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The Seventh Victim [VHS]

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Val Lewton (1904-1951) was brought to RKO when that studio decided to compete with Universal in the horror genre. As it happened, RKO was teetering on the verge of bankruptcy at the time--and Lewton was given the audience-tested title CAT PEOPLE and ordered to create an inexpensive movie to fit it. Without the budget to create "a monster movie," Lewton responded with a remarkably artful film that relied on suggestion and implication. He would go on to produce nine such films in all.

Released in 1943, THE SEVENTH VICTIM is not quite in the same league with such Lewton films as I WALKED WITH A ZOMBIE and THE LEOPARD MAN--but it is astonishing just the same. The story concerns young Mary Gibson (Kim Hunter, in her film debut) who leaves her boarding school to search for her older and strangely missing sister Jacqueline (Jean Brooks)--only to find herself unexpected ensnared by a satanic cult operating in New York's Greenwich Village.

Although the story line is a bit choppy, director Mark Robson guides it with a sure hand. Hunter, Brooks, and an exceptional supporting cast including Lewton favorites Tom Conway and Elizabeth Russell give the low-key but effective performances one associates with a Lewton film; the story offers a number of unexpected twists; and the cinematography is the light-and-shadow trademark of a Lewton production at its best.

But most disconcerting--and the film's greatest asset--is the cult itself, which consists of people you might have met on any 1943 sidewalk. They are entirely normal, and it would not be until Roman Polanski filmed ROSEMARY'S BABY that another film took a similar approach. The effect is at once disconcerting and remarkably chilling.

Unfortunately, THE SEVENTH VICTIM is not widely available at this date. The film is available in a hard-to-find VHS, but Lewton and 1940s horror fans would do well consider the five disk DVD set THE VAL LEWTON HORROR COLLECTION. In either case, the film is strongly recommended.

GFT, Amazon Reviewer

"I runne to death, and death meets me as fast, and all my pleasures are like yesterday" ("Holy Sonnet" VII Jonne Donne.)

Mary Gibson (Kim Hunter) is called to the office of here boarding school. There she is confronted with the fact that her sister is missing; the person who tells this is Mrs. Lowood (Ottola Nesmith) the person who runs the school. Now where have we heard the name Lowood before?

As you have already guessed Mary fearing something is afoot, is compelled to locate her sister Jacqueline (Jean Brooks). On her quest she meets various characters, all wanting to help her. We must guess whether they are good guys or have nefarious motives. One such character is Doctor Louis Judd (Tom Conway same name and similar character used in "Cat People").

Will Mary find her sister?
On the way will Mary find true love, at what cost?
Why the seventh victim, who were the other six?

Yes I know this is a Val Lewton production and if it is his best or worst, this film has his signature of being more psychological than supernatural. That is why this film is more than just a who-done-it.

The Val Lewton Horror Collection (Cat People / The Curse of the Cat People / I Walked with a Zombie / The Body Snatcher / Isle of the Dead / Bedlam / The Leopard Man / The Ghost Ship / The Seventh Victim / Shadows in the Dark)

Ranks with the best of Lewton's legendary horror cycle. Really creepy urban atmosphere that makes good use of cheapo sets to convey sense of loneliness and despair, as Kim Hunter searches city labyrinths for mysterious sister. The Missing Persons office has unnerving atmosphere of people being processed out of existence by paperwork. The sinister subway is particularly well handlled and makes you think it's really the dark forces that are in control. The street scenes with no cars and few people are hauntingly spooky, as if you're all alone and something's after you. Sure, it's not realistic in a documentary sense. But, it appears this is how people often experience city life, and in a way that only the inner eye sees. Then too, it's all done in oddly poetic style, unlike most horror flicks, then or now.

