Prix du Danger, Le
Entry updated 17 October 2022. Tagged: Film.
French/Yugoslav Film (1983; vt The Prize of Peril). Swanie/TFI/UGC-Top 1/Avala. Directed by Yves Boisset. Written by Boisset, Jan Curtelin, based on "The Prize of Peril" (May 1958 F&SF) by Robert Sheckley. Cast includes Gérard Lanvin, Michel Piccoli and Marie-France Pisier. 98 minutes, cut to 88 minutes in English-dubbed version. Colour.
In this French/Yugoslav coproduction, a man volunteers for the television game show "The Prize of Peril", in which anyone who can escape being murdered in the streets by trained killers (the whole event being televised) can win large cash prizes. To a large extent the game is rigged. The resourceful victim makes it back to the studio and exposes the sham before being carried off in a straitjacket. A fairly routine action movie masquerades as a morally outraged assault on media corruption. A later film, The Running Man (1987), bears an astonishing resemblance. [PN]
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