General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20265 min read

The Most Dangerous Game (1932 film)

The Most Dangerous Game is a 1932 American adventure-horror film directed by Ernest B. Schoedsack and Irving Pichel for RKO Radio Pictures, adapted from Richard Connell's 1924 short story about a big-game hunter who is shipwrecked on an island owned by a Russian aristocrat who hunts human beings for sport.¹ Joel McCrea plays the hunter Bob Rainsford, Leslie Banks plays Count Zaroff, and Fay Wray and Robert Armstrong play shipwrecked siblings Eve and Martin Trowbridge.² Made by the same RKO unit that produced King Kong the following year, it is regarded as one of the defining treatments of the "man hunting man" premise in cinema.¹^•³

Key fact	Detail
Release	16 September 1932, RKO Radio Pictures; United States; black and white; 7 reels¹
Runtime	61 or 63 minutes according to the AFI Catalog; 63 minutes per Criterion; a preview version ran 78 minutes¹^•²
Directors	Ernest B. Schoedsack and Irving Pichel; David O. Selznick executive producer, Merian C. Cooper associate producer¹^•²
Source	Short story "The Most Dangerous Game" by Richard Edward Connell, first published in Collier's on 19 January 1924; screenplay by James Ashmore Creelman¹
Principal cast	Joel McCrea (Bob Rainsford), Fay Wray (Eve Trowbridge), Leslie Banks (Count Zaroff), Robert Armstrong (Martin Trowbridge), Noble Johnson (Ivan)²
Budget	$218,869, according to RKO studio records¹
Music	Max Steiner; cinematography by Henry Gerrard; editing by Archie F. Marshek²
Critical standing	100% Tomatometer from 25 reviews and a 73% Popcornmeter from more than 2,500 ratings on Rotten Tomatoes⁴

Spoilers

Plot

While sailing through shark-infested waters, the yacht carrying the noted big-game hunter Bob Rainsford strikes a coral reef and sinks; Rainsford swims ashore as the only survivor and reaches a mysterious fortress owned by the Russian Count Zaroff.¹ Zaroff receives him as a gracious host and introduces him to Eve and Martin Trowbridge, recent shipwreck survivors like himself.¹

Finding Rainsford a kindred spirit, Zaroff reveals his obsessive passion for hunting and refers, obliquely at first, to his favorite island pastime: the pursuit of "the most dangerous game."¹ That night he takes the intoxicated Martin to his trophy room, which holds several mounted human heads, and tells him that his own head will soon join them.¹ When Martin fails to return, Eve enlists Rainsford's help; the two are caught in the trophy room, and Zaroff declares Rainsford the next player in his game.¹

Under Zaroff's rules, Eve is the prize if the count kills Rainsford, but if Rainsford survives until 4 a.m. he wins freedom for both of them.¹ The pair flees through a fog-bound swamp, eluding Zaroff's arrows; Rainsford battles one of the count's hunting dogs, and dog and man fall over a cliff into the ocean.¹ Zaroff returns to his fortress believing he has won, discovers Rainsford alive, and is killed by him in a fierce fight, after which Rainsford and Eve escape the island.¹

Production and its relationship to King Kong

The film was produced at RKO by the documentary-trained team of Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack, with David O. Selznick as executive producer and Cooper credited as associate producer; contemporary sources conflict over the producer credit, some listing Schoedsack and Cooper as co-producers and others Schoedsack and Pichel.¹^•² According to studio production files, some sets were shared with the King Kong production, and Schoedsack directed Fay Wray and Robert Armstrong in this film during the day while he and Cooper directed them in King Kong at night.¹ The two films also share screenwriter James Ashmore Creelman and much of the same crew.⁵

A rushed but complete production. Modern sources date the shoot from 16 May to 17 June 1932, though trade-paper items suggest a mid-June start.¹ The Motion Picture Herald listed a preview running time of 78 minutes, indicating that the picture was cut substantially before general release.¹ A July 1932 Film Daily item added several actors, including Creighton Chaney and Ray Milland, to the cast, but their participation in the finished film has not been confirmed.¹

Adaptation from the short story

Connell's story, which won the O. Henry prize, was first published in Collier's on 19 January 1924.¹ The screenplay by James Ashmore Creelman made one significant addition: the original story had no love interest, so the character of Eve was invented for the film, though she is written as more than a damsel in distress.⁶ The film's title carries the story's double meaning, in which "game" denotes both the sport and the prey, and the prey is human.³

Reception and legacy

Contemporary and later critics have treated the film as a landmark of early sound horror. The Criterion Collection calls it "one of the best and most literate movies from the great days of horror," noting that Cooper and Schoedsack made it just before making history with 1933's King Kong.² Reviewers have singled out the long, choreographed hunt sequence in the final act, in which the human prey prevails by drawing on animal cunning, and Leslie Banks's performance as Zaroff.⁷ On Rotten Tomatoes the film holds a 100% Tomatometer from 25 critics and a 73% audience score from more than 2,500 ratings.⁴

Influence on later film. The premise of humans hunting humans became a durable mini-genre, and the film's plot has been credited with inspiring many subsequent movies.³ Connell's story was filmed again by RKO as A Game of Death (1946), directed by Robert Wise and starring John Loder and Audrey Long, and by United Artists as Run for the Sun (1956), directed by Roy Boulting and starring Richard Widmark and Jane Greer.¹

Availability. The film fell into the public domain, which led to many televised and home-video releases of varying quality; the Criterion DVD (Spine #46) used the best 35mm print source, and Eureka Entertainment issued a Blu-ray in 2022.³^•⁸ Connell's underlying story entered the public domain in the United States on 1 January 2020.³

References

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026