In short: A Game of Death (1945)

Famous hunter and writer Don Rainsford (John Loder) finds himself stranded on an island belonging to passionate hunter and fan Erich Kreiger (Edgar Barrier). Curiously enough, there are a couple of other survivors from a different shipwreck there, too, the Trowbridge siblings Ellen (Audrey Long) and Robert (Russell Wade). The former seems to harbour some terrible suspicions about what their host is up to; the latter is too drunk to notice, one supposes.

Indeed, there’s something very wrong going on here, for Kreiger has prepared his island for maximum shipwreck efficiency in the classic wreckers tradition, so he can later hunt the survivors (who must by his logic be the fittest, following his very badly mangled understanding of Darwin) down for sport.

If you’re an innocent soul and believe the pointless remake to be a product of out times, you will be surprised to hear that this is RKO’s pointless remake (or second adaptation of the story that film was based on) of The Most Dangerous Game. Though it was at least made at a time when not nearly every film ever made that didn’t go up in smoke was available somewhere, somehow for anyone to see.

Despite having been directed by the great Robert Wise, this is certainly not at all on the level of his best work, nor of the original film. Too often, the film lacks in visual imagination, apart from a couple of the kind of moody shots Wise probably couldn’t not include in anything he filmed. Why, even his terrible Star Trek movie at the end of his career has its moments. But I digress.

In the good old tradition of the pointless remake as a genre, there’s very little here that actually changes the older film for the better or the more interesting. A couple of nuances shift to better fit the politics of the time, so the mad hunter isn’t a Russian but a German anymore (which would probably have played even better two or three years earlier), Ellen has slightly more to do, and so on. But mostly, this is a film that seems to be tailor-made to have its audience wish for the earlier, better movie with its much larger spirit and focus.