Suspense (TV Series) The Hunted (1954) User Reviews

The most dangerous game.

[searchanddestroy-1 · 27 October 2011]

What a wonderful surprise for this episode. Ward Bond plays here a nature lover who lives in the woods and decides to fight against a youngster who hunts for living. The old guy - Bond - captures him and makes him a proposal. He allows him to escape and ...guess what.

Ward Bond "suggests" to the teen to feel what the poor beasts feel when they are hunted down by this same young man. This poor guy is sympathetic to the audience, and Ward Bond can not be seen as a bad guy either. A really good suspense story, with a good score, better than the other episodes, absolutely unbearable. Looks like a Alfred Hitchcock Presents episode. Unusual and surprising.

Directed by Robert Mulligan.

A total waste of time

[lor_ · 8 October 2023]

This one-note story (ruined by the usual annoying organ music) stars Ward Bond as a game preserve warden, who's dressed like he's ready to star on "Wagon Train" (a few years in the future).

It's a variation on the so often copied "The Most Dangerous Game", with Bond witnessing young John Kerr shooting a deer illegally within the confines of the state's Game Preserve. Kerr is a cheater, winning a bet about who can bag the most trophies, by venturing into the Preserve to find animals to hunt.

Bond blames Kerr and his wealthy, influential dad, for losing his job as warden, and challenges Kerr to escape while he hunts him down. There's little suspense here with such a creaky story line, and a lousy ending. Funniest element is the end credit reading: "Hunting gear by Bloomingdale's". Director Robert Mulligan went on to bigger and astronomically better things.