All the elements of a Lewton barebones production are present-- creative use of sound and spaces, light and shadow, and several "got-cha's", including an unusual element for Lewton-- a fine central performance. The baby-faced Kim Hunter is just right as the gritty ingenue. As good as this minor gem is there are a number of flaws. Erford Gage, looks the part, but sometimes trips over the stilted dialogue of a Greenwich Village poet. (Interestingly, he was one of the very few Hollywood players to die in WWII.) It's also too bad that Jacques Tourneur was not available to bring his fluid camera style to bear on the material. He was the perfect director for Lewton's lyrical notions, as the poetic I Walked with a Zombie testifies. However, most at fault, is the production code of the day. No doubt the killjoy code is responsible for the smarmy lecture that is meant to show the diabolists The True Way. It's about as subtle and convincing as a hammer blow to the head and could only have come from some bureaucratic Guardian of Official Truth. It's no accident, I believe, that the true feelings of the filmmakers follow this episode with one of the most disturbingly downbeat fadeouts of that era.

Nor, for that matter, is it surprising that Hitchcock was a particular fan of Lewton's. But whereas Hitchcock finds horror in the commonplace, Lewton finds the commonplace in horror. Two sides of the same coin, and judging from Hunter's inventive shower scene, a source of inspiration for Hitchcock as well.

THE SEVENTH VICTIM (RKO, 1943) I strongly believe stands amongst the greatest thrillers in cinematic history. It's bizarre premise - a cult of devil-worshippers secretly operating in New York - gives way to a brilliantly-orchestrated tale, so firmly rooted within the wartime paranoia of the period, yet the performances also assure the film of a certain timelessness.

Young schoolgirl Mary Gibson (fresh-faced Kim Hunter in her screen debut) travels into New York when her older sister Jacqueline (Jean Brooks), the glamorous owner of a cosmetics empire, disappears without reason or trace. Uncovering Jacqueline's secret husband, Mary's quest takes an even stranger turn, when she discovers that Jacqueline relinquished her cosmetics business to one of her co-workers (Evelyn Brent) and later rented a small apartment - which only contains a chair, sitting below a hangman's noose...

It's often said that there's safety in numbers, yet in THE SEVENTH VICTIM, terror comes not in being alone, but with being in the company of others. THE SEVENTH VICTIM surely set the template for some of the later thrillers of Alfred Hitchcock (you'll never watch that famous shower scene from "Psycho" in the same way - the similar scene here in SEVENTH VICTIM is even scarier). Director Mark Robson, best-remembered for his later films including "Peyton Place" and "Valley of the Dolls", allows the slow-burning plot to unfold with ease. The performances are solid; Jean Brooks fascinates as Jacqueline with her expressive, haunted face and distinctive geometric hairstyle. She's almost an Art Deco statue come to life. Kim Hunter is truly lovely in her first major film role.

This is a film that perfectly illustrates the entire philosophy of "less is more". True, the film was shot with a certain economy to start with, but this plays to the strengths of the entire package. THE SEVENTH VICTIM is a timeless film that will continue to attract it's steady trickle of admirers for years to come. Criterion should snap this up pronto. It's nothing less than a masterpiece.

The Seventh Victim (Mark Robson, 1943)

Relatively tame Robson/Lewton collaboration (their first; they'd also partner up for the superior Karloff vehicles Bedlam and Isle of the Dead a few years later) that smells more of noir than it does of horror. Mary Gibson (Oscar-winner Kim Hunter in her first big-screen role) goes to the big city(TM) to find her missing sister Jacqueline (Jean Brooks, the femme fatale in Lewton's The Leopard Man the year previous). Mary teams up with melancholic poet Jason Hoag (Erford Gage) and Gregory Ward (Hugh Beaumont), Jacqueline's boyfriend, to look for her; instead, they find a cult of devil-worshippers who may have something to do with her disappearance.

The problem is, these urbane devil-worshippers don't do much devil-worshipping; they could be any sort of cabal (industralists, government agents, rogue accountants), and the film relies on the whole devil thing for its horror elements. Which is why it works so much better as proto-noir. Whatever you call it, though, it's a satisfying, if minor, piece of work from the Lewton factory that's well worth killing an hour and change with. ***

I like old movies and this is a good one. It is not one of Tom Conway's best movies, but it is a good old mystery and still fun to watch. I wish it was a DVD.

