“The Most Dangerous Game” by Richard Carroll is one of those short stories that for at least a couple of generations in high school English. The premise, in case you’re not familiar with it, is that a big game hunter named Rainsford falls off of a yacht and washes up on the private island of General Zaroff, who takes him in and invites him to play a “game” the following day. Said game is one where Zaroff hunts Rainsford (“the most dangerous game” of the title is “man”). The story’s been directly adapted a few times and has also been the inspiration for a number of other movies. In 1994, that film was Surviving the Game.

A low-budget flick that had a “here today, gone tomorrow” theatrical release, Surviving the Game is one of those movies that you’d wind up renting from the video store on a night where not much else was available or because you’d rented just about every other available action film. Starring Ice-T, it is a twist on “The Most Dangerous Game” that pits a group of “outdoorsmen” millionaires against his character of a homeless man named Mason.

At the very beginning of the film, we see the previous target get hunted, so we know that when Cole (Charles S. Dutton) offers Mason a possible job opportunity, we are quiet aware what he’s getting into. Prior to when Burns (Rutger Hauer) flies him out to the woods where the hunt will take place, we know that Mason is not only a down-on-his-luck homeless man but a man who has absolutely nothing. His wife and kid were killed in the fire that took his home, his dog was just hit by a car, and his World War II-vet friend Hank (Jeff Corey) has just passed. Said circumstances also explain why he would get suckered by Cole and Burns’ offer of a job as a “hunting guide” for a group of rich men.

And the first night of the trip, there’s nothing to suggest to Mason that they’re going to hunt him. He meets the other men: Hawkins (Gary Busey), Griffin (John C. McGinley), and Derek Wolfe Sr and Jr (F Murray Abraham and William McNamara). All of these men are very rich, having paid Burns $50,000 for the opportunity to hunt Mason; all of these men are also the type of “outdoor survivalists” whom are obviously overcompensating. And there’s a lot of posturing at dinner the night before, especially from Hawkins, because he’s played by Gary Busey and what is a Gary Busey movie without a psychotic-sounding monologue?

Anyway, the hunt begins the next morning and over the course of the next hour, we have the men chasing Mason through the woods and him not only defending himself but finding a way to take them down one by one. It’s not exactly a spoiler for you to know that Mason wins the game; it’s the “getting there” that makes this worthwhile as a film.

Like I said, this was a rental back in the day and that’s how I came across it, even though I remember seeing the commercials for it on television. Back then, I remember thinking that it was an underrated film and would recommend it to anyone who was looking for a new movie to watch. After re-watching it for the first time in 29 years, I can say that it’s still an underrated film even though it has way more flaws than I remember seeing it when I was 17.

Ice-T has had a pretty solid career on television over the last few decades and even here you can see that he can hold his own in a film. He’s definitely going for a performance like Stallone in First Blood, another work from which this movie is taking its cues. Unlike Stallone’s John Rambo, Mason doesn’t have the military training or ingenuity; instead, he’s a very flawed and rather desperate man who makes a number of mistakes during “the game.” Each of the antagonists chew quite a bit of the scenery and there are moments where the screenplay could have used a bit of silence instead of one more line from Hauer or Busey.

But overall, Surviving the Game is a solid action movie that is a good tense 90 minutes. I don’t know if it ever pops up on deep cable or on a streaming service, but when it does, it’s worth checking out.

Watch or Skip?

Watch.