Tuesday, July 28, 2009

"The 10th Victim" (1965)


Originally released in 1965 and based on a story by Robert Sheckley, Elio Petri's The 10th Victim (just out on DVD from Blue Underground) is a mod ménage of La Dolce Vita, James Bond and The Most Dangerous Game. The film is set in the then-futuristic 21st century; we've lived to see some (but thankfully not all) of Petri's amorally corrupt worldview come to fruition. Marcello Mastroianni and Ursula Andress are players in the world's most popular game: a real-life manhunt in which two participants are randomly chosen by a computer, one to be a hunter, the other to be the hunted. After ten successful rounds, you win a million dollars and the elite status as a "decathlete." The world is their battlefield (except for churches, bars, barbershops and a couple of other off-limits locales) — and other than parking violations not being tolerated, there are no rules.

Read my full review of The 10th Victim here at The L Magazine.

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