Like the other nine films of psychological suspense Val Lewton produced for RKO in the 1940's this story creates horror without showing much gore or any supernatural creatures. In a little more than an hour THE SEVENTH VICTIM introduces us to several characters and a complex storyline. At the beginning of the story Mary, a young girl at a boarding school, is called to the headmistress's office and told her older sister who is apparently also her guardian has not paid her tuition for the last six months and can not be found. Mary makes her way to New York City to search for her sister, Jacqueline, and the first puzzling clues are Jacqueline has sold her successful beauty products business and rented a room above an Italian restaurant and furnished it very eerily. Many creepy events follow and several characters both benign and malignant are introduced as Mary searches for answers through the shadows of Greenwich Village. Mary and Jacqueline are eventually reunited but there is no happy ending and the closing scene is very abrupt and disturbing.

This Val Lewton-produced programer is noteworthy for just three things. First, an effective atmosphere of creepy mystery, accentuated by lots of night scenes, dark alleys and shadowy doorways. Second, some effective characterizations by actors who never escaped from B-movie purgatory. Third, and by far the most important, an excellent performance by Kim Hunter in her first movie role.

The Seventh Victim is the story of Mary Gibson (Kim Hunter), a young woman who leaves her school in search of her older sister, Jacqueline (Jean Brooks). Jackie had raised Mary, and now Jackie has disappeared in New York City. She had owned a hair salon but seems to have sold it to her partner, an older woman named Mrs. Redi. Mary talks to Mrs. Redi but gets no information. She tracks down a room Jackie rented above a small Italian restaurant and discovers a noose hanging there. A seedy private investigator says he'll help Mary. After they break into the deserted salon in the middle of the night, all the detective finds is a knife thrust into his stomach. Mary meets a lawyer who lies about his relationship with Jackie, then a psychiatrist who appears to be playing all sides of the problem; then a young poet who finds a new love of writing after meeting Mary.

But then Mary learns of a group of people in Greenwich Village who are...yes, devil worshipers. Can things get worse for Mary? Who among the people she's met genuinely want to help her and who might be members of the coven? Is Jackie a member of the coven...is she a murderer...does she love death? Can group hope cause a suicide? Does the quote we read at the beginning of the movie by John Donne -- "I runne to death, and death meets me as fast, and all my pleasures are like yesterday" -- apply to Mary or to Jackie?

The Seventh Victim works as an okay programer for the first three-quarters. That's when we've met Mary and join her as she tries to find her sister. The last 15 minutes, however, suddenly veers into Jackie's story. Since we don't really know Jackie all that well, it's hard to get interested in her. The wrap-up, when we're back to Mary, seems hurried. Still, the movie delivers uneasy suspense in three scenes. They all involve Mary and they all depend on Kim Hunter's reactions. There's the night-time entry into the hair salon, the lonely subway ride late at night when Mary discovers a corpse, and the shower scene with a shadowy second person looming behind the curtain.

Kim Hunter does an excellent job as Mary; she's well worth a four-star rating. She engages our sympathy as soon as we meet her. Mary's age is never mentioned, but we assume she is about 17 or 18. Hunter's Mary is shy but determined and, in a quiet way, self-assured. At one point Mary and Gregory Ward, a friend of Jackie's, are sitting at a counter in a diner. Gregory has a cup of coffee in front of him and Mary, a glass of milk. "Drink your milk," he tells her. She looks him in the eye. "I don't like to be ordered to do anything." "I'm sorry," he says, "I didn't intend to treat you like a child." Mary may be young and inexperienced, but she has steel in her backbone.

Hunter was an actor of intelligence and skill. She brought believability and sincerity to a role. She's remembered now, if at all, for just three movies: Powell and Pressburger's A Matter of Life and Death, A Streetcar Named Desire (she won best supporting actress) and Planet of the Apes. Her movie career was effectively shredded in 1950 when she was named as a possible Commie sympathizer and blacklisted. Her "crime?" Signing petitions in support of free speech. She went back to Broadway and maintained a solid presence on the stage and in television. "For a long while I wouldn't talk about it at all," she said much later about the blacklisting. "I do now because there's a whole new generation that doesn't remember. And the more one knows, the more one can see, and not allow history to repeat itself."

As for the other actors, keep an eye out for Tom Conway as Dr. Louis Judd. Conway, like his brother, George Sanders, could give off waves of lazy charm. Conway also seemed to be one of those actors who always gave a patina of possible sleaze to a character. In this movie, he kept me guessing for a long time as to what his motives were.