontier of the future like he did in the Old West. It also creates a lunar dystopia of fully clad showgirls and bad cocktails. Now, that’s a Hammer horror I just can’t handle.

NIGHT SCHOOL (1981)

Director: Kenneth Hughes

Writer: Ruth Avergon

Producers: Ruth Avergon, Larry Babb

Cast: Leonard Mann, Rachel Ward, Drew Snyder, Joseph R. Sicari, Karen MacDonald, Annette Miller, Nicholas Cairis, Bill McCann, Margo Skinner, Holly Hardman, Elizabeth Barnitz, Leonard Corman, Belle McDonald, Meb Boden, John Blood, Ed Chalmers, Ed Higgins, William McDonald, Kevin Fennessy, Lisa Allee, Patricia Pellows, Elizabeth Alice, Ted Duncan, J.J. Wright, Patricia Pellows, Patricia Rust, Jane-Leah Bedrick, Wally Hooper, Jr., Kevin King, Nancy Rothman 

In Boston, Massachusetts, women are being decapitated. Homicide Lieutenant Judd Austin (Leonard Mann) notices the killer’s strange habit of depositing the victims’ severed heads in water. Since some of the victims were attending night classes at Wendell College, Lt. Austin concentrates most of his inquiries on the school’s faculty and students. 

The Flashback Fanatic movie review 

Unlike most slasher films of this era, Night School’s narrative focus is not on a teenage or young adult cast. While the killer’s targets are often young women, we are usually dealing with the investigation of the homicide detective and the concerns of Wendell College faculty members. This film does not use the typical youth-centric social dynamic many slasher films had with a young cast indulging in partying and sex until a killer picks them off. 

Leonard Mann stars as our hero, Lt. Judd Austin. Initially, this character seems rather bland, yet I have come to appreciate that he is not an attention-getting badass or world-weary cynic. He is never trying to be an intimidating, macho showoff, but he can be intrusive and direct with those he needs answers from. Apparently, Austin is idealistic in using his education for public service and is dedicated to solving this macabre case. He is Harvard-educated and approaches his job with more intellectual insight than his Armenian partner Taj (Joseph R. Sicari), who believes a good cop just needs a good pair of shoes. Yet Austin is not dazzling us with Sherlockian deductions; he is just following hunches. 

English model-turned-actress Rachel Ward makes her feature film-starring debut in Night School as Eleanor Adjai, an exchange student and research assistant for Professor of Anthropology Vincent Millett at Wendell College. Some have criticized her performance in this early role as wooden, but I think she is fine here. Ward displays some moments of emotional turmoil that deserve our sympathy. It could be argued that at one point she could be more agitated or hysterical. However, the more we learn about her character, the more sense it makes that she tries to be a contained person, despite the stresses she is dealing with. 

Her major stressor is her lover, Vincent Millett (Drew Snyder), the womanizing teacher at the women’s college. This scholarly scumbag sure has his pick of the nubile bodies in the student body. Millett has had multiple affairs with his pupils and can’t stop flirting right under Eleanor’s beautiful nose. To Snyder’s credit, sometimes his character doesn’t comes across like a complete asshole, but we can never trust him. Millett really needs a refresher course in impulse control. 

The motorcyclist mystery killer has the distinctive, identity-concealing getup of black leather cycling outfit and helmet. The killer also wields an equally distinctive weapon. That nasty accessory is a kukri, which certainly seems like a suitable blade for beheading. 

While slasher films were often criticized as misogynistic, there were plenty of women involved in their production. In the case of Night School, Ruth Avergon was one of the producers and wrote the script. She brings some female concerns to the film and also contrived a radical set of family values that motivate the killer. 

Another distinction that Night School has is slick and accomplished execution with the filmmaking fundamentals that are often taken for granted, but can really add a bit of polish to a genre film without drawing attention to themselves. In his final film, English director Kenneth Hughes’ long career of experience rises to the challenge of suspenseful teases leading up to the kills and reveals of their aftermath. Cinematographer Mark Irwin worked on a lot of David Cronenberg’s great sci-fi horror movies. Irwin’s shots that open the film, establishing its gloomy Boston setting, combine with the score to raise our anticipation for the upcoming atrocities. Composer Brad Fiedel provides a nice theme that is eerie and melancholy. It is perfect for the subject matter and the killer’s mindset. 

There is a final scene meant to be the you-think-it's-over-but-it's-not gimmick that some of the most notable fright flicks of the era had done. I have read that it is a scene tacked on after the principal photography had wrapped. I think the film would have worked better without it to end on its original somber and unsettling note. 

Released at the height of slasher mania, Night School has a slightly different approach and attitude, while still delivering the mystery killer intrigue and stalk-and-kill situations that define the genre. As usual, the critical reception at the time was as dismissive of it as with all other films in this nasty niche, but it has earned more respect by those reminiscing on the early ’80s heyday of the slasher film.