"Count Zaroff remains obsessed with the hunt... "Kill, then love," he tells Rainsford. "When you have known that, you have known ecstasy." Once he has hunted down Bob, he will rape Eve. Rather than wait around to see who wins, Eve joins Bob, and as they flee and lose and finally survive, through every chase and twist, they of course fall in love. The irony is that the erotic horror verbalized by Zaroff, the primal male urge to obliterate an enemy and celebrate in bed, is implicitly, and by more civilized and formulaic means, achieved by Rainsford... a superbly paced, sexually charged, tightly constructed, no-holds-barred adventure film with moments of dark, Germanic horror that stick in the mind, a movie that moves." - Bruce Kawin, Criterion Collection Notes