The Seventh Victim (1943)

Click on the image to go to the 45kb jpg movie poster at Matinee Today.

33k jpg of Mary Gibson and Jason Hoag outside the Dante Restaurant in The Seventh Victim

Sweet young Mary goes to the big city to find her missing sister Jacqueline, only to find that Jacqueline has taken up with a group of Satanists and picked up some new attitudes about death.

Director: Mark Robson. Assistant Director: William Dorfman. Script: Charles O'Neal, DeWitt Bodeen. Photography: Nicholas Musuraca. Editor: John Lockert. Art Directors: Albert S. D'Agostino, Walter E. Keller. Set Decorators: Darrell Silvera, Harley Miller. Music: Roy Webb. Musical Director: C. Bakaleinikoff. Costumes: Renie. Sound Recordist: John C. Grubb.

Tom Conway (Dr. Louis Judd), Jean Brooks (Jacqueline Gibson), Isabel Jewell (Frances Fallon), Kim Hunter (Mary Gibson), Evelyn Brent (Natalie Cortez), Erford Gage (Jason Hoag), Ben Bard (Bruns), Hugh Beaumont (Gregory Ward), Chef Milani (Mr. Romari), Marguerita Sylva (Mrs. Romari), Mary Newton (Mrs. Redi), Wally Brown (Durk), Feodor Chaliapin (Leo), Eve March (Miss Gilchrist), Tola Nesmith (Mrs. Lowood), Edythe Elliott (Mrs. Swift), Milton Kibbee (Joseph), Marianne Mosner (Miss Rowan), Elizabeth Russell (Mimi), Joan Barclay (Gladys), William Halligan (Radeau), Lou Lubin (Irving August), Kernan Cripps (Cop), Dewey Robinson (Conductor), Lloyd Ingraham (Watchman), Ann Summers (Miss Summers), Tiny Jones (Newsvendor), Sara Selby (Miss Gottschalk), Betty Roadman (Mrs. Wheeler), Eileen O'Malley and Lorna Dunn (Mothers).

"I've always wanted to die..." -Jacqueline, to Mimi
Notes:

• Several sequences from the screenplay, some important and some less so, were cut from the release version. In one, Mary admits to Gregory that 'if Jacqueline were dead, it would be easier,' thus reinforcing the morbid themes. In another, the basis for devil worship is given (if good exists, so must evil- as with life and death), and the Satanists explain themselves. As Mrs. Cortez, a dancer whose career was ended when she lost her arm says: 'Life has betrayed us. We've found that there is no heaven on earth, so we must worship evil for evil's own sake.' Another encounter with the diabolists has Judd accidentally reveal Jacqueline's hiding place- no other way for them to have found out is ever given.
• It is alleged that the shower scene in The Seventh Victim provided inspiration for the shower scene in Hitchcock's Psycho.
• Acting debut for Kim Hunter, whose later career included an Academy Award (Best Supporting Actress) for A Streetcar Named Desire (1951).
• One of the nice things about writing something like this is the you can parade your opinions around as if they actually mean something. With that in mind, The Seventh Victim is my favorite Lewton film.

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