By-the-numbers mystery with a nice twist

The Lady Confesses (1945)
Starring: Mary Beth Hughes, Hugh Beaumont, Edmund MacDonald, Emmett Vogan, and Claudia Drake
Director: Sam Newfield
Rating: Five of Ten Stars

When her wedding plans are derailed by murder, Vicki (Hughes) sets out to discover why nightclub owner Lucky Brandon (MacDonald) lied to cast doubt on her fiance's (Beaumont) otherwise unshakable alibi.

"The Lady Confesses" is a standard murder mystery that is elevated by a nice third-act twist. As is the case with many of these B-movies, the short running time leaves viewers wanting for a little more background on some of the characters. It would have been nice to know why the eventual murder victim disappeared for seven years, and it would have helped the story if we'd been given more information about Lucky's relationship to Vicki's fiance, Larry. However, I feel inclined to forgive the filmmakers, because there's not a wasted moment anywhere in the film where they might have squeezed such exposition in -- even the obligatory musical number at the night club is truncated when compared to what is typical in a movie like this.

The cast is interesting in this film, especially if you're a big fan of these kinds of movies. Mary Beth Hughes plays a role very different from the bad girl ones she's usually cast in. Hugh Beaumont also gets to play a role that's a little meatier than what we usually expect from him. He doesn't quite rise to the challenge, but nice lighting and some decent dialogue helps prop up his performance.

All in all, this is not a bad little movie.

'The Seventh Victim' has more emphasis on mood than story coherence

The Seventh Victim (1944)
Starring: Kim Hunter, Hugh Beaumont, Tom Conway, Jean Brooks, and Mary Newton
Director: Mark Robson
Rating: Six of Ten Stars

Mary (Hunter) leaves school to find her older sister (Brooks), who has gone mysteriously missing after selling the family business. After a detective she hires is murdered, Mary turns to the man her sister was having an affair with (Conway) and her sister's husband (Beaumont) for help, but when it becomes apparent that her sister had become involved with a secretive cult of devil-worshipers, will there be anyone she can trust?

There is no question that "The Seventh Victim" is a highly unusual and artfully made horror film. Every scene, and nearly every frame, is full of horror, dread, and a mysterious dream-like quality. Almost every scene holds within it either a double-meaning, hidden meaning, or foreshadowing or illumination of a plot development that is so subtle that viewers may not catch it until they watch the film a second time. Like a dream, the film unfolds like a jumble of barely connected scenes and events, events that on the surface seem simple or perhaps a bit nonsensical, but each has a deeper meaning that ties them to one another and the overall theme of the movie.

And the theme of the film can best be described as "no one gets out alive." Although a simple mystery tale on the surface, the deeper thrust of the film is to present life as a journey that takes us from innocence, to corruption, and ultimately death.

Of course, I may be imposing something on the film that isn't actually there, because, like the dreams it seems to emulate, many of its elements are only half formed. The relationship between Mary and her sister remains murky to the viewer, despite Mary's insistence they are close; there are two romantic plots that are even more murky; the Satanic cult at the film's heart is a bizarre and ill-defined contradiction in that they abhor violence yet are committed to spreading death in the world; and it's never quite clear whether the Tom Conway character is a hero, villain, or something in between. That said, the fact that the first place Mary visits after leaving the all-girl's convent school she had been living at is a shady restaurant called Dante's, and the recurring themes of darkness and death throughout the movie provide more than ample support for my interpretation.

Like all of the films Val Lewton produced for RKO, "The Seventh Victim" is a remarkable and unique film. Although not as groundbreaking as "Cat People" or as intense as "The Body Snatcher", it is still fascinating to watch, especially because its vagueness of meaning and plot, and the way its various scenes don't seem to quite connect to one another, should be weaknesses yet become the very things that keep viewers engaged as chills run down their spines. It may not be the sort of film to show at a free-wheeling Halloween party, but anyone who claims to be a fan of "intelligent horror" needs to experience this movie.

Is that the smallest continent on Earth?

Lost Continent (1951)
Starring: Cesar Romero, Chick Chandler, John Hoyt, Sid Melton, Whit Bissel and Hugh Beaumont
Director: Sam Newfield
Rating: Three of Ten Stars

When an experimental missile goes out of control and crashes on an uncharted island, Air Force Major Joe Nolan (Romero) leads an expedition to recover the guidance system and figure out what went wrong. But when the same mysterious rays that caused the missile to go of course also brings down the expedition's plane, Nolan and his team must travel through miles of wilderness, scale a mountain... and find themselves confronted with dinosaurs and other life that has died out millions of years ago elsewhere on the planet. But what is more deadly--the pre-historic creatures, or the man Nolan suspects of being an enemy agent (Hoyt) and of trying to pick off expedition members one by one.


"Lost Continent" is a film with very little to recommend it. It's got a slow-moving story that's made even more slow-moving by what seems like a never-ending sequence of the characters climbing a mountain; I used to think the driving scenes that are popular padding in crappy movies were boring, but scenes of guys pretending to be scaling a mountain on an obvious set are even worse.

Those climbing scenes are doubly-boring when the attempts at generating suspense come from extreme illogic in character behavior and actions. For example, one character is injured early in the expedition, but do the supposedly experienced leader Major Nolan leave him behind in the care of the buxom and friendly young native lass played by a cameo-ing Acquanetta near the end of her brief acting career? Nope, they drag him along on a difficult climb for no reason whatsoever other than to have his injury give rise to him slipping and falling... and ultimately to give grounds to suspect the Russian defector as a double-agent trying to sabotage the mission. It's what "The Eiger Sanction" (review here) might have been like if it had been made by morons.

Then there's the stop-motion animation that gives life to the dinosaurs that menace our heroes. Even allowing for the facts that this is a movie from 1951 and that it was more stock footage like the exterior scenes of the air force base the missile was launched from. However, after taking a quick look at the silent movie version of "The Lose World," where I assumed the dinosaurs had been picked up from, I concluded that the animation was original... just so bad that it made one think it had to state from the early decades of filmmaking. Further, these dinosaurs don't appear until about 3/4th of the way into the film, despite the fact they were a main selling point of the picture.

At every turn, this is a movie that lets the viewer down. Heck, even the promo still I used to illustrate this article has nothing to do with anything that happens in the movie. Acquanetta is never menaced by any flying creatures, as she never sets foot outside the village set.

The Rating of Three I'm giving this film is so low that it borders on a Two. I'm only being as generous as I am, because the actors are actually pretty decent given what they're working with. Plus, Cesar Romero is particularly good as the American officer who knows to be suspicious of a possible enemy agent, but who is intelligent enough not to jump to judgement until he is 100 percent certain that he is right. I always appreciate a movie that features portrayals of military officers as I have known them, not the frothing-at-the-mouth paranoid psychopaths that are so often presented in Hollywood flicks. (Of course, another reason for the portrayal of Major Nolan may be a statement on the part of the filmmakers about the Red Scare that was running through American pop culture and politics at the time this movie was made. While there were reasons to be wary, there were more reasons to be certain before accusing, could be what the movie was trying to say.)

Those few good elements can't make up for the fact that this is a movie that at every turn delivers less than it should. Heck, even the name promises more than the movie delivers. Instead of a lost continent, it presents a mountain valley on an uncharted island.