The Seventh Victim is a 1943 American horror film noir directed by Mark Robson and starring Tom Conway, Jean Brooks, Isabel Jewell, Kim Hunter, and Hugh Beaumont. Written by DeWitt Bodeen and Charles O'Neal, and produced by Val Lewton for RKO Radio Pictures, the film focuses on a young woman who stumbles on an underground cult of devil worshippers in Greenwich Village, New York City, while searching for her missing sister. It marks Robson's directorial debut and was Hunter's first onscreen role.
O'Neal had written the script as a murder mystery, set in California, that followed a woman hunted by a serial killer. Bodeen revised the script, basing the story on a Satanic society meeting he attended in New York City and setting it as a prequel to Cat People (1942), with Conway reprising his role as Dr. Louis Judd. Filming took place over 24 days in May 1943 at RKO Studios in Los Angeles.
Released on August 21, 1943, the film failed to garner significant income at the box office and received mixed reviews from critics, who found its narrative incoherence a primary fault. It was later revealed that Robson and editor John Lockert had removed four substantial scenes from the final cut, including an extended conclusion. In spite of its mixed reception, the film became a cult film in England, noted by critics for its homoerotic undertones.
Plot[]
Mary Gibson, a young woman at Highcliffe Academy, an expensive boarding school, learns that her older sister and only relative, Jacqueline, has gone missing and has not paid Mary's tuition in months. Therefore, the school principal tells Mary that she'll have to leave the school, but could remain if she works as a teacher's aide. She decides to leave to find her sister, who owns La Sagesse, a cosmetics company in New York City.
Upon arriving in New York, Mary finds that Jacqueline sold her cosmetics business eight months earlier to her assistant, Esther Redi. Jacqueline's close friend and La Sagesse employee, Frances Fallon, claims to have seen Jacqueline the week before, at Dante, an Italian restaurant in Greenwich Village. Mary locates the restaurant, and discovers that Jacqueline has rented a room above the store, without having moved in. Mary convinces the owners to let her see the room, which she finds empty aside from a wooden chair and above it a noose hanging from the ceiling. This makes Mary more anxious and determined to find her sister. While at Dante, Mary meets Jason Hoag, a poet, who offers to help find her sister.
Mary's investigation leads her to several individuals who knew Jacqueline, including her secret husband, attorney Gregory Ward, and a psychiatrist, Dr. Louis Judd. Mary learns Jacqueline had been a patient of Judd's, seeking treatment for depression stemming from her membership in a Satanic cult called the Palladists, and her subsequent efforts to leave the group. Jacqueline was lured into joining the cult by her former co-workers at La Sagesse, particularly Esther Redi.
Mary enlists a private detective, Irving August, to help locate Jacqueline. When Mary accompanies him to La Sagesse after hours, Irving is stabbed to death by an unseen assailant. Mary flees into the subway, where she witnesses two formally-dressed men enter her car, carrying Irving's corpse between them. She attempts to alert police, but the men vanish with Irving's body before they arrive.
Judd approaches Mary and offers to bring her to visit Jacqueline at his residence where she's been in hiding. There, Mary is briefly met by Jacqueline, who gestures her to be quiet before again vanishing. Determined to remain in New York, Mary takes a job at a kindergarten. Some time later, Esther breaks into Mary's apartment and confronts her in the shower, claiming that Jacqueline murdered Irving and urges Mary to return to Highcliffe. Mary tells Gregory and Jason what Esther told her and they resolve to locate Jacqueline and have her surrender herself to police for Irving's murder. They unite with Judd, who takes them to meet Jacqueline.
Jacqueline recounts how she came to join the Palladists, as well as how she inadvertently killed Irving, believing him to be an assassin sent by the cult to kill her. (The Palladists have a rule that any member who betrays the cult must die, and they believe Jacqueline betrayed them by talking about the cult to Judd, an outsider.)
The cult members congregate to decide Jacqueline's fate. She would be the seventh person condemned for betrayal since the founding of the cult. However, the cult doesn't believe in directly committing acts of violence, feeling it's only permissible as a last resort. Instead, they goad perceived offenders into committing suicide. Frances, because of her profound attachment to Jacqueline, begs the cult members to spare her but to no avail.
The cultists kidnap Jacqueline and, over several hours, try to browbeat her into killing herself as she has long been suicidal anyway. They offer her a cup of poison. When she refuses to drink it, they let her leave, but send an assassin to follow her. The assassin chases her through the streets with a switchblade, but she eludes him and returns to her rented room above Dante's. Simultaneously, Jason and Judd confront the Palladists, condemning them for their dedication to evil, and recite lines from the Lord's Prayer in response to Mr. Brun's (a high-ranking member of the cult) nihilistic philosophical explanation for their doctrine.
In the rooming house hallway, Jacqueline briefly encounters her neighbor, Mimi, a young woman who is terminally ill. Mimi confesses to Jacqueline that she is afraid to die, and plans to have one last night out on the town. Jacqueline enters her own apartment and apparently hangs herself—the thud of the chair falling over is heard, but Mimi does not realize the significance of the sound as she leaves for the evening.
