The Deadliest Sport – Man Hunting Man!

I’m a huge fan of horror and dystopian fiction, and all the tropes that come with it. A family moves into a haunted house they bought for a steal from a shady realtor, and the father figure becomes slowly possessed by the house’s evil spirits? We’ve seen it a million times, but it’s still fun. Or maybe the world has been ravaged by a human virus or by global warming, and now roving packs of madmen run the desert… You know. All those common themes in fiction we are familiar with, and that we can’t get enough of, and discuss with friends.

But there is one trope I don’t often see discussed or acknowledged for some odd reason:

MAN HUNTING MAN FOR SPORT!

You may not be familiar with Richard Connell’s 1924 story, “The Most Dangerous Game”, but chances are, you have watched movies or read books inspired by this influential piece of fiction.

In 1924, Richard Connell released “The Most Dangerous Game”, a story like no other (back then). In this story, a visitor to an island owned by an eccentric millionaire finds himself hunted for sport and must battle for his life, because…well…the millionaire is bored of hunting animals and wants to hunt humans. That’s the only reason.

I find this facet of the plot particularly disturbing—that humans could be hunted for no better reason than to entertain the rich and elite! *shivers* Dare I say, it’s too plausible not to grab my attention?

It didn’t take long for Richard Connell’s gruesome story to create a stir. Early critics called it “strikingly original”, and “a nail-biter”, and in 1932, it received a film adaptation.

You can watch it on YouTube here:

Nearly three decades after Connell’s ground-breaking classic, a similar plot emerged in the dystopian novella, The Sound of His Horn, released in 1952 under the pseudonym, Sarban. The author’s true name was John William Wall, but that wouldn’t be printed on copies of The Sound of His Horn until many years later. Perhaps the author wished to remain anonymous due to the dark themes of his book and how it pushed the boundaries of what had been written so far. After all, high-ranking British diplomats of the 1950s couldn’t be mixed up with trashy horror fiction involving enslaved humans hunted by Nazis for fun.

If you ask me, The Sound of His Horn is a cross between “The Most Dangerous Game” and The Island of Dr. Moreau. Humans aren’t just hunted like animals; they are turned into animals, reduced to captivity and servitude, dressed in feathers and fur, and…worse. I don’t want to spoil everything. You should read it! Soooo disturbing.

In 1982, Stephen King released the novel, The Running Man, under his pseudonym, Richard Bachman. Why? In a nutshell, King was producing material faster than his press could keep up with. The publisher could only release so many novels under the Stephen King brand name, so King donned a new pen name for some of his work.

Instead of trying to describe The Running Man in my own words, I’ll borrow the synopsis from StephenKing.com:

Ben Richards is desperate – he needs money to treat his daughter’s illness. His last chance is entering a game show called The Running Man where the objective is to elude police and specially trained trackers for a month. The reward is a cool billion dollars. The catch is that everyone else on the planet is watching and willing to turn him in for a reward.

This novel has been adapted to film twice.

The 1987 version was a lot of fun. It starred Arnold Schwarzenegger. I have fond memories of watching it as a child (as fond as memories can be of watching innocent people get murdered left and right). But this film adaptation differed vastly from the novel. Key elements were changed, and it is a whole different story in some ways. Still, it’s an over-the-top depiction of humans being hunted for sport that is quite effective in its own right.

The 2025 adaptation of The Running Man, directed by Edgar Wright, is much more faithful to the book than the 1987 film. I watched it on Amazon Prime.

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Heading into the 1990s…

If you ask me, the 90s was a great decade for American cinema. And in the man-hunting-man-for-sport genre, a couple of underrated gems dropped during the first half of the decade.

Like Hard Target, which came out in 1993 and starred Jean-Claude Van Damme.

In this movie, Van Damme plays a bodyguard, employed by a woman in pursuit of her missing father. The two uncover a sinister group of wealthy men who hunt the homeless for sport, paying them $10,000 if they can survive.

If you’re into cheesy action flicks, you’ll probably think this movie kicks ass. I mean… there’s definitely a lot of kicking…

The next year, in 1994, New Line Cinema released Surviving the Game. This film starred Ice-T and Rutger Hauer. In this movie, a man is hired as a hunting guide for a group of wealthy clients, who—lo and behold—reveal to him at gunpoint that he will be the hunted one.

Surviving the Game was a box office bomb. It didn’t gross enough money to even cover production costs, and it has a pretty rotten score over on Rotten Tomatoes, but…it deserves a watch if you’re into the whole man-hunt thing. (Isn’t that why you’re here????)

When the book Battle Royale was released in Japan in 1999, it brought an unsettling new twist to the game…by incorporating teenagers.

In this cutthroat novel written by Koushun Takami, a group of highschoolers is taken to a remote island against their will. They must battle each other to the death, with only one victor left standing in the end. This novel is often described as a precursor to The Hunger Games.

I watched the movie on Tubi, and it was an absolute blood-fest. Lots of action and playful gore. Although, what I found most disturbing was the numerous underlying love stories. The romantic subplots between the teenage characters in Battle Royale can be a bit distracting from the carnage!

Either way, the introduction of minors into this sub-genre was a horrific turn of events, for sure…

Speaking of kiddos killing each other! Next up is The Hunger Games.

I know everyone is familiar with The Hunger Games. The book has won over fifty awards, and the movie, over thirty. The books have sold more than one-hundred-million copies worldwide, and the film franchise has grossed over 3.3 billion.

But those impressive numbers aside, I think the reason this story sticks in the minds of the masses is the deeply disturbing idea—again—of our children hunting each other down and murdering each other, all just to entertain the rich. Man-hunting for sport is a concept that has been curling toes since 1924, but let’s face it, the victims being children in the prime of their lives adds an extra portion of tragedy to the plate.

In more recent years, the genre is still alive and strong with film releases such as Ready or Not (2019) and The Hunt (2020). These films both center on strong female leads, and I highly recommend them both. Ready or Not just got a sequel, too!

So, come on! Dive deep into this trope! It’s a good one. And an extremely unsettling one!

The idea of man hunting each other for cash prizes, for televised entertainment, or simply to stand victor of some murderous game, has integrated itself into pop culture so much that it’s everywhere, if you look around for it.

There are new releases coming out all the time in modern literature that are still influenced by Richard Connell’s “The Most Dangerous Game”, and by all the iconic stories that followed, such as The Hunger Games.

I recently read a dark fantasy novel called All of us Villains, co-written by Amanda Foody and C.L Herman, and I think this one falls under the same umbrella, only with a lot of magic thrown in.

So… there you have it! We humans are sick, complicated creatures who love to read, write, and watch about humans hunting humans for sport, though we would hate for it to happen in real life. There are plenty of books, films, and even songs and art pieces on this topic, and of course, not all of them are mentioned in this article. Maybe you can track down more, and then we can discuss them.

Happy hunting!

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Lindsey Beth Goddard is a tortured poet and dark fiction author, living in Missouri, whose short stories have been published in e-zines such as Gamut Magazine and Carnage House, as well as in anthologies such as Error Code and The Asylum of Terror (1 and 2). Her work has been performed on popular podcasts like Creepy Podcast and Chilling Tales for Dark Nights. She is the author of four short story collections, two poetry books, and a novel. For more information, visit: LindseyBethGoddard.com