'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.

'I Walked with a Zombie' is a masterpiece of the unexpected

I Walked with a Zombie (1943)
Starring: Frances Dee, Tom Conway, James Ellison, Edith Barrett, Christine Gordon and Darby Jones
Director: Jacques Tourneur
Rating: Nine of Ten Stars

A young Canadian nurse, Betsy (Dee), comes to the West Indies to care for the invalid wife the wife of a plantation manager (Conway). When she falls in love with her employer, Betsy determines to cure her charge, to give her beloved what she things he wants. even if she needs to use voodoo to do it.


"I Walked With a Zombie" is one of the great classics of the gothic horror genre. With spectacular visuals, characters with murky motivations and natures, dark secrets aplenty, and a pure-hearted young girl who just wants to make everything right and who naively believes she can do so, it's a picture that is far better than its cheesy title would lead you to believe. Like every film produced by Val Lewton at RKO, it's a film that breaks conventions and helped establish cinematic vocabulary that remains in use to this very day. (Lewton's films were among the first to use sound and imagary purely for the purposes of startling the viewer, such as interrupting a quiet scene with a sudden burst of sound.)

The film also succeeds because of the powerful performances by the actors involved and the expert direction by Jacques Tourneur. Too often in films of this vintage, I find myself irritated by the "insta-romance" that springs up between characters--"The Maltese Falcon" and "Notorious" are both excellent movies that are marred by such plot elements--but the pacing of "I Walked With Zombie" and the performances of by the actors are such that that the romance between Betsy and her employer seems natural and believable.

Even more moving than the story and the acting is the film's direction and cinematography. Not a second is wasted and not a scene isn't perfectly staged or shot perfectly framed. The zombie in the film is one of the most chilling to ever be featured on screen, and Betsy's trek through the sugarcane field to the voodoo ceremony is one of the finest examples of how to build dread and suspense.

Anyone who considers themselves a student of horror films MUST see this movie. This goes double if you fancy yourself a filmmaker (or some day want to be one). Don't apply the lable of "genius" to Dario Argento, George Romero and Mario Bava until you've seen how REAL geniuses made movies.


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'Whistle Stop' is done in by a weak script

Whistle Stop (1946)
Starring: George Raft, Ava Gardner, Victor McLaglan, Tom Conway, and Jorja Curtright
Director: Leonide Moguy
Rating: Five of Ten Stars

When Mary (Gardner) returns to her home town after two years away, she rekindles a rivalry between Kenny (Raft), a two-bit loser she's always loved, and Lew (Conway), the local hotel owner--and hood-- who has always been in love with her. This time, the rivalry leads to more than just a few thrown punches... this time, it leads to robbery and murder.


"Whistle Stop" feels more like a summary of a story than the actual story. We learn learn next to nothing about the characters other than their most obvious traits (Why does Mary really come back to town? What was she really doing for those two years in Chicago? Why does Lew go to such extreme measures to get even with Kenny... is he really just a bastard?), we learn very little about the deep relationships that exist between them (Why does Gitlo--a resentment-filled employee of Lew, who is played by Victor McLaglan--have such a soft spot for Mary? Has Mary and her family always been the landlords of Kenny's family and is that how they met?). Perhaps if we knew a little more about the characters in the film, the ending would have felt a little less strange.

This is one of those films that's technically well made and features decent performances by all the actors, but which is ultimately undone by a bad script. The end result is okay but unremarkable.

Hell hath no fury like an evil witch scorned

Bride of the Gorilla (1951)
Starring: Raymond Burr, Barbara Payton, Lon Chaney Jr, Tom Conway, and Carol Varga
Director: Curt Siodmak
Rating: Three of Ten Stars

Brutish plantation foreman Barney Chavez (Burr) rejects his Indian lover Larina (Varga) after starting an affair with his boss’s wife, Dina (Payton). After dispatching his boss in a staged accident, Barney gets both the wife and the plantation. Although Police Commissioner Taro (Chaney) suspects from the beginning that the accident was staged, he can’t get enough solid evidence to prove Chavez’s guilt. However, Chavez soon faces justice more severe than the law, as a twist in the plot proves that hell hath no fury like the mother of a woman scorned… particularly a mother who has access to deadly folk-magic.


“Bride of the Gorilla” occupies a space somewhere between an overblown melodrama and a horror film. Unfortunately, its story is a bit too thin and the characters way to stock to allow it to rise above the quality of the most feeble of “Tales from the Crypt”-type chillers. (The ending is also very remincent of those types of stories.)

Given the material they have to work with, the actors all do a respectable job, but the reason one would have for watching “Bride of the Gorilla” would be to admire the classic starlet beauty of Payton and Varga. There really isn’t anything else to recommend the film to modern audiences.