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The naked prey book2/18/2023 In A Game of Death (1945), Zaroff’s villain became a Nazi the film was directed by Robert Wise, who also helmed The Sound of Music. The Most Dangerous Game has been overshadowed by King Kong, but filmmakers (and other artists) really took to its premise. Starring a young Joel McCrea (still a few years from his success as a leading man at Paramount) and Fay Wray (at the time the screen’s reigning scream queen), The Most Dangerous Game has the inexorable logic of a nightmare, and the gloomy, swampy locations to match. Schoedsack was co-director of both films.) It also featured a mesmerizing score by Max Steiner, one of Hollywood’s premier composers. More a horror film than an adventure, The Most Dangerous Game was filmed at the same time, and on the same sets, as the RKO classic King Kong. ( Read the original story.) With no way off Zaroff’s tropical island, the guests must play along with his deadly demands. My favorite in the human prey genre, this 1932 film was based on a 1924 short story by Richard Connell in which survivors of a shipwreck come face to face with the infamous Count Zaroff. Here are five other films in which humans hunt each other to the death.įay Wray and Joel McCrea in The Most Dangerous Game.ġ. and Little, Brown in the process- The Hunger Games takes a premise that has been around for decades and refashions it for a new audience. Just as Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight novels popularized vampire and werewolf themes for a young-adult audience-making a fortune for Warner Bros. But director Boaz Yakin never pretends that Safe is anything but escapist entertainment, and he doesn’t dwell on how the movie’s victims die. The upcoming Jason Statham vehicle Safe has a body count in the dozens, as well as a young protagonist who directly causes the deaths of several villains. ![]() ![]() Although Quentin Tarantino professed it a favorite, Battle Royale has never received a legitimate release in the U.S.Ĭall me a hypocrite, but I’m generally fine with other forms of screen mayhem. The stories still share a surprising number of plot elements. Collins has stated that she was unaware of Battle Royale when working on The Hunger Games. In it, high school students are sent to a remote island in a rigged fight to the death. A 1999 novel by Koushun Takami that was adapted into a 2000 film directed by Kinji Fukasaku, Battle Royale is far more violent and morally ambiguous than The Hunger Games. Personally, I am uncomfortable with how children are used in The Hunger Games, and even more uncomfortable with one of its immediate predecessors, Battle Royale. Set in a dystopian future, the premise features televised Olympics-style battles to the death among 24 teenagers selected from the 12 colonies that had rebelled against the ruling class. With almost 25 millions copies in print, Collins’ series of young adult novels are a phenomenon in their own right. Three more episodes are currently planned (the last book will be split into two parts, like Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.) So you can count on Hunger Games sequels in the near future. Should it match that title’s receipts, The Hunger Game could top $150 million within days.ĭespite muted reviews from old-line media like Variety, The Hollywood Reporter, The New York Times, and Time, The Hunger Games has already helped to boost the stock price of distributor Lionsgate by over 80% in the past three months. Opening today, the movie has already broken the first-day sales record on Fandango, topping the previous leader, The Twilight Saga: Eclipse. ![]() If you’ve somehow avoided the marketing juggernaut behind The Hunger Games, the film version of Suzanne Collins’ novel is poised to become the first box-office blockbuster of 2012.
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