Made simultaneously with King Kong, by many of the same artists and utilizing that film's jungle sets, The Most Dangerous Game was much admired by the Surrealists as a film graced with the mark of one of their idols, the Marquis de Sade. Richard Connell's oft-filmed story of the self-exiled Russian Count Zaroff, who tires of big game hunting and goes instead for human quarry on his private island, becomes in the hands of the King Kong team another adventure in uncontrolled libido. But here the poetry of cruelty replaces the "mad love" of a giant ape. "A tightly constructed, literate horror film...(The) English actor Leslie Banks lent considerable style and deliberate restraint...twist(ing) Zaroff's hedonism to its most nerveless refinement, making it the equivalent on film of de Sade's lucid monsters..." (Carlos Clarens, An Illustrated History of the Horror Film).