THE SEVENTH VICTIM

B-movie impresario Val Lewton’s string of low-budget masterpieces in the 1940s remain among the most influential horror movies ever made, works of astonishing ingenuity that used off-screen space, sound, and shadow to create diabolical tales of people who descend into dark worlds of terror and ambiguity, such as CAT PEOPLE and I WALKED WITH A ZOMBIE. Perhaps the most complex and sinister of them all is this pocket-size portrait of evil and despair, starring Kim Hunter in her film debut as a young woman who leaves the safety of her boarding school to track down her missing sister (a haunting Jean Brooks), who has fallen in with a death-obsessed, Satan-worshipping cult.

“A sober, melancholy tale of fragile humanity that only limns the edges of the supernatural, the film is firmly grounded in reality; nevertheless, when it’s over, we feel like we’ve been to hell and back.” - Michael Koresky