#279: The Seventh Victim
Is it horror? Is it noir? It’s a damn good flick either way
This review was originally posted to Twitter on June 20, 2020.
Initial release: August 21, 1943
Director: Mark Robson
The best horror movies tend to be the subtle ones, the creepy ones that make you afraid to turn the lights out at night, afraid of the silence. Mark Robison made a lot of classics you might never have heard of, like Valley of the Dolls; but it’s The Seventh Victim, his directorial debut, that put him on the map. The funny thing is, while it isn’t a Jacques Tourneur film, but it sure feels like one.
Mary, a young woman, just barely an adult, is told by her boarding school’s headmistress that her older sister, Jacqueline, has not paid tuition for the last six months and has seemingly disappeared. Traveling to New York City, Mary looks for answers, but finds very little. What she does find is frightening: Jacqueline had sold her business in its entirety to her partner eight months prior, and that she’d been keeping a room in a boarding house containing nothing but a chair and a noose.
Eventually a private detective takes pity on Mary and agrees to look into it, but in a darkly terrifying scene, winds up stabbed to death. Mary also makes connections with Jacqueline’s secret husband, Gregory, as well as Jason, a young poet, and Dr. Judd, a somewhat sinister psychiatrist (returned, inexplicably, from Cat People. Is he the same guy? A twin brother? Are the two movies mutually exclusive, or is Judd some creepy immortal whose presence links the two films? Robison was actually an editor on Cat People; in The Seventh Victim, Judd makes reference to the earlier film, despite his character having died in it, which raises a lot of questions as to his true nature. Of course, we know from production notes that the character was originally named Siegfried, and changed to capitalize on Cat People’s success; personally, given the maybe-supernatural elements of both films, I find the mystery of Judd’s apparent survival more interesting.)
Judd knows where Jacqueline is, but he tends to keep secrets — such as Jacqueline’s involvement in a secret society of wealthy Satan worshipers, who have secrets of their own. There’s really no shortage of secrets in this creepy, if poorly-edited and slightly incoherent thriller. Robison drapes everything in heavy shadows, stringing the audience along with tense scenes where the score drops away and all we hear are the sounds of footsteps, or a clock ticking, or any of the other quiet, lonely sounds we expect to hear in the darkness in the middle of the night.
In fact, this film is so thick with atmosphere that it can honestly be forgiven a disjointed storyline. Less forgivable is Jacqueline: after spending a large chunk of the film being built up, she is finally revealed, only to be a less than commanding presence. In the end, despite her gothy vibe and gloomy outlook on life, as well as the just-barely-subtle implication of an intimate relationship with a female coworker, she’s less interesting than Mary, who is otherwise a very typical 40s horror movie protagonist.
All that being said: this is a visually stunning, ambiguous film that does a lot more with what’s not seen than with what is. It’s strange and unsettling; the obvious hints of Jacqueline’s lesbianism lend credence to the idea that this film is about how secrets can destroy people. The clues are all there: she marries Gregory, a lawyer, in secret but it’s clear there’s no relationship there; her relationship with her coworker, who openly says she’s only happy when they’re together; her unending misery in a world where homosexuality is taboo. 1940s horror noirs, as rare as they are, are always a joy to watch, and though some less-than-judicious editing (as well as the whole Judd situation) has made the film somewhat incoherent, The Seventh Victim stands tall as one of the finest of its genre.
-june❤
