The Big Book of Reel Murders

by Stories That Inspired Great Crime Films (epub)

  Bond got off his machine and walked over to the ugly twist of khaki and smoking steel. There was no need to feel for a pulse. Wherever the bullet had struck, the crash-helmet had smashed like an eggshell. Bond turned away and thrust his gun back into the front of his tunic. He had been lucky. It would not do to press his luck. He got on the B.S.A. and accelerated back down the road.

  He leant the B.S.A. up against one of the scarred trees just inside the forest and walked softly through to the edge of the clearing. He took up his stand in the shadow of the big beech. He moistened his lips and gave, as near as he could, the killer’s bird-whistle. He waited. Had he got the whistle wrong? But then the bush trembled and the high thin whine began. Bond hooked his right thumb through his belt within inches of his gun-butt. He hoped he would not have to do any more killing. The two underlings had not seemed to be armed. With any luck they would come quietly.

  Now the curved doors were open. From where he was, Bond could not see down the shaft, but within seconds the first man was out and putting on his snow-shoes and the second followed. Snow-shoes! Bond’s heart missed a beat. He had forgotten them! They must be hidden back there in the bushes. Blasted fool! Would they notice?

  The two men came slowly towards him, delicately placing their feet. When he was about twenty feet away, the leading man said something softly in what sounded like Russian. When Bond did not reply, the two men stopped in their tracks. They stared at him in astonishment, waiting perhaps for the answer to a password. Bond sensed trouble. He whipped out his gun and moved towards them, crouching. “Hands up.” He gestured with the muzzle of the Colt. The leading man shouted an order and threw himself forward. At the same time the second man made a dash back towards the hide-out. A rifle boomed from among the trees and the man’s right leg buckled under him. The men from the Station broke cover and came running. Bond fell to one knee and clubbed upwards with his gun-barrel at the hurtling body. It made contact, but then the man was on him. Bond saw fingernails flashing towards his eyes, ducked and ran into an upper-cut. Now a hand was at his right wrist and his gun was being slowly turned on him. Not wanting to kill, he had kept the safety catch up. He tried to get his thumb to it. A boot hit him in the side of the head and he let the gun go and fell back. Through a red mist he saw the muzzle of the gun pointing at his face. The thought flashed through his mind that he was going to die—die for showing mercy….

  Suddenly the gun-muzzle had gone and the weight of the man was off him. Bond got to his knees and then to his feet. The body, spread-eagled in the grass beside him, gave a last kick. There were bloody rents in the back of the dungarees. Bond looked round. The four men from the Station were in a group. Bond undid the strap of his crash-helmet and rubbed the side of his head. He said: “Well, thanks. Who did it?”

  Nobody answered. The men looked embarrassed.

  Bond walked towards them, puzzled. “What’s up?”

  Suddenly Bond caught a trace of movement behind the men. An extra leg showed—a woman’s leg. Bond laughed out loud. The men grinned sheepishly and looked behind them. Mary Ann Russell, in a brown shirt and black jeans, came out from behind them with her hands up. One of the hands held what looked like a .22 target pistol. She brought her hands down and tucked the pistol into the top of her jeans. She came up to Bond. She said anxiously: “You won’t blame anybody, will you? I just wouldn’t let them leave this morning without me.” Her eyes pleaded. “Rather lucky I did come, really. I mean, I just happened to get to you first. No one wanted to shoot for fear of hitting you.”

  Bond smiled into her eyes. He said: “If you hadn’t come, I’d have had to break that dinner date.” He turned back to the men, his voice business-like. “All right. One of you take the motor-bike and report the gist of this to Colonel Schreiber. Say we’re waiting for his team before we take a look at the hide-out. And would he include a couple of anti-sabotage men. That shaft may be booby-trapped. All right?”

  Bond took the girl by the arm. He said: “Come over here. I want to show you a bird’s nest.”

  “Is that an order?”

  “Yes.”

