Cider and Cinema: The Most Dangerous Game

Welcome, dear friends, to what I hope will be the first of many Cider and Cinema posts here at filnnerdblog.  Cider is often my drink of choice, so it makes sense to combine my love for the fruity beverage with my love of films.

First up, tonight’s drink.  This time I’ve got a Devon apple cider infused with elderflower, from M&S.  A lightly sparkling, refreshing drink, this is a pleasant enough cider, although it’s rather heavy on the apples.  I’d like to see the elderflower taste brought out more, to give it a more unique taste.  As it is, this is just a tad subtle for me.

Mmm

Now onto tonight’s film.  I’ve chosen 1932’s black and white thriller, The Most Dangerous Game, starring Fay Wray, who would appear in King Kong the following year.

Events take place on an island where a crazy count who loves hunting big game, but has become bored by it, decides to up the ante.  Hunting humans.  So he’s a really nice, normal bloke, then.

He looks like an evil count, doesn’t he?

The film begins aboard a yacht where we see a group of well to do men talking about how much they like hunting.  There’s some great dialogue, here including our protagonist, Bob Rainsford foolishly and incorrectly bragging!

This world’s divided into two kinds of people: the hunter and the hunted. Luckily I’m the hunter. Nothing can change that.

Hmm…give it about 35 minutes, Bob, old man!

Silly Bob, bragging to his mates

The cartoonishly villainous Count Zaroff first invites Bob to join him – not as prey, but as a fellow hunter.  But Bob is hardly likely to get a girl like Fay Wray (Eve) if he goes around hunting people for sport, and he’s much more morally upstanding than that.  He and so he takes his chances against the Count.

Eve and Bob on the run

There’s a fun jungle-based cat and mouse chase that ensues, as Bob fights for his life, and some of it’s even pretty tense.  The music here helps no end, cranking up the suspense as they were so good at doing back then.  Perhaps that’s because they had to rely so heavily on the score to convey meaning during the silent era?  I don’t know, but it was good, and suitably dramatic for the macabre subject matter.  Don’t you just love that word?  Macabre.  Mac.  Abre.  Maaaaaccccaaaaarrrrrrrbbbbbbbbeeeee.  It rolls off the tongue beautifully, doesn’t it?

Anyway, what was I saying?  I don’t know, but I liked this film, and am definitely go to check out some more oldies.  I used to watch a lot of black and white films from the 30’s and 40’s but it’s a habit I’ve got out of in recent years.

If you’re interested, the short story this film was based on is available on open source or you can watch the whole film here.

Cider score: a bit too heavy on the apples at the expense of the elderflower means this is 6/10

Movie score: an old school 7/10