The Seventh Victim (1943) Film Review C+

Woman in fur coat, black and white.

DIRECTOR: MARK ROBSON

“The Seventh Victim” (1943) is an uneven, plot-heavy, yet blessedly short noir-horror hybrid about a missing woman, a Satanic cult, and repressed identity. More so than with “Cat People”, gay writer DeWitt Bodeen manages to create a queer subtext that is subtle yet present, reflecting themes of isolation, coded desire, and existential despair.
Mary Gibson (Kim Hunter), a young woman attending a Catholic boarding school, learns that her sister, Jacqueline (Jean Brooks), has stopped paying her tuition and gone missing. Mary travels to Greenwich Village NYC (I wonder why!), to find Jacqueline, uncovering a web of secrets involving a satanic cult called the Palladists and a bunch of strange characters, including Hugh Beaumont as Jacqueline’s mysterious husband,  Tom Conway, reprising his role as Dr. Louis Judd from “Cat People,” and Isabelle Jewell as a friend of Jacqueline’s. Jacqueline, herself, is revealed to be suicidal, estranged, and hiding from the cult, which demands her death for betraying their secrecy. In its Querness, the movie moves between the baroque and the silly.
Produced by Val Lewton for RKO with cinematography by Nicholas Musuraca and music by Roy Webb, it marked the screen debut of Hunter and the directorial debut of Robson.
Isabell Jewell took her own life in 1972, while Jean Brooks and Tom Conway both suffered from alcohol abuse disorder. Their careers cut short, they both died young.

CINEMATOGRAPHY
Nicholas Musuraca
RKO

STREAMING ON AMAZON and APPLE TV+

https://thebrownees.net/nicholas-musuraca-master-of-chiaroscuro/
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https://thebrownees.net/seventy-queer-films-of-the-new-hollywood-1967-1981
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