  The Most Dangerous Game

  RICHARD CONNELL

  THE STORY

  Original publication: Collier’s, January 19, 1924, winning the O. Henry Memorial Prize; first collected in Variety by Richard Connell (New York, Minton, 1925)

  A SUCCESSFUL AND PROLIFIC SHORT STORY WRITER who also enjoyed success in Hollywood, Richard Edward Connell (1893–1949) is best known today for “The Most Dangerous Game,” one of the most anthologized stories ever written and the basis for numerous film versions, including the 1932 RKO film of the same title (called The Hounds of Zaroff in England).

  At the age of eighteen, Connell became the city editor of The New York Times, then went to Harvard, where he was the editor of the Harvard Lampoon and the Harvard Crimson. Upon graduation, he returned to journalism but was soon offered a lucrative job writing advertising copy. After serving in World War I, he sold several short stories and became a full-time freelancer, becoming one of America’s most popular and prolific magazine writers; several of his stories served as the basis for motion pictures.

  Connell also produced four novels: The Mad Lover (1927), a romantic work in the style of F. Scott Fitzgerald in which a wealthy young man falls in love with a woman who rejects him because he is a wastrel without drive or ambition; the book ends with a surprisingly humorous denouement. In Murder at Sea (1929), twelve passengers are on the Pendragon, bound for Bermuda, when one is brutally murdered and the question is who did it but, even more baffling, is why? Playboy (1936) is a light comedy about the idle rich, featuring the titular character, “Million-a-Year-Mike,” the heir to the Van Dyke fortune, amassed by his grandfather with his Two-Bit chain of stores. What Ho! (1937) is a British country house romantic comedy in the P. G. Wodehouse manner (though not a competitor on the hilarity scale) in which an Iowa taxidermist sells his business to rent the manor house of an earl with whom he shares a last name.

  THE FILM

  Title: The Most Dangerous Game, 1932

  Studio: RKO Radio Pictures

  Directors: Irving Pichel, Ernest B. Schoedsack

  Screenwriter: James Ashmore Creelman

  Producers: David O. Selznick (executive); Merian C. Cooper (associate)

  THE CAST

  • Joel McCrea (Bob Rainsford)

  • Fay Wray (Eve Trowbridge)

  • Robert Armstrong (Martin Trowbridge)

  • Leslie Banks (General Zaroff)

  The essential storyline remains intact for the film version of Connell’s thrilling tale. Robert Rainsford, a famous big-game hunter, is on a yacht, making his way to hunt jaguars with a friend, when it crashes on a reef. He swims to an island where he comes upon a luxurious mansion, the home of General Zaroff, also a noted hunter. Apart from Zaroff’s menacing assistant, Ivan, only a young woman and her brother, also survivors of a shipwreck, are in the house. Zaroff has a conversation with Rainsford in which he explains that hunting has come to bore him but that there is one prey that he finds truly challenging and exhilarating and Rainsford realizes that he means humans. After Martin disappears, Eve and Rainsford recognize that they are scheduled to be the next quarry.

  There is no woman or brother in the short story, but it is not a surprise that Hollywood wanted a pretty girl to serve as a love interest. The film is otherwise true to its inspiration.

  The following year, the wildly successful King Kong (1933) was released and brought back virtually the entire team who had made The Most Dangerous Game: stars Fay Wray and Robert Armstrong, directors Cooper and Schoedsack, screenwriter Creelman (with Ruth Rose), executive producer Selznick, and producers Cooper and Schoedsack.

  Connell’s story has inspired numerous dramatic versions, including feature films A Game of Death (RKO, 1945, with John Loder, Edgar Barrier, and
Audrey Long); Run for the Sun (United Artists, 1956, with Richard Widmark, Jane Greer, and Trevor Howard); The Most Dangerous Game (Wild Eye, 2016; rereleased as Never Leave Alive, 2017), with John Hennigan, Michelle Taylor, and Eric Etebari; and The Hounds of Zaroff (Lucky 70, 2016; not released until 2018), with Rachel Schrey, Devin Schmidt, and Timo Schrey.

