The Most Dangerous Game has Judd Nelson as a hunter going into Alaska to hunt bear, along with Bruce Dern, his son (CT), and another guy. Their ship blows up.Dern dies, and the other three end up stranded on an island, only to be found by Casper Van Dien and his large, mute, servant. After some back and forth in his lair, we find out Van Dien is a hunter too--of people! He kills Nelson and the other guy, and sends CT out to survive, along with a brother and sister duo he'd been keeping there for a few weeks. The thing is though, CT is a WWII vet, and he's more than up to the challenge of taking Van Dien down!
Maybe one of the biggest surprises of the year, this film was fun! And not only were Ty and I in agreement on that, according to his review Chris at Bulletproof enjoyed it as well. Yes, it was low budget, and yes, we've seen this story however many times before, but sometimes a simple story on a small budget is all you need. Van Dien was fantastic as a German-accented scene-chewing baddie who reveled in his baddie role; and CT, despite being a novice at this, was very solid as the hero. Then we had Nelson as CT's dad, which was a stretch based on ages, but Nelson is always fun; Tom Berenger plays a guy who's been surviving on the island that CT and the sister encounter, and with him playing that part, how could you not love him? And finally, Bruce Dern is there to pad out the opening, which, to me is a very creative form of padding--the Emmett-Furla-Oasis crew could take notes on that one! Free on Tubi, 95 minutes, simple story with enough intrigue and tension, and fun performances, what more do you need?
We love Casper Van Dien at the DTVC, and Ty is a big fan too, which was why we did the podcast episode featuring two of his films. I think this one gets to the heart of why we're big fans, because he plays this baddie with such aplomb, but yet he keeps him so bad that we never have the Destro Effect, we always want to see CT beat him. This movie doesn't work without that, and I think with someone new to acting like CT, Van Dien's able to do that heavy lifting so CT can be more low-key and not have to stretch himself too much. This is only Van Dien's 9th film on the site, which seems like a really low number, so I need to get more of his films up--though I'm not sure if I'll do the other one we did for the pod episode, Red Prophesies, because he and everyone else is dubbed in that! He has a ton of stuff out for me to review, so we can get that tag count up, and this film is a reminder of why we need to do that, because Van Dien is one of the greats.
Like many in my age group, I grew up on The Real World, from Eric Nies in New York, to what I have as one of the best seasons of a TV show ever, season two in LA, to Puck making a mess of things in San Francisco. I dreamed of being on the show back then, but as I got older, there was a part of me that knew I wasn't cool enough, and part of me that couldn't imagine being filmed all day like that. CT on the other hand, who is about my age, decided to sign up and audition, and look at him now. He was part of a series of guys from Eastern Massachusetts--or "Massholes" as we Mainers called them when they came to our beaches in the summer and clogged up our roads with their bad driving--I say that, but I have many relatives in Eastern Mass, as my grandfather was from Somerville, and his siblings and cousins populated areas like Malden, Saugus, Danvers, and Methuen. But anyway, CT was one in that series of these near-Bostonians, starting with David in Seattle--who I believe CT is related to or grew up near--brash, "r" dropping, ready to kick yah fuckin' ass if you get smaht with them, but out of those CT was the Boston-iest, starting with his season in Paris, where he pretended that he sent the flowers one of the ladies received from her friends, or telling Ace that his hair was "on fi-yah" when he spiked it up with gel, or just punching trust-fund American exchange students on the street. He was made for The Real World/Road Rules Challenge, one of the few Real Worlders who could handle the hardened Road Rules kids, and quickly became one of the show's stars, making him as big as luminaries like Puck in the history of the show. But the question is, can he act? He's working on it for sure, but that presence that makes him so much fun on The Challenge works as a fantastic counter to Van Dien's over-the-top baddie. He has one other film on Tubi that Ty and I will have to do at some point, but I'm also excited to see his career grow. I need more CT DTV films in my life--he's on fi-yah!
Unlike CT who's new to acting, Judd Nelson has been around for a while. What I didn't realize is we hadn't reviewed one of his films since we did The Day the Earth Stopped in 2010, and this is only his third film on the site, the other one being Steel. I'm not sure how that happened, I figured I'd have stumbled into something else like this where he had a smaller supporting role, but apparently not. He is 21 years older than CT, so he could possibly be his father, but could you imagine him playing Bender at 25 with a four-year-old CT at home? And I think it's that and St. Elmo's Fire that makes me think he's younger, when he's older than James Spader, and guys like Vincent D'Onofrio and Tom Sizemore. Like Van Dien, he does a great job of supporting CT as a new actor, even affecting a slight Mass accent, which sounds like it shouldn't be a stretch since he's a New Englander too, but he grew up more like James Spader, not quite going to school with JFK, Jr., but close, so he wouldn't have naturally had an accent like CT does. I think the bigger stretch is the goatee, but like Van Dien, though in perhaps a more subtle way, he was digging into playing a type in this to make the film more fun, and, again, I think this works more because of it. Hopefully it's not another 13 years before the next time we see him here.
Finally, this was killed in the IMDb reviews, but part of me wonders if that's a good thing? A lot of times low budget flicks like this get as many people associated with the project or friends and family of them to give it 10s, so when I see a bunch of 10s I get suspicious. This didn't do that, the same way that an Albert Pyun would never do something like that, and perhaps maybe that's a good sign. Sure, maybe with low budget flicks when you see bad reviews they're accurate, but more often than not, people who kill something like this on IMDb are expecting it to be something bigger than it is, and don't grade it on a curve to account for budget and other limitations it might have going in; but at the same time, people who can't let those bad reviews sit and need to get their friends and family to inflate the numbers are hurting their credibility just as much. I get it, if you put in an earnest effort to make something you think is solid, warts and all, seeing someone shit all over it has to be frustrating. Hopefully though there are enough people out there that get what you were going for, and those opinions matter more than someone who just wants to kill you on a movie website--which it sounds like we have here.
And with that, let's wrap this up. You can get this on Tubi here in the States, and I think based on the number of other places that has it streaming for free, it's probably available outside the US. This is a fun DTV flick that will get you to the church on time.
And if you haven't yet, check out my new novel, Holtman Arms, at Amazon in paperback or Kindle!
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