The Seventh Victim

The last of the nine horror films Val Lewton made for RKO that I'll be writing about is The Seventh Victim, made in 1943, and directed by Mark Robson. It's more noir than horror, and as with the other Lewton pictures, there is less out-and-out frights than there is a fascination with death. Lewton's comment about this film's message was "death is good."

The film stars Kim Hunter, in her film debut, as a young woman in a private school. Her older sister has paid her tuition, but the headmistress tells her they haven't heard from her sister. Hunter decides to go to New York to find her, and ends up in a creepy mystery, meeting some nice people but also an assortment of weirdos, especially her sister's former partner in a beauty salon. She eventually meets her sister's boyfriend, played by Hugh Beaumont (who would go on to be Ward Cleaver in Leave it to Beaver--ironically his name in this film is Gregory Ward).

Together with Beaumont, a moony poet (Erford Gage) and an enigmatic psychiatrist (Tom Conway, in another effectively disturbing performance for Lewton), the hunt is on for the sister. Conway knows where she is, but plays it coy. Eventually she turns up, looking like Morticia Addams. (She was played by Jean Brooks, who had quite a disturbing life story, if you care to look it up). Brooks is the kind of woman who rents a separate room and keeps a noose hanging in it, to comfort her knowing she has a place to go to die.

I won't say too much more about the plot, because as the first half unwinds one really has no idea where it's going. The solution isn't quite as entertaining as the mystery, but the film ends on a very existential note, as Brooks goes to that room with the noose, while a dying woman in the next room goes out on the town for one last fling.

The Seventh Victim is full of light and shadow that help classify it as noir, and is also, for a B-film, a remarkably sophisticated commentary on life and death.