  Other theatrical films inspired by the story have different titles and have not always credited Connell. These include Bloodlust! (1961), The Woman Hunt (1972), Hard Target (1993), Surviving the Game (1994), and The Eliminator (2004), as well as The Pest (1997), a parody.

  “The Most Dangerous Game” has served as the basis for numerous episodes of radio and television series, sometimes credited and sometimes not, but most famously was broadcast as the September 23, 1943, episode of the CBS series Suspense, which starred Orson Welles as Zaroff and Keenan Wynn as Rainsford.

  THE MOST DANGEROUS GAME

  Richard Connell

  “OFF THERE TO THE RIGHT—somewhere—is a large island,” said Whitney. “It’s rather a mystery—”

  “What island is it?” Rainsford asked.

  “The old charts called it Ship-Trap Island,” Whitney replied. “A suggestive name, isn’t it? Sailors have a curious dread of the place. I don’t know why. Some superstition—”

  “Can’t see it,” remarked Rainsford, trying to peer through the dank tropical night that pressed its thick warm blackness in upon the yacht.

  “You’ve good eyes,” said Whitney with a laugh, “and I’ve seen you pick off a moose moving in the brown fall bush at four hundred yards, but even you can’t see four miles or so through a moonless Caribbean night.”

  “Nor four yards,” admitted Rainsford. “Ugh! It’s like moist black velvet.”

  “It will be light enough in Rio,” promised Whitney. “We should make it in a few days. I hope the jaguar guns have come from Purdey’s. We should have some good hunting up the Amazon. Great sport, hunting.”

  “The best sport in the world,” agreed Rainsford.

  “For the hunter,” amended Whitney. “Not for the jaguar.”

  “Don’t talk rot, Whitney. You’re a big-game hunter, not a philosopher. Who cares how a jaguar feels?”

  “Perhaps the jaguar does.”

  “Bah! They’ve no understanding.”

  “Even so, I rather think they understand one thing—fear. The fear of pain and the fear of death.”

  “Nonsense,” laughed Rainsford. “This hot weather is making you soft, Whitney. Be a realist. The world is made up of two classes—the hunters and the huntees. Luckily you and I are hunters. Do you think we have passed that island yet?”

  “I can’t tell in the dark. I hope so.”

  “Why?”

  “The place has a reputation—a bad one.”

  “Cannibals?”

  “Hardly. Even cannibals wouldn’t live in such a God-forsaken place. But it’s gotten into sailor lore, somehow. Didn’t you notice that the crew’s nerves seemed a bit jumpy today?”

  “They were a bit strange, now you mention it. Even Captain Nielsen.”

  “Yes, even that tough-minded old Swede, who’d go up to the devil himself and ask him for a light. Those fishy blue eyes held a look I never saw there before. All I could get out of him was: ‘This place has an evil name among seafaring men, sir.’ Then he said, gravely: ‘Don’t you feel anything?’ Now you mustn’t laugh but I did feel a sort of chill, and there wasn’t a breeze. What I felt was a—a mental chill, a sort of dread.”

  “Pure imagination,” said Rainsford. “One superstitious sailor can taint a whole ship’s company with his fear.”

  “Maybe. Sometimes I think sailors have an extra sense which tells them when they are in danger…anyhow I’m glad we are getting out of this zone. Well, I’ll turn in now, Rainsford.”

  “I’m not sleepy. I’m going to smoke another pipe on the after deck.”

  There was no sound in the night as Rainsford sat there but the muffled throb of the yacht’s engine and the swish and ripple of the propeller.

  Rainsford, reclining in a steamer chair, puffed at his favourite briar. The sensuous drowsiness of the night was on him. “It’s so dark,” he thought, “that I could sleep without closing my eyes; the night would be my eyelids—”

  An abrupt sound startled him. Off to the right he heard it, and his ears, expert in such matters, could not be mistaken. Again he heard the sound, and again. Somewhere, off in the blackness, someone had fired a gun three times.

