The Seventh Victim

Mary leaves boarding school and comes to New York to look for her missing sister. The sister's cosmetics company has changed hands, her apartment is empty, and a rope hangs from its ceiling. Following the trail through Greenwich Village she runs into a polite, well-dressed cult that refuses to carry out violence with its own hands. The subject is not horror but finding someone who wants to die. The person at the centre does not want rescuing and says so plainly, which is an unusually dark place for a 1943 Hollywood picture. The form is cheap and therefore clever. With no budget for a monster, the threat is delivered as sound and shadow throughout. The scene conducted through a shower curtain calls to mind how the same setting would be used in another film seventeen years later. It comes from Val Lewton's low-budget horror unit at RKO. It is Mark Robson's first film as director. The film carries a line of John Donne over its opening, and that line announces the ending in advance. Kim Hunter plays Mary in her first film. Tom Conway and Jean Brooks are in the cast. Who it is for: viewers who like classical-era horror and films that work through atmosphere. Who it is not for: anyone who wants the plot to hold together; the film was cut down and some connections really are missing.