TCM Movie: The Seventh Victim (1943)

Screenwriter Dewitt Bodeen believed he had a hit in his first draft of "The Seventh Victim." It was going to be about an orphaned girl from Los Angeles who discovers she's going to be killed by a serial killer. But while researching his next script for "The Curse of the Cat People," he got a call from his producer, Val Lewton. "When you come back you're going right on to a new story for the Seventh Victim because we discarded the one you originally wrote and I've already put Charles O'Neal on it and you'll be working with him." (Bansak, Edmund G. Fearing the Dark: The Val Lewton Career) But it was the next letter that seemed to be a more impossible request. "See if it's possible for you to get to a devil-worshipping society meeting."

"So I got to one through RKO because they had a marvelous office here in New York. I went to them and said, is there any chance of me going to a devil-worshippers' meeting and they started laughing, but they called back and said, yes, it had been arranged. But I would have to go under a pseudonym. The society would be glad to have me but I wouldn't be able to say anything -- just sit there and observe. [...] They were mostly old people and they were casting those spells while they knitted and crocheted. A bunch of tea-drinking old ladies and gentlemen sitting there muttering imprecations against Hitler. I made use of the evidence in that the devil worshippers in The Seventh Victim were very ordinary people who had one basic flaw, an Achilles heel which has turned them against good and towards evil."

"The Seventh Victim" really was shaping out in Val Lewton's favor even before the newer draft was written. His last creation "I Walked with a Zombie" (1943) had taken a percentage of the box office, which was a rarity for B pictures usually being rented at a flat rate, thanks to the success of his very first production in "Cat People" (1942).  After a meeting with Charles Koerner and other RKO executives, he was awarded a promotion to make "A" pictures and Bodeen and O'Neal wrote the script with "A" in mind. But giving Canadian assistant-editor Mark Robson his directorial debut really messed things up for Lewton, but he kept to his word giving the kid a break. RKO gave him the ultimatum between the "A" picture and Robson and Lewton was back doing "B" movies on a shoestring budget with supplied schlocky titles.

Shooting began May 5th, 1943 to May 29th in RKO Gower Street in Los Angeles and Lewton took as much advantage of the pre-established sets like he had done in his last three films. The remains of "The Magnificent Ambersons" was used at the beginning as the Highcliffe boarding school where Mary Gibson (Kim Hunter, whose stage name was created by Lewton himself) discovers her sister has gone missing and her tuition hasn't been paid in months. Mary leaves Highcliffe for New York City to find Jacqueline but finds her cosmetics business in the hands of her business partner and no one knows where she has gone. Mary meets Jacqueline's psychiatrist, a remarkably living Dr. Judd from "Cat People," and discovers that her sister was a part of a Satanic cult she had outed during one of their sessions. Somehow the Palladists found out and Jacqueline will become the seventh victim condemned to death since the founding of the cult for revealing their existence.

But "The Seventh Victim" was written with an A budget in mind and four vital scenes were deleted at the expense of keeping under the 75 minute mark as per the contract with RKO. Mary admits "it would be easier of Jacqueline were dead" to Gregory Ward when he visits her at the daycare center where she works. It is referenced at the beginning of a later scene where Mary's supervisor says to her "Aren't you the popular one? You've a visitor again." Two more scenes highlight Judd's investigation on the Palladists in visits to the amputee pianist Natalie Cortez. In the first scene they discuss philosophy and Cortez admits why she became a Palladist. "Life has betrayed us. We've found that there is no heaven on earth, so we must worship evil for evil's sake." In Judd and Cortez's second meeting, the psychiatrist tries to worm his way into the cult although unintentionally reveals that Jacqueline is staying with Mary at the rooming house which makes it easy for the Satanists to kidnap their seventh victim. When Judd and Hoag confront the Palladists, the scene went even longer in the reciting of the Lord's Prayer.

In the scene that follows Jacqueline's suicide and what is meant to be the ending, Mary, Gregory and Jason all gather at the Dante restaurant. Mary and Gregory leave together in their happy ending, but Jason still sits before the mural of Dante and Beatrice and talks to himself. "I am alive, yet every hope I have is dead. Death can be good. Death can be happy. If I could speak like Cyrano ... then perhaps, you might understand."

"The Seventh Victim" was released August 21st, 1943 and was copyrighted five days later. It opened on September 17 at the Rialto Theater in New York City. The promotions department of RKO barely did anything for the film except for offering a suggestion to theater owners. "On a table in your lobby, display a statue, a bust and a head of a woman. Whereever the skin shows on the statue, mold small spots out of chewing gum or candle grease to resemble goosebumps. Place a card nearby reading 'Even this marble developed goosebumps after seeing The Seventh Victim." (Bansak, Edmund G. Fearing the Dark: The Val Lewton Career)

A South Carolinian cinema proprietor was disappointed with the movie. "We must have been the eighth victim; patrons walked out. Business poor. Some of the kids would not sit through it." A theater employee in Scotia, California said it was "without the doubt the most unsatisfactory picture we have any recollection of." Bosley Crowther of the New York Times felt "The Seventh Victim" "might make more sense if it was run backward." Variety also did not feel much more for it. "A particularly poor script is the basis for the ills besetting this mystery melodrama. Even the occasional good performance can't offset this minor dualer." Thankfully, Kate Cameron of the New York Daily News was a little more forgiving. "The suspense created in the beginning of "The Seventh Victim" And the sinister atmosphere which envelops some of the characters in the story are the principal assets" but comes down on Jean Brooks's performance as Jacqueline as "giv[ing] no hint of the scintillating personality Jacqueline is supposed to possess, nor does she adequately intimate the terror and fear which she is supposed to labor."


"The Seventh Victim" will be shown on Turner Classic Movies October 10th, 2019 at 9:45 pm CST/10:45 EST