SEVENTH VICTIM, THE (director: Mark Robson; screenwriters: De witt Bodeen/Charles O'Neal; cinematographer: Nick Musuraca; editor: John Lockert; cast: Kim Hunter (Mary Gibson), Tom Conway (Dr. Louis Judd), Hugh Beaumont (Gregory Ward), Isabel Jewell (Frances Fallon), Jean Brooks (Jacqueline Gibson), Evelyn Brent (Natalie Cortez), Elizabeth Russell (Mimi), Erfort Gage (Jason Hoag), Mary Newton (Mrs. Redi), Lou Lubin (Irving August), Marguerite Sylva (Bela Romari), Chef Joseph Milani (Mr. Romari); Runtime: 71; RKO release; 1943)
Reviewed by Dennis Schwartz
Russian emigré Val Lewton produced this pulp fiction cinema about a young girl searching for her missing sister who runs into a murder amidst a group of NYC Satanists. Lewton's fingerprints are all over the literary script that was made into an intelligent, well-crafted and bizarre thriller. It is noirish in attitude and Gothic in tone, enhanced by dark shadowy cinematography and Mark Robson's crisp direction, which brings about a mixture of ominous danger and a feel for the offbeat. It opens with a grim John Donne poem to set the stage for the upcoming action, "I run to death, and death meets me as fast, and all my pleasures are like yesterday...".
In an upstate boarding school, Mary Gibson (Kim Hunter) is told by the headmistress that she will have to leave school because her sister Jacqueline (Jean Brooks) hasn't paid her tuition for months and can't be located. Mary decides to go to NYC and see what's up with Jacqueline (Jean Brooks).
While searching for her missing sis, Mary is befriended by a couple who own a quaint Greenwich Village restaurant and learns that Jacqueline rented a room from the couple but hasn't been seen living in it. Checking the room they discover a chair and a hangman's noose suspended from the ceiling in an otherwise bare room. Mary gets further help from the following individuals in her plight: Jason Hoag (Gage), a failed poet, living in what goes for an impoverished poet's garret that has a beautiful skylight (a place like that in the current Village real estate market would go for a small fortune), who hasn't published in ten years after writing a critically acclaimed first book, but who feels inspired by Mary's innocence to help look for her sister. Irving August (Lou Lubin), an ambulance chasing private eye, who is curious about the case and decides to take it without his usual fee. He opens the wrong door trying to get info for Mary and is stabbed to death by someone unseen. Dr. Louis Judd (Tim Conway), a slick shrink treating and romancing Jacqeline (certainly not ethical), has her hidden away on the pretext that she's suicidal and deeply troubled, but helps Mary relocate with her sister. Gregory Ward (Beaumont), Jaqueline's wealthy lawyer husband, who is looking for his wife, even though the marriage is a failed one. And then, there is Mrs. Redi (Mary Newton), a manager in Jacqeline's cosmetic plant, who tells Mary that her sister sold her the business, but Mary learned from August' investigation that Jacqeline handed the business over to her without asking for a penny.
Mary is drawn into the strange world of Satanists when it is discovered Mrs. Redi is a member of that cult, and that her sister joined because she was bored and looking for kicks and was not really a believer in such things, but didn't realize the dangers involved. The group had six other cult members whom they considered as betrayers of their secret world commit suicide, and Jacqeline is to be the seventh victim, unless Mary and her friends can help.
It's easy to dismiss the film's flaws, such as cramming too much story into such a short time frame of 71 minutes, but it is better to concentrate on the artfully told B-film and all the personal touches found that make the film so clever. When viewed that way, this low-budget film is simply superb, equal to producer Val Lewton's "Cat People" (42). For its time period of the 1940s, it bravely touches on suicide as a necessary part of the plot and covers Satanic cults in a mature manner, by showing that ordinary types can join such a cult. The film hints at lesbianism and also reflects on characters with deep repressions who are trapped by their psychological problems. The film sold me as soon as I saw Satanism prospering in the trendy confines of bohemian Greenwich Village. "The Seventh Victim" caught in a poetic way the arty Village atmosphere of the time and the feelings of doom the characters all felt. There was also an eerie shower scene that predates Psycho's, showing the threatening figure of Mrs. Redi wearing a hat and the shadow she casts on Mary's shower curtain, which makes her look like a Satanic figure.
REVIEWED ON 1/22/2001 GRADE: B+
Dennis Schwartz: "Ozus' World Movie Reviews"
http://www.sover.net/~ozus
ozus@sover.net
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