The Seventh Victim.

Review #2431: The Seventh Victim.

Cast: 

Tom Conway (Doctor Louis Judd), Jean Brooks (Jacqueline Gibson), Isabel Jewell (Frances Fallon), Kim Hunter (Mary Gibson), Evelyn Brent (Natalie Cortez), Erford Gage (Jason Hoag), Ben Bard (Mr. Brun), Hugh Beaumont (Gregory Ward), Chef Milani (Mr. Jacob), and Marguerita Sylva (Mrs. Bella Romari) Directed by Mark Robson (#1797 - Home of the Brave and #1931 - Valley of the Dolls)

Review: 

"It had a rather sinister quality, of something intangible but horribly real; it had an atmosphere. I think the actors and the director had to believe very strongly in the possibilities of disaster: that something was there. We believed it ourselves. We talked ourselves into believing it. We had a kind of fidelity to that feeling. We had the characters speak throughout in a deliberately quiet, polite and subdued manner, engendering a very calculated undercurrent of possible disaster."

This was the fourth of nine movies produced by Val Lewton in what you might call his horror cycle, all for RKO. The movie was written by Charles O'Neal and DeWitt Bodeen. The movie was to be directed by Jacques Tourneur, but he had other plans that saw the promotion of Mark Robson to direct. The Montreal native had actually studied at UCLA and Pacific Coast University School of Law but found his first work in film with the prop department at 20th Century Fox. But he did not settle there, later going to RKO Pictures that saw him start training in film editing. It was here that Robson served as an assistant to Robert Wise on the editing of Citizen Kane (1941), among other things. He then became a main editor for RKO that saw him work on, well, the Lewton features you probably would guess with Cat People (it was Robson who accidentally came up with that one particular sequence involving a bus) and so on. Robson would direct a handful of movies for RKO (which included four for Lewton) before going to various studios for a career that ultimately spanned over three decades. You can probably guess that this movie had a few phases before becoming what you see today: for one, there was initially a pitch involving a murder plot in oil wells before Lewton's supervision saw it go to, well, a cult in the Village, with Bodeen claiming to have based it on a real thing he saw in New York (the movie title refers to Jacqueline, as she is the seventh person condemned for betrayal in the history of the cult-although the cult does not go around killing people, they goad them instead). This was the third of four Lewton-connected movies released in 1943 (with this being released in August), with the others being I Walked with a Zombie (April), The Leopard Man (May), and The Ghost Ship (December). The movie was a flop with audiences at the time, with one cinema worker joking that they must've been the eighth victim. Of course, time has treated it differently (according to Robson, he was asked about the movie by the Boulting brothers who used to bicycle around London a print of the film, which was thought to be "an advanced, weird form of film-making").

I really wished I liked the movie more. But if you are into movies that might tangentially remind you of the dread found in later movies involving cults in one's wake such as, well, Rosemary's Baby (1968), this may be up your alley. The movie was shot in the course of 24 days, but the editing process (as overseen by Robson and John Lockert) was probably more crucial to, well, how things play out. A handful of scenes were cut from the film that relate to certain events in the film and the ending itself was trimmed to basically just end right after one certain sound is heard. It is a slow web to untangle for 71 minutes that probably is akin to actual life in not exactly going the way you think it will unfold for some sort of eerie feeling. That or basically one is watching a noir more than a straight horror film, but I suppose your taste (or patience) may vary. People come and go in the movie, since Hunter (in her film debut) probably is in the movie more than Brooks, although each do pretty well with what the movie shades out in wayward people looking for the way back (okay one is looking to die, but at least she knows where everybody goes anyway). The movie only really seems to gel into fascination in its latter half for me, mostly because it actually stops introducing people and shows what I guess is something about cults that claim to be big on the Devil (notice how they aren't actually stopped at the end, you just see some folks recite the Lord's Prayer at them - good thing they weren't doing anything like killing goats or evading their taxes, oooh!). I guess what I want to say is that it only vaguely holds my fascination because it has that same problem that I ended up having with Rosemary's Baby: get to the damn point, although at least you could almost watch this movie (71 minutes) twice in the time it takes to finish Rosemary. I want to feel like there is more of a looming threat than just a bunch of folks playing house because heaven forbid they go to a church or a bar to find "worship". At least the ending does do one thing right: it simply just ends, because even a thud works for effect. As a whole, it follows along the line of the prior Lewton-connected movies in fine quality with eye-catching titles and interesting imagination with the eerie things that come to lurk in everyday life, whether that involves loneliness or cults or the unknown.