  Rainsford sprang up and moved quickly to the rail, mystified. He strained his eyes in the direction from which the reports had come, but it was like trying to see through a blanket. He leaped upon the rail and balanced himself there, to get greater elevation; his pipe, striking a rope, was knocked from his mouth. He lunged for it; a short, hoarse cry came from his lips as he realized he had reached too far and had lost his balance. The cry was pinched off short as the blood-warm waters of the Caribbean Sea closed over his head.

  He struggled to the surface and cried out, but the wash from the speeding yacht slapped him in the face and the salt water in his open mouth made him gag and strangle. Desperately he struck out after the receding lights of the yacht, but he stopped before he had swum fifty feet. A certain cool-headedness had come to him, for this was not the first time he had been in a tight place. There was a chance that his cries could be heard by someone aboard the yacht, but that chance was slender and grew more slender as the yacht raced on. He wrestled himself out of his clothes and shouted with all his power. The lights of the boat became faint and vanishing fireflies; then they were blotted out by the night.

  Rainsford remembered the shots. They had come from the right, and doggedly he swam in that direction, swimming slowly, conserving his strength. For a seemingly endless time he fought the sea. He began to count his strokes; he could do possibly a hundred more and then—

  He heard a sound. It came out of the darkness, a high, screaming sound, the cry of an animal in an extremity of anguish and terror. He did not know what animal made the sound. With fresh vitality he swam towards it. He heard it again; then it was cut short by another noise, crisp, staccato.

  “Pistol shot,” muttered Rainsford, swimming on.

  Ten minutes of determined effort brought to his ears the most welcome sound he had ever heard, the breaking of the sea on a rocky shore. He was almost on the rocks before he saw them; on a night less calm he would have been shattered against them. With his remaining strength he dragged himself from the swirling waters. Jagged crags appeared to jut into the opaqueness; he forced himself up hand over hand. Gasping, his hands raw, he reached a flat place at the top. Dense jungle came down to the edge of the cliffs, and careless of everything but his weariness Rainsford flung himself down and tumbled into the deepest sleep of his life.

  When he opened his eyes he knew from the position of the sun that it was late in the afternoon. Sleep had given him vigour; a sharp hunger was picking at him.

  “Where there are pistol shots there are men. Where there are men there is food,” he thought; but he saw no sign of a trail through the closely knit web of weeds and trees; it was easier to go along the shore. Not far from where he had landed, he stopped.

  Some wounded thing, by the evidence a large animal, had crashed about in the underwood. A small glittering object caught Rainsford’s eye and he picked it up. It was an empty cartridge.

  “A twenty-two,” he remarked. “That’s odd. It must have been a fairly large animal, too. The hunter had his nerve with him to tackle it with a light gun. It is clear the brute put up a fight. I suppose the first three shots I heard were when the hunter flushed his quarry and wounded it. The last shot was when he trailed it here and finished it.”

  He examined the ground closely and found what he had hoped to find—the print of hunting boots. They pointed along the cliff in t
he direction he had been going. Eagerly he hurried along, for night was beginning to settle down on the island.

  Darkness was blacking out sea and jungle before Rainsford sighted the lights. He came upon them as he turned a crook in the coast line, and his first thought was that he had come upon a village, as there were so many lights. But as he forged along he saw that all the lights were in one building—a château on a high bluff.

  “Mirage,” thought Rainsford. But the stone steps were real enough. He lifted the knocker and it creaked up stiffly as if it had never before been used.

  The door, opening, let out a river of glaring light. A tall man, solidly built and black-bearded to the waist, stood facing Rainsford with a revolver in his hand.

  “Don’t be alarmed,” said Rainsford, with a smile that he hoped was disarming. “I’m no robber. I fell off a yacht. My name is Sanger Rainsford of New York City.”

  The man gave no sign that he understood the words or had even heard them. The menacing revolver pointed as rigidly as if the giant were a statue.

  Another man was coming down the broad, marble steps, an erect slender man in evening clothes. He advanced and held out his hand.

  In a cultivated voice marked by a slight accent which gave it added precision and deliberateness, he said: “It is a great pleasure and honour to welcome Mr. Sanger Rainsford, the celebrated hunter, to my home.”