So apparently there are people in the world whose idea of a good time is to go out and kill something. Guns, knives, crossbows, spears, hooks, traps—it’s all good, as long as an animal ends up dead.
I don’t get it.
Mind you…I come closer to getting it when the animal they’re hunting is selfish, greedy, violent, destructive and just plain ANNOYING.
So join us as we examine some films that put Homo sapiens in the cross-hairs…
WEBSITE | FILM | PREVIEW |
1000 Misspent Hours and Counting | A Game of Death | Kreiger’s guests are more decisive than their 30’s counterparts when it comes to acting on those suspicions, too. As soon as Ellen decides that she trusts him enough to reveal what she believes their host is up to on his island, Rainsford goes to confront Kreiger. He tells him he’s guessed the secret— but then he congratulates Kreiger on his ingenuity and vision, and asks to be taken along on such a hunt as soon as possible. This is pretty much what Kreiger has been fantasizing about since the day he set up shop on the island, so he doesn’t take a lot of convincing to accept the sincerity of Rainsford’s request. The madman’s confidence thus gained, Rainsford returns to the Trowbridges to begin plotting how to turn the tables on their captor. |
Predator | The swarming guerillas aren’t the only ones stalking the jungle, nor are they close to the most dangerous. The superstitious old abuelas from Ana’s village have a name for what killed and skinned the other soldiers, which apparently has a habit of coming out during nasty-hot summers like this one. Cazatrofeos de los Hombres, they call it— the Trophy-Hunter of Men. | |
Without Warning (1979) | My first impression of Without Warning was that this is the alien invasion movie you’d make immediately after you saw Friday the 13th. It’s got the woodland setting, the young protagonists, the body-count structure during the first act, the finding-the-bodies scene, and a whole rural hamlet apparently populated by nothing but Crazy Ralphs. The handling of the alien seems Friday the 13th, too. Only at the climax do we get a clear look at it; until then, it’s portrayed almost exclusively by a roving POV cam and closeups on its weird, biological weapons. Friday the 13th can’t have had any direct influence on Without Warning, however, because the former movie hadn’t been released yet when the latter was in the works. | |
And You Call Yourself A Scientist! | The Most Dangerous Game (1932) | We are not, of course, supposed truly to sympathise with Zaroff’s position – even if we do get a giddy, guilty thrill out of it – but there is no doubt at all that the film expects us to appreciate the sight of Rainsford getting his moral comeuppance. Zaroff puts it in terms of Rainsford lacking the courage to follow his convictions to their logical conclusion; the viewer is more likely to think in terms of Karma. The man who justified his life as a professional hunter on the specious grounds of his prey’s equal enjoyment, who dismisses killing as a mere game, as sport, is about to find out that it’s not as much fun as he thought, being on the other end of the rifle… |
Braineater | ||
Jabootu’s Bad Movie Dimension | ||
Mezzanotte | ||
The Unknown Movies | Savages (1974) | The movie is leanly written. The running time is only seventy-two minutes in length, so that there aren’t any moments that could be considered blatant padding; for example, the two lead characters first meet and start their hunting trip in the first five minutes of the movie. Another interesting aspect of the teleplay is that it doesn’t end the way that you may expect. You probably know how most variations of The Most Dangerous Game end, so I won’t get into that. What’s interesting about this version is that where you think it would end isn’t the ending – more than twenty minutes is still left in the running time. I won’t spoil things by telling you what happens in those last twenty minutes, except that it places a new and troubling challenge on the protagonist. |