The Seventh Victim (1943)

Who’s In It: Kim Hunter (When Strangers Marry, A Streetcar Named Desire, Planet of the Apes), Jean Brooks (The Leopard Man), and Tom Conway (Tarzan's Secret Treasure, Cat People, I Walked with a Zombie).

What It’s About: A young woman (Hunter) falls in love with her brother-in-law (Conway) while investigating the disappearance of her sister (Brooks).

How It Is: As I expect from Val Lewton movies now, The Seventh Victim is very stylish (I mean, Jean Brooks' bangs alone!) and begins with a cool mystery. Unfortunately, it has more in common with The Leopard Man than Cat People or Isle of the Dead. The mystery is solved too early and after that the film just becomes about the fallout from it. Which, like in The Leopard Man, isn't a bad take in itself. I like that the movie is interested not just in the mystery, but also in the way that it affects its characters. But in this case, if affects Mary (Hunter) by forcing her into a romance with her brother-in-law, Louis (Conway). Not only is that creepy and inappropriate considering that they're both looking for their sister and wife, but at no point do I ever actually believe that either character is really falling for the other one. I don't know if that's lack of chemistry or underwritten characters or both, but it doesn't work.

It's also a big problem that the reality of Jacqueline (Brooks) doesn't equal the build-up. The woman that everyone's looking for in the first half of the movie sounds cool, confident, and a little mysterious. But that's not the reality of the frightened and severely depressed person we meet in the second half. There's a great discussion to be had about the masks we put on to cover our insecurities, but the movie never really goes there. It's too interested in that dumb romance that Jacqueline's in the way of.

I feel like I should at least mention the Satanic cult that the movie's supposed to be about (and that gives the film its name), but it's a lame, toothless group that (except for one, memorable sequence) doesn't have much effect on the main characters. It's as disappointing as the rest of the movie.

Rating: 2 out of 5 poisoned punches

The Leopard Man (1943)

Who's In It: Dennis O'Keefe (the original Brewster's Millions and Raw Deal), Margo (Lost Horizon), and Jean Brooks (The Green Hornet Strikes Again!, The Seventh Victim).

What It's About: After a panther escapes from a nightclub act, multiple women are found horribly mutilated. But is it the work of the animal or a human serial killer?

How It Is: I always love the mood and visual style of  Val Lewton and Jacques Tourneur films. I'm especially a fan of Tourneur with Night of the Demon and Out of the Past being a couple of my all time favorite movies. I'm all over the place on their collaborations though. I love Cat People and like I Walked with a Zombie, but The Leopard Man was very disappointing.

Brooks and O'Keefe play a singer and her manager who are partially responsible for letting the animal escape. They feel some guilt over the situation, so they join the hunt for the animal, but they soon suspect that the escaped beast is just a cover up for a human murderer.

Unfortunately, their investigation is sloppy and once they do discover the actual villain, the motivation for the murderers is barely given any thought. It turns out that the movie is actually more focused on Brooks and O'Keefe and how their experience changes them and shapes their relationship. That's cool, but it's not a replacement for a satisfying mystery, which The Leopard Man doesn't have.

Rating: 2 out of 5 killer cats.

Isle of the Dead (1945)

Who's In It: Boris Karloff (Frankenstein, The Mummy), Ellen Drew (The Mad Doctor, The Monster and the Girl), and Alan Napier (Batman).

What It's About: A ruthless general (Karloff) becomes increasingly suspicious that a young woman (Drew) on a quarantined island is a vampire-like creature.

How It Is: I need to see more of producer Val Lewton films. It's been years since I've seen The Body Snatcher, but Cat People is one of my favorite horror movies and I also enjoyed its less spooky sequel, The Curse of the Cat People. On of my favorite things about Cat People is something it shares in common with Isle of the Dead, so I'm curious to see if it pops up in more of Lewton's films.

Cat People and Isle of the Dead would make a great triple feature with Night of the Demon, which wasn't produced by Lewton, but was directed by sometimes Lewton collaborator Jacques Tourneur (who made Cat People, I Walked with a Zombie, and The Leopard Man for Lewton, as well as the less frightening Tale of Two Cities). What Cat People, Night of the Demon, and Isle of the Dead really have in common though is the theme of skepticism vs belief. All three films have characters claiming that something supernatural is occurring while other characters disbelieve. But better than just that, all three movies also wait until the very end to reveal who's right.

In Isle of the Dead, Karloff is the skeptic. He's trapped on a quarantined island with a varied group of people that includes a British consul named St Aubyn (Napier), his wife, and the wife's paid companion Thea. There's also a superstitious housekeeper who sees how ill Mrs St Aubyn is, how vibrant Thea is, and concludes that Thea is a supernatural creature draining the life from her mistress. Karloff's General Pherides scoffs at first, but the more he observes, the more he becomes convinced that there may be something to the housekeeper's tale.

I won't reveal whether or not Thea actually is some sort of life-sucking demon, but it's not spoiling anything to say that since Isle of the Dead is coy about the revelation for most of its run time, it progresses more like a thriller than a horror story. There are a couple of levels of danger going on: the danger that Mrs St Aubyn is in if Thea is a monster, and the danger that Thea is in from Pherides if she isn't.

It's a cool set up and the script adds another layer by having these conversations about skepticism and belief spill over into discussions of religion. At the beginning of the movie, Pherides doesn't just laugh at the housekeeper's theories, he's also an atheist. But as the story progresses, his openness towards the idea of a life-sucking monster is also reflected in his softening about religion. That raises all kinds of interesting questions about the connection between faith and imagination. Isle of the Dead doesn't attempt to answer these deeper questions, but I love that it makes me think about them.

Rating: Four out of five obsessed officers.