Prize of Peril (1983) UK Quad Poster

A French / Yugoslavian production from director Yves Boisset, which used Robert Sheckley's same titled 1958 short story, making it one of the earliest dystopian 'TV hunt to the death' sources, but with added TV airships and camera-carrying motorbikes dashing around Paris (or Belgrade standing in for Paris). Sheckley had already touched on the same subject (government-endorsed TV Hunt) in his earlier 1953 story Seventh Victim, which was filmed as The 10th Victim with Marcello Mastrioianni and Ursula Andress in 1965.

20th Century Fox were unsuccessfully sued on a copycat claim when 1987's The Running Man came out, written by Stephen King under his Richard Bachman pseudonym. Sheckley himself wrote out a list of all the similarities between the two versions and contacted King, who said he was surprised and didn't remember reading The Prize of Peril, even though he was a fan of Sheckley's work. He has never publicly commented on the myriad similarities. Another official version of Sheckley's original story is Das Millionenspeil (The Game of Millions) in 1970.

Aka: Le prix du danger

Condition: VERY FINE

Cast: Gérard Lanvin, Michel Piccoli, Marie-France Pisier, Andréa Ferréol - La Grande Bouffe (1973), The Tin Drum (1979), The Last Metro (1980)