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.

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.

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.

The Seventh Victim is directed by Mark Robson and written by DeWitt Bodeen and Charles O'Neal. It stars Tom Conway, Jean Brooks, Isabel Jewell and Kim Hunter. Music is scored by Roy Webb and cinematography by Nicholas Musuraca.

When she is told her older sister Jacqueline has vanished, Mary Gibson is forced to leave her private school and travel to New York City to hopefully find her. Obtaining help from her sister's husband, Gregory, and the suspicious help of psychiatrist, Dr. Louis Judd, Mary finds that the deeper she goes the more dangerous the situation becomes, it appears that Jacqueline has got herself involved with something very sinister indeed.

He calleth all his children by their name.

Coming as it does from producer Val Lewton, one shouldn't be surprised that The Seventh Victim is a hauntingly poetic creeper of a movie, no shocks or out and out horror here, just a genuine sense of dread and a pervading sense of doom. When delving a bit further into the making of the picture it becomes apparent that an original cut of the piece was considerably longer, this explains a lot to me as the film, as good as it is in its 71 minute form, is not fully formed and at times not the easiest to fully understand. It would seem that although originally intended as a longer mainstream picture, a difference of opinion between Lewton and the studio (thought to be about the hiring of first time director Mark Robson) meant it was cut to a B movie standard.

The Palladists.

What remains, though, isn't at all bad, in fact it's unique. Robson's direction (obviously guided by Lewton) is perfectly sedate and in keeping with the mood of the piece, and between them they have conjured up some most unforgettable scenes and imagery. One particular shower scene lingers long after the credits roll, the perfect use of a silhouette probably had a certain Alfred Hitchcock taking notes, whilst the ending is quite simply a piece of bleak and unforgettable cinema. Musuraca is the key ingredient, though, the ace cinematographer is all about the shadows, blending noir with Gothic to create atmospheric paranoia. Satanism in Greenwich Village, suicide, psychological discord and urban dread, all potent little threads dangled into the slow burn pot. But ultimately it's the mood of the picture that gets you, unease and the murky mystery ensuring you are hooked throughout. 7.5/10