The Seventh Victim (1943)
As the only major classic Hollywood studio that no longer exists, RKO staked its reputation on two genres during the 1940s. After the end of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers’ respective associations with the studio, RKO was enriched by a string of horror films while becoming the spiritual home of film noir. Producer Val Lewton (it is often said that the early Hollywood executives and producers who built Hollywood were Jews and immigrants, and Lewton checks both boxes) and his unit specialized in wildly successful horror films armed with fewer resources than Universal – which had a bullpen of monsters (Frankenstein’s monster, Dracula, the Wolf Man, the Phantom of the Opera, etc.) to produce multiple films for. In less stable financial shape than its Hollywood rivals, RKO also doubled down on film noir – atmospheric crime dramas surrounding tales of moral ambiguity and lustful passions that were often modestly budgeted. It gave the studio a perception that it relied on B-pictures, but these B-pictures boasted robust profits and greater quality compared to those at other studios.
Directed by Mark Robson in his directorial debut and produced by Val Lewton, The Seventh Victim is decidedly one of those many RKO B-pictures. Yet The Seventh Victim is a fusion of RKO’s specialties. There is a murder, a mystery, an urban setting lit in the requisite high contrasts between light and dark, and Satanism. Because of cuts made in its post-production, the film – co-written by DeWitt Bodeen (1942′s Cat People and 1948′s I Remember Mama) and Charles O’Neal (his film debut, later credits including 1959′s The Alligator People and 1963′s Lassie’s Great Adventure) – leaves certain motivations and plot developments unexplained, which can make The Seventh Victim difficult to follow halfway through. It is, however, a stylish amalgam of RKO’s most acclaimed genres for the 1940s.
At a Catholic all-girls boarding school, Mary Gibson (Kim Hunter in her debut) has learned of her sister’s disappearance. Jacqueline Gibson (Jean Brooks) has not been heard of some time; she is Mary’s only surviving family member and the source of her tuition. Mary takes leave from school, travels to that hotbed of Satanic activity known as Greenwich Village in Manhattan, and learns the Jacqueline had rented a room above an Italian restaurant called Dante’s. Relenting to Mary’s pleas to ignore residential policy, the proprietors unlock the door to Mary’s apartment – where there is nothing except a vacant wooden chair and a noose above it. In the ensuing investigation, Mary will contact physician-psychiatrist Dr. Louis Judd (Tom Conway); private eye (Lou Lubin); Jacqueline’s former co-worker, Frances Fallon (Isabel Jewell); one-armed pianist Natalie Cortez (Evelyn Brent); poet Jason Hoag (Erford Gage); Jacqueline’s husband, Gregory (Hugh Beaumont); and a fellow named Brun (Ben Bard).
Previous Lewton horror films at RKO contained mysticism or faux science to jumpstart their stories. In The Seventh Victim, the cultists are without apocalyptic intentions, never committing violence except when necessary. There is no final chase sequence, fantastical battle, or depiction of gruesome rituals. The Satanic worship occurs largely off-screen, as the members of the cult live their lives as normally as they possibly could. The male members particularly seem to be chasing lost loves and passions – was this vulnerability preyed upon by cult recruiters? This is not a horror film intended to frighten viewers at a given scene, but to inject foreboding after plot revelations – trapping the audience just as much as the Gibson sisters. Maybe screenwriters Bodeen and O’Neal could not delve deeply into the practices of the cult, lest they run into trouble with the Hays Code (a series of guidelines to censor American films, enforced by the Motion Picture Association for America, and replaced with the modern-day MPAA ratings system in the U.S. in 1968). Thus, the emphasis remains on Mary’s search for Jacqueline – which resolves in a more straightforward fashion than one might expect. Bodeen and O’Neal also settle for a thinly-veiled allusion to Dante and Beatrice from Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy. But once the audience sees Jacqueline for the first time, her presence is felt through the rest of the film, as if watching her sister from corners light does not seem to reach.
Jean Brooks was contracted to RKO during the 1940s, playing largely bit roles and working as supporting characters in Universal serials. Her role as Jacqueline in The Seventh Victim is probably her most famous work today – with no small assist from her haircut and dark wardrobe. As Jacqueline, she plays the role like a half-willing hostage – serene, quiet, making deliberate gestures subtle enough to suggest ulterior motives yet just a hair short of conspicuousness as if not to anger something or someone. Brooks’ mysteriousness is not sexual like the many femme fatales of film noir; instead, it is more like a young person knowing that she has been led astray, but nevertheless playing games because the answer to the puzzle before her is currently unknown. As the embodiment of the film’s primary dilemma, Brooks is excellent here. Elsewhere, Tom Conway reprises his character from Cat People (1942) – there is debate whether Cat People and The Seventh Victim are set in the same reality, or if RKO could care less about continuity – and is serviceable in perhaps too robustly championing his character’s unorthodox ways.
Seemingly arbitrary asides – sudden character appearances, several minutes spent establishing the centrality of a location in Greenwich Village, grisly imagery or actions never recalled again or without rhyme or reason – contribute to a clunky film that makes the pre-climactic narrative extremely difficult to describe. Thankfully, The Seventh Victim is swift, clocking in at seventy-one minutes. Add another twenty or so minutes to the film without credible exposition, and that almost certainly results in an incomprehensible mess (then again, 1946′s The Big Sleep is almost two hours of incoherent plot that has been redeemed over the decades because of its exceptional flirtatious dialogue).
The Seventh Victim is a film where all the lurid details occur in the dark, or out of view of the protagonists. One of Val Lewton’s favored cinematographers, Nicholas Musuraca (1946′s The Spiral Staircase, 1947′s Out of the Past), inundates The Seventh Victim with alternately eerie and harsh lighting – suggesting that a Manichaeistic worldview is impossible in film noir, a genre where reasonings are bound to desire, impulse, and power.
In this fascinating experiment melding RKO’s film noir expertise and Val Lewton’s horror groundings, The Seventh Victim feels like a rough draft of a genre mash-up that did not spawn any successors, nor inspire filmmakers to combine the genres for themselves. The film should be sought for those who have seen ‘40s horror and plenty of film noir; for general audiences, this is not an ideal introduction to RKO’s wheelhouses or to any of the brilliant creative minds behind The Seventh Victim. Mark Robson and Val Lewton left an incomplete sentence, perhaps an ellipsis, on this venture of horror noir (noir horror?). One must wonder if – in an era where noir is no longer produced – someone might be willing to add their perspective, several decades after the most recent attempt.
^ Based on my personal imdb rating. My interpretation of that ratings system can be found here.
NOTE: This is the 666th write-up I have published on tumblr. Off to work on the next one because I can’t end on this number.
