The Seventh Victim

“I run to death, and death meets me fast.” A woman desperate to find meaning in her existence is drawn into a Satanic cult in Mark Robson’s The Seventh Victim, an early noir whose clean studio sets belie its dark, existential themes and suicidal tendencies. Kim Hunter stars as Mary Gibson, a Catholic schoolgirl whose older sister Jacqueline (Jean Brooks), the owner of a cosmetics company, goes missing in New York’s Greenwich Village. Desperate to find her, Mary seeks help from Jacqueline’s new husband Gregory Ward (Hugh Beaumont), a generous private detective (Lou Lubin), and psychiatrist Dr. Louis Judd (Tom Conway), whom Jacqueline had been seeing for depression related to her membership in a cult called the Palladists. Mary’s sleuthing endangers not only herself but Jacqueline, whose fellow cultists take advantage of her mental instability for the greater good (or evil). It’s mature subject matter for 1943, and it’s deftly directed without any of the expected, cheesy horror tropes. Webb’s dissonant score comprises primarily minor key, and Musuraca’s cinematography achieves greatness in nearly every shadowy scene: the silhouetted intruder behind Mary’s shower curtain, the private eye’s break-in to the factory at night, the switchblade-wielding killer’s hunt through the back alleys. Some may be put off by the “deliver us from evil” religious tone toward the end, but The Seventh Victim is a shocking noir packed with beautiful suspense.