Overall, I give it 7 out of 10 stars.

The Curse of the Cat People.

Review #2094: The Curse of the Cat People.

Cast: 

Simone Simon (the ghost of Irena Dubrovna Reed), Kent Smith (Oliver Reed), Jane Randolph (Alice Reed), Ann Carter (Amy Reed), Eve March (Miss Callahan), Julia Dean (Julia Farren), Elizabeth Russell (Barbara Farren), Erford Gage (Police Captain), and Sir Lancelot (Edward) Directed by Robert Wise (#515 - Star Trek: The Motion Picture, #725 - The Day the Earth Stood Still, #921 - The Haunting, #1407 - West Side Story) and Gunther von Fritsch.

Review: 

I'm sure you remember Cat People (1942). That was the film directed by Jacques Tourneur with a script provided by DeWitt Bodeen, with Val Lewton having brought them both in to serve in their roles on the film as producer for RKO. The title may have been a bit more grabbing than the actual surroundings of the plot when it comes to "cat people", but it was worth a watch for those who favor patience in their horror films. Now here we are with a film that is strangely termed as "psychological supernatural thriller film" but let us just erase the doubt and say hey, it's a light horror film. Lewton imported certain aspects of his childhood into suggestion for the story of the film, as evidenced by his upbringing that saw him raised in Port Chester, New York after his family had moved from Russia. Gunther von Fritsch, an Austrian-born director (who had served in the US Army Signal Corps and did training films), was tasked to direct this one, his first (and perhaps only notable) feature film. However, he did not go to a satisfactory pace (i.e. only getting halfway through the script in filming) for what was meant to be a shoot of under three weeks. As such, Robert Wise, previously known as a sound and music editor at the studio after starting work there in the 1930s (which included Citizen Kane (1941), most famously), was brought in to direct the rest of the venture, which also serves as his feature film debut. Wise would direct for RKO until 1949, with two of his productions being under Lewton with Mademoiselle Fifi (1944) and The Body Snatcher (1945). Lewton wanted to call the film "Amy and Her Friend", but RKO (after screening the film) insisted on the cat title to cash in for suck-I mean, customers (a sequence of teenagers chasing a black cat up a tree was edited into the film on their request). 

Even more so than the previous film is one that is a film that is not great in any one field, but this is one that lacks any real particular great moment to really hold their hat for. It is a bait-and-switch in most senses of the world, because it doesn't have much to do with cats or curses, seemingly more interested in the world of seeing the horrors of a kid that may or may not be on the verge of going under the sanity train because of her lack of connection to others around her. Smith, Randolph, and Simon return from the previous film but don't exactly have as much to connect with, as the film really is Carter's to focus on, which goes fine. She handles the material presented to her with curiosity and dignity that you can see from someone meant to endear as a fellow explorer of strangers. Dean and Russell in theory would make for an interesting pair in family drama (a senile woman who may or may not be right about her daughter being who she says), but you only get glimpses. It barely even feels worth it to have Simon there, because she has very little to really do besides saying they are from "great darkness and deep peace". Bottom line, family drama, child with ghost, pick one to spend time further on. You might say the film has its own degree of ambiguity like the earlier film, but you are not seriously going to tell me that I actually am supposed to care to guess if the "ghost" is really present to our lead or not. The original tried the whole "maybe it's in her head, maybe it isn't", but I played along with it being real because the idea of watching a build of things you "see" or "hear" only to have a fake out sounds like the lamest idea imaginable when you are here for the idea of horror. With this film, I'm not playing the game of guessing and I'm not playing the game of trying to see if the film will do something more involving that the middle-ground stuff. It is merely fine, nothing more, one that will either seem moody or average, or...well, pallid. This is the kind of film where you have folks telling a brief rendition of "The Headless Horseman" to go with a climax that involves a kid being confronted with a grumpy woman...and a ghost appears right onto the woman, so the kid gives 'em a hug. I think the ending of the previous film, involving the revelation of one never lying to them, just works better in closing the whole thing rather than the mild warmth here. It is a film all about the fantasies that come with children with wandering imagination more present than what you fear, where a child that you are raising needs positive interaction and lessons from those around them rather than playing into fantasy. 70 minutes is mildly acceptable for those who have the curiosity for a mildly enjoyable film that may or may not stoke even further look into the world of Val Lewton and company.

Overall, I give it 7 out of 10 stars.

Next up: Body Snatchers, hell yeah.