Hart to Hart: Hunted Harts (1983) – Review

Let us turn our eye toward a 1980s television mystery series that dealt with a husband-and-wife team who got mixed up in such things as smuggling, theft, corporate and international espionage, but more often than it, it was murder. Today we will be looking at their venture into the ever-so-popular genre premise of The Most Dangerous Game.

The plot of “Hunted Harts” has more in common with a Bond movie than it does your typical Hart to Hart episode as it gives us an over-the-top villain who is only one volcano lair away from being Blofeld. The story kicks off with millionaire businessman/big game hunter Winston Davenport (Ian Bannen) losing his bid to Hart Industries over purchasing a large company – he wanted to break up the company and sell off the parts for profit, while Johnathan Hart (Robert Wagner) intends to expand the company and create new jobs – and this so infuriates Davenport that he comes up with one of the most insanely stupid revenge plots ever produced by a villain.

Davenport, NRA member in good standing and certified loon.

And what exactly is his diabolical plan? Turns out that Davenport funds a in South American wildlife preserve run by Geoffrey (David McCallum) and Liza Atterton (Tippi Hedren), so he sends them a letter informing them that due to recent financial misfortunes he can no longer provide the cash to keep their animal sanctuary alive. But the letter goes on to suggest that they could turn to Hart Industries for aid as they are known for their altruistic donations and that Jennifer Hart (Stefanie Powers) has even written articles about the need for animal preservation. Of course, this is all to get Jonathan into the jungle so that he can go all “Most Dangerous Game” on his most hated adversary.

“I’ve never met a cliché I didn’t hunt.”

What follows is pretty paint-by-numbers script as we get the Harts arriving at the Riverbend Wildlife Game Ranch and becoming impressed and charmed by the Attertons and all their animals, only for things to take a turn for the worst when their excursion into the jungle is cut short when one of the staff shows up with a nasty spear lodged in his back and their jeep is found to be sabotaged. They then stumble across Davenport’s camp but he claims to be a man named Charles Teagarden and that he has mistakenly strayed onto their property. He quickly drugs the Attertons and calmly informs Jonathan that he will be hunting him in the morning, because that is what any self-respecting villain would do, and with nothing but a machete and a six-hour head start, Jonathan and Jennifer find themselves on the run and in a fight for their lives.

“We have one more season to go, so the odds are good we will survive.”

Stray Observations:

• Davenport’s whole plan revolves around the Harts coming to South America to check out this animal preserve so that he could hunt them, but what if they’d just written a check and not made the trip at all?
• Even if Jonathan Hart had never previously met Davenport face-to-face it’s hard to believe that he’d never at least seen a picture of him. Millionaires do tend to show up in newspapers and magazines from time to time and this is someone he’d been having “intense” business dealings with over several years.
• David McCallum is most known for playing Illya Kuryakin in The Man from U.N.C.L.E. but Stefanie Powers herself played April Dancer in The Girl from U.N.C.L.E.
• The Attertons free themselves but don’t pause for a second to use Davenport’s radio to notify the authorities, which is sitting on a table three feet away from them. Oblivious or dumb, you be the judge.
• This is not Tippi Hedren’s first time on screen with lions and tigers, she and her family made the disastrous film Roar which resulted in 70 cast and crew members being injured by a variety of big cats.
• Tippi Hedren not only plays an animal activist in this episode she’s also one in real life. Hedren has been rescuing exotic animals since 1972 and founded The Shambala Preserve in Acton, California.

You’d think she’d at least be more averse to Birds.

This episode was helmed by Gabrielle Beaumont, who was a groundbreaking woman in Hollywood and a prolific director of episodic prime-time television, unfortunately, this episode was anything but groundbreaking. To be fair, we can’t fault her entirely as she was certainly not helped by the staff writers, Hugh McKay, Donald Ross and Amelia Anderson who not only failed to add anything interesting to this well-used premise of “The Most Dangerous Game” but were also unable to utilize the great chemistry that had developed between Robert Wagner and Stefanie Powers over the previous three seasons. Both of the actors are charismatic and fun but in this episode they appear to be going through the motions and delivering lines as if reading them off cue cards. Worst of all is the fact that both David McCallum and Tippi Hedren, great actors in their own right, were given very little to do – when not asked to perform like complete morons – and they are completely underutilized here.

“Well, my dear, this stuff does pay the rent.”

Needless to say, this is not “Must Watch TV” and is only worth checking out if you have a passion for watching actors point to obvious stock footage – which we get a lot of here –and hammy acting from Ian Bannen who looked to be the only one having a good time. I will say that “Hunted Harts” isn’t the worst movie or television show to use “The Most Dangerous Game” as its premise – there is a lot of competition in that area – but it fails at both creating suspense and providing something interesting for our leads to do. This is one you can easily skip unless you are a true Hart to Hart completest.