30 Nights of Horror October 30

This is for Bernard Welt and David Ehrenstein.

The Seventh Victim is, after Cat People, my favorite Lewton movie. A young student ( Kim Hunter) is informed that her sister, perfumier Jacqueline, has quit paying Mary's tuition and cannot be located. Fearless and naive as all Lewton heroines, Mary sallies forth into the Village bohemia of the '40s iso her sister. She learns that Jacqueline has quit the perfume racket and left her business to the overbearing Mrs. Redy ( Isabel Jewell). She meets her brother-in-law Hugh Beaumont, an italian hostess named Bella and, of all people, Jacqueline's psychiatrist ( Tom Conway). Obviously, in the timeline of Lewtonia, Conway has not yet met Elena the cat person.
A queer logo catches Mary's eye. We learn that it is the symbol of the Paladys, a cabal of "non-violent" satanists. "Non-violent", my eye. They have already murdered private eye Irving August and dispatch a knife wielding killer after Jacqueline when, at last, she turns up. All the fuss is over jacqueline's blabbing the secrets of the Paladys. I don't know why she'd want to belong to a club that can only afford a one armed pianist.
Mary is confronted in the shower by Mrs. Redy, a scene that presages the Marion Crane murder.
Jacqueline had taken a small room containing a chair and a rope slung over the rafters with a noose at one end. Mary meets her tubercular neighbor, who's determined to go out and trip the light fantastic and damn her health. I will not reveal the ending of this film. It's the grimmest ending in the Lewton canon.