Ancient Cult Files #9 -- The Seventh Victim (1943)

   During the 1940's, producer Val Lewton made a name for himself producing B-grade horror films for RKO Studios. He famously saved the company from going under with his 1942 breakthrough film, Cat People, which has in subsequent decades been hailed as a psychological/horror/noir masterpiece. The next year, he made an equally as suspenseful and shadowy film, but this one is possibly even more influential.
   The Seventh Victim was released in 1943 by RKO Studios, it starred Tom Conway, Jean Brooks, Isabel Jewell, Erford Gage, Huge Beaumont, and future Oscar winner Kim Hunter in her first film. It was fourth film in the myriad of Lewton's low-budget horror classics.
   The story begins with a doe-eyed student at Highcliff's School for Girls named Mary Gibson (Hunter). Mary's parents died when she was very young, and was raised by her elder sister, Jacqueline (Brooks), whom is a successful business woman with a cosmetics company. However, Jacqueline has not paid Mary's tuition in six months, and she has not written to her for even longer. Despite being given the option of living at the school as a tutor to pay off her debt, Mary heads to New York in search of her sister.   

   At the cosmetics factory, her sister's partner, Esther Redi, tells her that she hasn't seen her sister in months and that Jacqueline had sold the company to her. After Mary is shooed away by Redi, she is told by one of the employees, Frances Fallon (Jewell), that she saw her sister going into a restaurant a few weeks ago and tells her where it is. 

Mary and Mrs. Redi at the factory.

Once there, the owners of the restaurant tell Mary that Jacqueline and a man came to rent out a room above the restaurant and then left. Upon looking into the room, the only furnishings her sister ever placed in the room was a lone chair,and the only decorations being a noose hung from the ceiling.

   Fearing for her sister's life, Mary follows several connections to her sister which include Jacqueline's lawyer and secret husband, Gregory Ward (Beaumont), a failed poet Jason Hoag (Gage) who falls in love with Mary, and Dr. Louis Judd (Tom Conway), who was Jacqueline's psychiatrist for depression. Mary is shocked by her sister's bizarre obsession with suicide, and her drifting presence with so many strange people. Upon finding out that her sister basically gifted to company to Redi, Mary becomes suspicious that they may be holding her sister hostage. She breaks into the factory one night with the help of a private investigator who took an interest in the case while overhearing some of the details of Jacqueline's disappearance. A room that is never opened becomes their target, but both are frightened by the darkness of the factory at night. 

Mary, alone in the dark.

Eventually, the private investigator goes down the hallway to look into the room, but when he comes out, he has been stabbed through the chest. Mary runs away and gets on a subway to process what she has seen, and spies two men getting on the train, seemingly carrying a drunk friend home. She is horrified to realize that the man is actually the dead investigator. Mary tries to alert the watchman, but the three men disappear mysteriously.
About to give up on the search, Jason and Ward convince Mary to stay and keep trying. The three continue to do research on Redi and her associates, and discover that Jacqueline had been attending a private club in Greenwich Village, called the Palladists. After talking with Frances again at the factory, the three deduct, with Dr. Judd confirming, that they are a society of Satanists. Judd also reveals that he knows where Jacqueline is, heavily implying that they have been having an affair, and has been

Jacqueline and the Palladists.

hiding her because the Palladists have a strict code about keeping their society a secret, and anyone who breaks that must die. Jacqueline has disobeyed this code by talking about the Palladists activities in therapy, the 7th person to have ever broken this rule, hence is to be the 7th one to die, as in the title. He finally takes Mary to her sister, who is obviously mentally unstable, but is safe. However, the group of Satanists track her down and kidnap her, condemning her to death, via drinking poison to fulfill their oath to non-violence and to appeal to Jacqueline's obsession with suicide. The rest of the film concerns Mary trying to help her sister, Ward realizing that he's fallen in love with Mary, and Jacqueline deciding her own fate.
   The film has been hailed since its release critically for its shadowy cinematography and rather controversial themes of suicide and Satanic religion. Though both of these would become fairly common themes in horror, the 1940's had very strict sensors on what themes could be allowed. Lewton reportedly got around these because the studio asked him to make a horror film without a message of any kind. However, he later said that the film did have a message: "Death is good, and we shouldn't be afraid of it." The most stunning

part of this film is the camera work. Lewton knew how to cast

The Gibson sisters reunited at last.

shadows and make us feel the uncomfortable tension that Mary does throughout the film. The incorporation of sudden loud noises after periods of silence was a new technique that he mastered and became a standard in horror and thriller cinema throughout the next decade. Kim Hunter would go on to originate the character of Stella Kowalski in Tennessee Willaims' stage version of A Streetcar Named Desire and won an Academy Award for her portrayal of the character in the 1951 film. Tom Conway's character, Dr. Louis Judd, also appears in Lewton's first picture Cat People, which has caused many fans to hypothesize that the two story lines take place in the same universe and could be connected.
   Another, very forward theme in this film is

Frances pleading to Jacqueline.

the homosexual undertones between Jacqueline and several of the female cult members, most notably Frances. Frances is one of the only Palladists who seem to genuinely care for Jacqueline, and when the society is discussing how to go about having her die, one member points out Frances' obvious affection with the line: "I know this is difficult for you because you're in love with her." Later, when Jacqueline is being held hostage to drink the poison, Frances suddenly bursts out for her to hurry up and do it because she can't bear to watch her suffer under the torment of the other members. When she actually makes an attempt to drink it, France snatches it away and begins to sob hysterically, saying that she "can't let her die since the only happy time of her life was when they were together". Jacqueline seems to be very open sexually in general, apparently having affairs with Judd and Frances while being married to Ward, which he was fully aware of.

Redi threatening Mary in "The Seventh Victim"

Helena Markos in "Suspira"

   One factor of the film which has been overlooked by many is how much of the imagery and plot devices influenced other horror film directors. Three main films that I have picked out that were obviously inspired from The Seventh Victim are Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho, Roman Polanski's Rosemary's Baby, and Dario Argento's Suspiria. The motif of one sister looking for another is one of the driving plot points of Psycho, and it contains a scene in the shower (pictured below) which obviously inspired some of the shadow work in the infamous shower scene from the master of suspense. Rosemary's Baby also takes place in New York's Greenwich Village with a society of Satanists targeting a naive young girl. Suspiria perhaps borrows the most from this shadowy masterpiece, using the theme of occult activities and the setting of a girls boarding school. 

Janet Leigh's shower at the Bates Motel.

One of the scenes in The Seventh Victim that inspired both Suspiria and Psycho with a scene in which Redi is seen behind a shower curtain when she comes to try and discourage Mary from continuing on her search for her sister. Psycho uses this for its infamous kill scene while the giallo classic uses it for the climax of the film.

   All and all, this is an excellent film. It's very well-shot, well-paced, and an atmospheric trip through a world of danger and evil settled right in the middle of everyday America. This is one of Val Lewton's best and my personal second favorite of his films. 

Five stars, check it out.

"Your sister had the belief that life was not worth living unless one could end it" - Gregory Ward