The Paperback Palette: September 2019

Webster's defines HORROR as: ( n. ) 1. the strong feeling caused by something frightful or shocking; terror and repugnance. 2. strong dislike or aversion. 3. the quality of causing horror. 4. something that causes horror.

Webster's defines ADVENTURE as: ( n. ) 1. the encountering of danger. 2. a daring, hazardous undertaking. 3. an unusual, stirring experience, often of a romantic nature. 4. a liking for danger, excitement, etc.

MY INTEREST in horror movies has less to do with their actual elements of terror and fear and more to do with their innate ability to create adventurous environments around those elements. It's that requisite search for adventure that has pushed me to watch, or sample, hundreds of horror films throughout my lifetime, and often to my own detriment (so much of it is gawd-awful!). But I do admit to enjoying the often brilliant performances of the many unsung actors that populate the field, as well as basking in the incredible milieu, robust atmosphere and scariness that is so central to the genre's popularity.

One of my favorite "horror-adventure" films from the early days of Hollywood is The Most Dangerous Game, a pre-Code, RKO Radio Picture production released in 1932. Ernest B. Schoedsack and Irving Pichel, of King Kong fame, were the film's co-directors. The score was produced by Max Steiner.

The film is based on a short story of the same name by Richard Connell (1893-1949), originally published in Colliers on January 19, 1924, with illustrations (pictured below) by the American born artist Wilmot Emerton Heitland (1893-1969). Connell's yarn won the O'Henry Memorial Award for short fiction the year it was published.

Connell's story has been reprinted at least sixteen times in various English language anthologies, but illustrated only twice on an actual book cover. The first was on Berkley's 1957 paperback anthology, The Most Dangerous Game and Other Stories of Adventure, with cover art by Mel Crair, and the second on Random House's 1967 hardcover anthology Alfred Hitchcock's Spellbinders in Suspense, with cover art and interior illustrations by Harold Isen (both are pictured below).

Fay Wray and Joel McCrea were cast as leads in The Most Dangerous Game. Wray of course would be destined for ultimate remembrance one year later for her iconic role as Ann Darrow in King Kong, while McCrea would become, after effectively starring in such classic films as Foreign Correspondent and Union Pacific, one of Hollywood's most forthright, leading men, especially in Westerns.

Their characters Eve Trowbridge and Sanger "Bob" Rainsford are shipwrecked on a remote island, inhabited by the fiendish megalomaniac Count Zaroff, played melodramatically but effectively by the great English stage actor Leslie Banks, who forces them to engage in a sadistic hunt with the two of them as his human prey. The hunt, aided by Zaroff's loyal henchmen, becomes a testosterone fueled duel in which the world class hunter Rainsford's honor-bound rules are challenged in the most extreme way, with Eve as the compulsory prize to the successor.

It's been stated that the film represents American isolationist fears during the Great Depression, with Zaroff's fuehrer-like figure symbolizing decadent Europe. That expositor certainly feels accurate, but even with that political conflagration in place I see this movie only as a concentrated adventure story, but one tinged with underlying Sadeian horror.

RKO Pressbook, 1932.

I was probably eight or nine when I first saw The Most Dangerous Game broadcast on television. Even now, a half century later, its legacy of suspense, adventure and horror hasn't diminished at all with me. In fact, when I began assembling my list of Top-Ten favorite movies for this posting I felt compelled to include The Most Dangerous Game, along with several other films of the same ilk. They are, by their release dates, as follows:

The Most Dangerous Game (1932)
King Kong (1933)
Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954)
Curse of the Demon (1958)
The Mysterious Island (1961)
The Haunting (1963)
Jaws (1975)
Alien (1979)
The Thing (1982)
Aliens (1986)

By strict definition all but one of these films, that being The Most Dangerous Game, are "Monster Movies", a sub-genre within horror which seems to incorporate adventure into itself almost by virtue of its very nature.

However, if I could be allowed an alternative list it would look like this:

Lost Horizon (1937)
Casablanca (1942)
7th Voyage of Sinbad (1958)
Dersu Uzala (1975)
The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976)
Star Wars (Ewoks aside, Episodes IV, V, VI; 1977, 1980, 1983)
The Road Warrior (1981)
Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)
Ofelas aka Pathfinder (1987)
Last of the Mohicans (1992)

Most of the films on my secondary list are not "monster" related per se, but they are powerful adventure stories, each and every one. And yet great films exist even outside of the genres that I so blatantly favor, and I could be swayed to include almost any film from the 1970s, be it comedy, drama, crime, exploitation, historical, fantasy or science-fiction. The 1970s was, arguably, the greatest decade for movies ever, and any intelligent person shouldn't have to look anywhere else to find a favorite film representation, and one that will stand the test of time. Go back even further to 1968's 2001: A Space Odyssey, and then cap it off with 1982's The Thing, and what you have in between is simply undeniable in its importance as cultural, cinematic entertainment. I even have a soft spot for 1979's terribly underappreciated More American Graffiti.

But seriously, how can anyone compile a Top-Ten list and then stick with it for all time? Isn't our favorite movie merely the last great one we've seen, or re-seen? If I re-watch any of Hitchcock's best films again, Rear Window (1954), Vertigo (1958) and Psycho (1960), I'm apt to make a change in my top-ten. Perhaps my list should be expanded to include no less than 100 titles. After all, entertaining films, in any category, will always have an inherent ability to influence our opinion, even if our initial love of the medium began with a specific genre amalgamation.