Ok….I know there is a lot of discussion on Zodiac and The Most Dangerous Game movie released by RKO. Has anyone ever brought up the remake of this movie, or seen it? It was called "A Game of Death" and was released in 1945 also by RKO. Not sure as to how close it was to the original, but could this one possibly be related more to the Zodiac than The Most Dangerous Game? Looking for download on it to see if I can watch a bit.
There’s another remake called Bloodlust from 1961. It starred Robert Reed from the Brady Bunch TV show. It was rereleased in driveins in 1968 or 1969.
The victims in this movie are young couples. And they look almost exactly like the Zodiac victims. Robert Reed and his leading lady look exactly like Bryan and Cecelia. There’s a couple that looks like Mike and Darlene. There’s a single guy who looks like Paul Stine. There’s a couple that looks like David and Betty Lou.
You can see it on MST3k on YouTube. Very weird.
You think Zodiac might have been someone involved in films somehow who went crazy and started to act out the plots?
A bit like that guy who was in the yellow book? The projectionist? (I thought they rejected him because of his handwriting.)
That’s an interesting new angle, though.
Mr Smithy:
What were the chances that any serial killer could go out and find couples who looked like the couples and individuals in the movie Bloodlust, murder them, then get away with it?
Don’t know about getting away with it…but finding people who looked like the characters in the movie wouldn’t have been all that difficult. I had a look at YouTube just now – and then I realized that I’d already seen Blodlust, years ago, it’s in a DVD collection of classic horror movies I have sitting on my shelf somewhere.
Anyway – these characters are pretty generic, very much types. And given that peoples’ appearance, clothing, hair style, etc. tended to vary within a pretty narrow range back in the 60s (so it seems to me, at least) I don’t think it’s surprising that Z’s victims resembled these characters superficially.
The latter is what you mean – right? Or do you see a more particular, striking, individual resemblance between the movie characters and the victims?
I’m not saying there’s nothing to see here, by the way. Far from it. There’s already a connection between Z and "The most Dangerous Game" – and he may very well have seen this remake. If he saw it in ’68 it could even have served as a more direct inspiration – but it’s hard to conclude from the movie itself, I think. It doesn’t appear to be anything particular in the remake which stands out in a Z sense.
I thought it was weird that Graysmith, himself enough of a movie nut and Dangerous Game nut to notice a "connection" between Zodiac and Dangerous Game, I thought it was weird HE didn’t notice the resemblance between the characters in Bloodlust and the Zodiac victims. The movie came out when he was in college in Oakland. It was rereleased in 68 or 69. If Zodiac really was a Dangerous Game nut (like Allen supposedly was) then Zodiac surely saw it. And Allen, for that matter.
Weird that Graysmith never saw it. Something else is weird. Graysmith claimed that all the books used to create the Zodiac cipher were stolen from the libraries of some military bases around Oakland. Graysmith himself was studying in Oakland at that time, and as the son of an Air Force officer, his military dependent ID afforded him access to the same libraries. That is, he could have pointed out that he himself may very well have studied elbow to elbow with the budding Zodiac.
But he never mentioned that.
Weird.
Anyway – these characters are pretty generic, very much types. And given that peoples’ appearance, clothing, hair style, etc. tended to vary within a pretty narrow range back in the 60s (so it seems to me, at least) I don’t think it’s surprising that Z’s victims resembled these characters superficially.
…what he said.
Since there’s a lot of horror/slasher pics around between (say) the late 50’s and 1969, it doesn’t surprise me, either, that there’s a film out there which has people in it – and those people are a bit like the "Zodiac" series. (Was the last one a cab driver? That would impress me.)
Graysmith wrote a lot of old hooey didn’t he? And missed out as many interesting things as he left in? I keep his book in the bathroom, now.
By the way – Graysmith’s favourite Zodiac movie is Dirty Harry – and he says "It is faithful to the facts in the Zodiac case and uses an exact copy of Zodiac’s printing in Scorpio’s letters to the Chronicle". Well, there you are then.