Cast[]
- Tom Conway as Doctor Louis Judd
- Jean Brooks as Jacqueline Gibson
- Kim Hunter as Mary Gibson
- Isabel Jewell as Frances Fallon
- Evelyn Brent as Natalie Cortez
- Erford Gage as Jason Hoag
- Ben Bard as Mr. Brun
Production[]
Development[]
The script for The Seventh Victim went through several incarnations in the pre-production process. One version focused on an orphan caught in a murder plot amid California's Signal Hill oil wells; in this narrative, the heroine needed to solve the orphan's identity, saving him from becoming the seventh victim of the unknown killer. This version of the script was re-written entirely by DeWitt Bodeen under the supervision of producer Val Lewton. The new plot followed a young woman who uncovers a cult of Satanists in Greenwich Village. Bodeen purportedly based his idea for the film on a real Satanic society he had encountered in New York. The script incorporated other elements of his experiences in New York: Jacqueline's cosmetics business, La Sagesse, was inspired by his previous work as a journalist reporting on cosmetic companies, and the Italian restaurant, Dante's, was based on Barbetta, a restaurant in Manhattan's Theater District.
Filming[]
Mark Robson, a Canadian editor who had worked as an assistant on Citizen Kane, was signed to direct the film, his directorial debut. It was shot over 24 days at RKO's Gower Street studio in Los Angeles, California, beginning on May 5, 1943, and concluding on May 29. The opening scene at the boarding school used the set featured in RKO's The Magnificent Ambersons, released the year before.
Release[]
The film premiered in the United States on August 21, 1943. Five days later, on August 26, according to the United States Copyright Office, it was registered for copyright by RKO Pictures. On September 17, 1943, the film opened theatrically at the Rialto Theatre in New York City. A total of $130,000 was spent on promotional material, including posters and lobby cards.
Though box office data for the film is unknown, according to film historian John McElwee, The Seventh Victim did not fare well with audiences upon its theatrical release, and was not a box office success. A cinema proprietor in South Carolina reported that theatergoers were disappointed: "We must have been the eighth victim; patrons walked out. Business poor. Some of the kids would not sit through it." A.C. Edwards, a theater employee in Scotia, California, said it was "without doubt the most unsatisfactory picture we have any recollection of." The failure to generate considerable income at the box office (on top of the financial failure of Lewton and Robson's follow-up picture, The Ghost Ship) would result in Lewton scrapping two planned projects, The Screaming Skull and The Amorous Ghost.
Critical response[]
Contemporaneous[]
Some critics praised elements of the film, such as Kate Cameron of the New York Daily News, who felt that it established a "sinister atmosphere" and had an "incredible" story; she did, however, criticize the performance of Brooks, whom she wrote "gives no hint of the scintillating personality Jacqueline is supposed to possess, nor does she adequately intimate the terror and fear under which she is supposed to labor." A critic from The Philadelphia Inquirer alternately praised Brooks's performance as well as those of the rest of the cast, and ultimately described the film as "eerie, anything but cheery... Director Mark Robson didn't miss many tricks calculated to send chills down the spine." Writing for the Big Spring Daily Herald, Jerry Cahill similarly felt that "the suspense of the picture is well carried out by the crack performances."
A critic of the Republican Herald also praised the film for being "packed with a suspenseful action that builds from its quiet beginning to a hair-raising conclusion." Grace Kingsley of the Los Angeles Times noted that "probably hardboiled mystery fans will be disappointed that none of the horrific rites are disclosed, but there are enough other chills and thrills to make up." A critic for the Waxahachie Daily Light praised the film for its "gripping climax," deeming it a "thrilling horror drama."
The film was likewise praised for the shadowy camera work by cinematographer Nicholas Musuraca, but criticized by some for having too many characters and a storyline that lacked cohesion; among these critics were Bosley Crowther of The New York Times, who felt that the film "might make more sense if it was run backward." Variety gave a negative review, noting: "A particularly poor script is the basis for the ills besetting this mystery melodrama. Even the occasional good performance can't offset this minor dealer."
Retrospective[]
Critic Jonathan Rosenbaum cited The Seventh Victim as one of his favorite horror films. Film historian Carlos Clarens also praised it, noting: "Rarely has a film succeeded so well in capturing the nocturnal menace of a large city, the terror underneath the everyday, the suggestion of hidden evil", and deemed it "hauntingly oppressive". In Guide for the Film Fanatic, Danny Peary called the film "a complete original".
TV Guide gave the film four out of five stars, noting: "While very little in the way of horrific action takes place in The Seventh Victim, the film has a haunting, lyrical, overwhelming sense of melancholy and despair to it—death is looked upon as a sweet release from the oppression of a cold, meaningless existence." They considered its conclusion "without a doubt the bleakest ending to any film ever made in Hollywood." Time Out London also praised the film, calling it Robson's "masterpiece, a brooding melodrama built around a group of Satanists ... the whole thing is held together by a remarkably effective mix of menace and metaphysics—half noir, half Gothic."
In a retrospective review of the film in The New York Times, critic Caryn James wrote: "Despite its creaky plot, The Seventh Victim is one of Lewton's best movies, a triumph of style over sense." She also noted a "terrifying scene that anticipates Psycho [in which] Mary is shocked by a visitor who breaks in while she showers." Other historians and critics, including Joel Siegel and Laurence Rickels, cited the scene as a potential precursor to the infamous shower murder in Psycho.
As of September 2021, the film had an approval rating of 94% on the review aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes, based on 16 reviews with an average score of 7.5/10.
Home media[]
The Seventh Victim was released on LaserDisc & VHS in 1986 by RKO Home Video, and again on VHS in 2002. It made its DVD debut on October 8, 2005, in a five-disc box set titled the Val Lewton Collection, comprising nine horror films released by RKO and produced by Lewton. Other films in the set include Cat People, I Walked with a Zombie, and The Ghost Ship. The Seventh Victim was also paired on a single-disc DVD alongside Shadows in the Dark, a documentary on Lewton's career.