Wonderful character development!

Dreadfully Boring

Simple and well acted, it has tension enough to knot the stomach.

It’s sentimental, ridiculously long and only occasionally funny

Mary Gibson (Kim Hunter) is told that her older sister Jacqueline has disappeared. Instead of staying at her school to work, Mary sets off to find her sister. She finds a hangman's noose in Jacqueline's room. Private eye Irving August offers to help but he gets a warning. Then she finds Gregory Ward who was inquiring at the morgue. She joins August on his investigation and he's killed. On the subway, she encounters two men carrying August. The police won't believe her. Psychiatrist Dr. Judd claims to have Jacqueline but she sees her run away. She also finds out that Ward is actually Jacqueline's husband. Poet Jason Hoag offers to help.I love the paranoid darkness that runs through this movie. The shadowy look is great. There are all kinds of murky secrets and dangerous conspiracies. It's young Kim Hunter's first feature. She's a bit stiff and naive which fits the character very well. The story is very convoluted which keeps taking sharp turns with a few too many characters. Mary is overwhelmed and I would be too. It's highly questionable whether the movie makes complete sense. At the very least, there are a lot of coincidences.

Often I do cut older movies some more slack because of the limitations they had but this one pretty much failed in all aspects for me. Most of the movie revolves around a young woman, still a student, seeking for her older sister who has disappeared. Some people want to help her in her quest others are less helpful. The movie muddles on a bit with a few things happening, some boring dialog. The movie never really gets going, you never get to know any of the characters (all uninteresting) well. Apparently totally out of the blue the husband or was it boyfriend of the missing girl has feelings for the youngest sister. And than there is also that mysterious sect which doesn't fit in very well in the whole thing. No this really was a big mess.

The Seventh Victim is a nicely shot horror-mystery from RKO. While it's construction is simple, there is a somewhat-complex love pyramid going on, and it has a stylish cult atmosphere.We start off with Mary, as she leaves her girl school existence, in search of her sister- Jacqueline- who has apparently disappeared.She heads into the big city, where she follows a number of leads, with hopes of tracking her sister down. During her search she meets a young poet, a psychiatrist, an old Italian couple, and a few private investigators- one of which has been hired by the husband of Jacqueline, who is secretly in love with Mary.Eventually, with help from one of the PI's (who dies) and the Poet, they manage to track Jacqueline down, as she had been hidden away by the psychiatrist (it is subtly implied they were sleeping together).Jacqueline is, hilariously, goth-as-f*ck. Obsessed with suicide, goth haircut (circa 1940's...impressive!), wears dark furs, shoes and nail polish. Anyways... because she could never find a place to fit in, she inevitably ends up rolling with this secret satanic society that requires a blood oath to join.And they feel that she has broken said oath and must be killed, because she revealed their existence to the shrink (she was probably banging).The poet is secretly in love with Jacqueline, and as such, is working alongside her sister, in order to save her life. But now she's facing accusations of being a murderess, on top of the threats to her life. Though, luckily for her, there are a number of close calls,but she does manage to escape... no thanks to her sister and the poet.Everything with the film goes smoothly, until the final confrontation...during which the whole thing turns into Christian propaganda! I wouldn't be surprised if it originally had a different ending that was considered unacceptable by censors. Basically, the film ends with the notion that the teachings delineated through the Lord's Prayer trump the entire Satanic philosophy and worldview. But this is all summed up in about 3 sentences, so it really comes off as quite humorous...and almost out of place. Totally didn't see that coming.6 out of 10.

Living a secret life on the lower East Side, a group of devil worshipers seem to be an analogy for fifth columnists playing the spying game in New York in this combination of psychological horror and film noir. Broadway actress Kim Hunter made her film debut as the sweet younger sister of a missing woman. She drops out of college to head to New York to find her missing sister and stumbles upon something far more sinister than she could ever imagine.The dark shadows of the New York streets take front and center in this intriguing thriller that makes the night a villain and its characters simply players in a game of chess where both the winner and loser's grand prize is the same: death, where the fate is certainly worse. These streets are filled with odd noises, scary images and even today, when you venture down certain avenues in Manhattan, you may feel the same chills that the heroines here certainly felt, 70 years ago.The odd hairstyle of the missing sister (Phyllis Brooks) is pure Val Lewton with its severity even though the character is not meant to be evil, just mysterious. She appears almost death-like, a combination of "Dracula's Daughter" and "She Who Must Be Obeyed" as she first appears to put her finger up to her lips to "shhh" her sister in their first scene together as her presence is definitely meant as a metaphor. Death definitely does not take a holiday here, and the most evil that the devil worshipers get is to prod their intended victims onto suicide, making their meeting place feel like a room of "Rebecca's" Mrs. Danvers.The direction is appropriately grim and slow moving, giving it almost a feeling of floatation, with a scene in a shower that obviously influenced Hitchcock decades later. As imperfect as this film is, it is one that won't leave your mind, and one you will re-visit to try and find the many hidden metaphors and themes which its creators intended.