Mary Gibson (Kim Hunter) leaves her boarding school to search for her sister Jacqueline (Jean Brooks), who had been paying her bills and has mysteriously vanished. Mary’s quest leads her to private investigator Irving August (Lou Lubin), who is murdered in a shadowed doorway, and also to helpful failed poet Jason (Erford Gage) and paternalistic Gregory Ward (Hugh Beaumont), the second of whom was secretly married to Jacqueline. Jason and Ward then bring Mary to suave and unscrupulous psychologist, Louis Judd (Tom Conway), who seems to be keeping Jacqueline hidden, perhaps to protect her, perhaps because he is having an affair with her, but most likely both. Behind all of the sinister activities, and adjacent to Mary’s new acquaintances, are the Palladists, an organization of Satanists.
Any discussion of The Seventh Victim must be a discussion of Val Lewton. It is the 4th of 9 horror and horror-related low budget films he produced at RKO in the 1940s, saving the studio when the excesses of Orson Welles almost sunk it. These were producer-driven movies. Given only a title, a run-time limit, and a painfully low budget, Lewton was free to do as he liked, and what he liked were psychological stories hung on a fairy-tale frame. From film to film, he’d reuse ideas, scenes, characters (sort of), actors, and crew. These were all Val Lewton films first and foremost. His directors were the superb though practical Jacques Tourneur, the novice Robert Wise, and the more mundane Mark Robson. Robson, also a neophyte director having been promoted from the editor of Lewton’s previous two films, does his best imitation of Tourneur as he takes the big chair for The Seventh Victim. He’s not Tourneur, but close enough, and for a low budget picture, he’s a good get.
Unlike most 1940s horror producers, Lewton cared about his films. He wasn’t making throwaway films for the low end of a double feature matinee. His films had to mean something, and had to leave you with something to think about. Oh boy, does The Seventh Victim do that. There’s the journey from innocence to sad reality. There is the revelation that while the world may be very frightening, the great evils we imagine are more likely to be dim, weak, and prosaic. But above all, The Seventh Victim is about life and death: how to live, how to die, and when to do both. THE scene has Jaqueline encountering her neighbor (Elizabeth Russell) who is slowly dying, and after a brief discussion, both decide how their lives will end. It reminded me of a Ray Bradbury story in which he posits that all people, deep down, have one of two desires: either simple joy right now or to die.
The Seventh Victim is filled with the shadows that infuse all Lewton films, and even more, the tension and mystery. The world is simply wrong from the first moment to the last. Mary’s boarding school principal is sinister and Mary is warned never to return by the principal’s assistant, but this isn’t a plot point or a clue. It’s just an unsettling part of an unsettling world. The first person Mary encounters in the city is the old manager, now new owner, of Jacqueline’s business. She too appears sinister. Later we find that she is, but she could have appeared normal or friendly. But no. This is a dark fairy-tale and kind people and relaxing moments are few and far between. This is Noir turned even darker and the tone, individual scenes, and even the story influenced many movies, most obviously Psycho, Rosemary’s Baby, and Eyes Wide Shut.
But all is not well. Lewton films tend to suffer from the same problems, most of which I put down to the restraints he worked under, particularly budget. The acting is uneven. The best of his stock company, Conway and Russell are always good, and when he could pick up an actor who knew what to do, such as Boris Karloff who starred in three Lewton pictures, things worked beautifully. But if an actor had no such self-direction, or simply didn’t yet have the skill needed, Lewton and his director’s couldn’t shape what was needed. I blame the lack of time for rehearsals, coaching, and re-shoots, though perhaps I’m being kind. In The Seventh Victim we have two acting problems, Hugh Beaumont is acceptable. That’s it. Nothing more, and he needed to be more. He acts in exactly the same way he did as Ward Clever in Leave It To Beaver. The bigger problem is Kim Hunter. She would become a fine actress, but in this her first film role, she needed guidance and didn’t get it. She’s stiff and monotone. She doesn’t sell any of the emotions she’s supposed to be feeling. It does make me wonder if that’s the reason for the odd structure of the film. It should be all about Mary, but the big, frightful march through those shadowed backstreets is given to Jacqueline. I’ve no proof, but it is clear that Jean Brooks could handle it, while Hunter was not yet ready.
Then there are a few character irregularities. Jacqueline leaps from catatonic insanity to (near) mental clarity in no time at all. Judd is terror-stricken at the thought of running into the Satanists, but later gives it no more thought than dropping by the library. And both Jason and Ward go through substantial life changes in seconds, and mostly off screen. A bit more time for yet another draft of the screenplay, and a longer runtime to fill in some missing pieces would have worked wonders. So much of The Seventh Victim is too quick. There needed to be more steps and more growth.
There’s also the matter of the cringey recitation of part of the Lord’s Prayer to the Satanists. I blame that one on trying to appease the censors.
So for me, The Seventh Victim is a failure, but it’s a failure that leaves me thinking about so much, one that my mind goes back to for days after viewing. Given greater resources, this could have been a masterpiece. As is, it is eclipsed by other Lewton films. But in the 1940s, when so many horror films were empty, I’ll take a failure that’s overflowing.