The Seventh Victim

This little known and scantily screened Val Lewton masterpiece is a must see. The eerie atmosphere established at the boarding school where Kim Hunter learns of her sister's disappearance continues throughout. Scenes including her nightmarish experience in a darkened cosmetic company hallway illustrate how far afield recent film has gotten from true suspense as sustained in the imagination of the viewer. The chilling normalcy of the lives of the Satanists she comes to be pursuing in an effort to understand what has happened to her sister, and their quiet menace as they later gather forces to will the suicide of one of their ranks is gripping. The scenes depicting her sister's frantic run through the streets to escape a pursuer will remind others of the opening of Lewton's other little shown film The Leopard Man. Viewing this film further reinforces my belief that an intelligent film patron does not need to be clubbed over the head by excessive gore and violence to be truly scared by a film if the story is intriguing and the execution is as good as in The Seventh Victim.

When Mary Gibson comes to New York to find her missing sister, Jacqueline, she is shocked to discover that she has a brother-in-law she knew nothing about as Jacqueline has gotten married. However she still can't locate her sister. However when she meets Dr Louis Judd, he gives her hope and provides some guidance to her efforts. When her private investigator is killed, Mary later sees his body being carried by two men on a train and suggests to her that something strange may be up; with the help of unemployed poet Jason Hoag she then starts to find connections between Jacqueline's disappearance and some form of strange cult.

I had no idea what this film was about but, having been seeing a lot of the Falcon movies recently, I decided to watch it due to Conway's involvement and was pleased to find that was much more than just that to make this film worth seeing. The plot is pretty dark and features a lot of hinted material that I would not have expected to have found in a film made during the 1940's – and is all the better for it. The "mystery" of the film is revealed early on and this is not the hook on which we are hung; instead the story unfolds with an intense atmosphere of foreboding that really offers nothing happy for the audience to leave with. The story is still good but, without this atmosphere and creepy touches, it isn't enough to work this well by itself. The material has plenty of creepy moments such as the shower confrontation, the creepy chase through alleyways, the subway confrontation and the ending itself; these are all very effective and are complimented by great direction from Robson and lighting/cinematography to match.

The cast could almost seem secondary to this side of the film but they do all still manage to be effective and add to the atmosphere. Hunter is convincing as Mary, innocent, naïve and in great danger, it never feels like a performance. Conway is good because I was never sure what side he was on or if his character was completely honest or not. Meanwhile Brooks works despite being a bit of an early Goth cliché; Gage is effective and the whole cast pretty much matches the atmosphere of the film and add value with their performances.

Overall this was a very nice surprise to me. It may be quite short but it is surprisingly effective in terms of having a creepy atmosphere; the story works well and the performances only help the film to produce a 1940's chiller that is surprisingly downbeat and effective throughout.

No surprise that Val Lewton was involved with The Seventh Victim, his fingerprints can be seen on every frame. Like Cat People and I Walked With A Zombie, the atmosphere oozes from the screen, although Tournier was not involved here. Young Kim Hunter tries to find her sister, only to find she has fallen into the clutches of a group of Satanists. Oddly, the Satanists are presented as a gentile bunch, no raving lunatics here, they all seem disturbingly sane. There are some magnificent images here. Hunter breaking into her sisters room to find nothing but a chair and a noose, a creepy shower scene that pre-dates Psycho and the extraordinary downbeat ending. A grim little chiller that remains unsettlingly plausible throughout.

As a longtime booster of The Cat People, I tended to give the credit to its director Jacques Tourneur (later to helm Out of the Past). Seeing The Seventh Victim, also from Val Lewton's B-movie unit at RKO, changed all that. It seems Lewton was the resident genius, cobbling together stylish horror/suspense films on shoestring budgets. The young Kim Hunter, away at a private school, learns that her tuition hasn't been paid because her sister, owner of a beauty empire, has disappeared. She leaves school and starts scouring New York's Greenwich Village (also the locale of much of The Cat People) only to uncover a cult of devil worshipers. Lewton's thrillers haven't dated the way James Whale's, for instance, have, possibly because they depend so heavily on suggestion; the literalness of today's "horror" films is completely alien to these suggestive, truly chilling films. The RKO B-movie unit under Lewton was also, probably, a major influence on the look of film noir, soon to become the cutting-edge aesthetic in American movies. This is as tense and satisfying a 75 minutes as you'll find until the Mann/Alton team's seminal noirs of a few years later.

Schoolgirl Kim Hunter (Mary) is called to the office of the Headmistress Ottola Nesmith and told that she can no longer stay on as a pupil as her sister Jean Brooks (Jacqueline) has stopped paying her fees. More than that, Brooks seems to have gone missing. So, Hunter goes off to find her. But Brooks isn't so easy to locate.

This film leaves you with scenes stuck in your mind, so it's good from that perspective. It is also well shot with an eerie atmosphere. Scenes that stand out include the sequence with Hunter and a detective exploring an office at night and the subsequent spooky train ride, a shower scene that will make you think of "Psycho" (1960) and pretty much every scene with Brooks. Fancy a drink? – no thanks but the pressure is on. And how about that ending? Wow, pretty bleak stuff. Especially coming after what had me cringing as we watched God and the Bible being used as a tool to counter Satan and his ways in an extremely simplistic way.

Amo, Amas, Amat, Amamus, Amatis, Amant – remember your Latin from school? The 'ablative absolute' and the 'ut' clause (use the subjunctive). Quamquam. This film also throws in some Latin and I'm glad to hear it. It takes the viewer back to a time sadly long gone as we hear schoolgirls reciting the verb 'Amo' – to love. The day will come when a generation will watch this film and not understand what language it is.

The cast are OK with Jean Brooks standing out. Her look suggests she is leader of the occult movement rather than a victim of it. And all of her scenes are quality – some genuinely scary, and all unworldly because of her appearance. That ending with the neighbour comes as a shock and leaves an eerie memory that will have you thinking about how we view life. It's an interesting film…and sad.