I Walked with a Zombie/The Seventh Victim: Produced by Val Lewton (4K UHD Review)

• Reviewed by: Stephen Bjork
• Review Date: Oct 16, 2024
• Format: 4K Ultra HD
• 

Director

Jacques Tourneur/Mark Robson

Release Date(s)

1943 (October 8, 2024)

Studio(s)

RKO Radio Pictures/Warner Bros. (The Criterion Collection Spine #1236)

• Film/Program Grade: See Below
• Video Grade: See Below
• Audio Grade: See Below
• Extras Grade: A
• Overall Grade: A

Review

When RKO Pictures assigned producer Val Lewton to their horror unit in 1942, no one could have possibly predicted the astounding legacy that he would leave behind. From 1942 to 1946, Lewton gifted RKO with nine idiosyncratic and poetic films, all of them based on the principle of leaving most of the horror to the imaginations of viewers. RKO would give Lewton a lurid title to work with, but as long as he stayed within a limited budget, they also gave him relative freedom to create whatever he wished. It wasn’t complete independence, as the studio did occasionally interfere, but for the most part he was able to achieve his own personal vision for each film. The results speak for themselves, and while they weren’t always successful at the box office, every one of Lewton’s horror films has something unique to offer.

That’s especially true of Lewton’s second production for RKO, I Walked with a Zombie. Few horror films in the entire history of cinema have offered such a unique embarrassment of riches. Much of the credit for that needs to go to director Jaques Tourneur, who had already brought his dynamic visual sensibilities to bear for Lewton on Cat People. Yet he ended up making even better use of his gift for the contrast between light and shadow in their second collaboration together. I Walked with a Zombie is replete with strikingly poetic imagery that elevates the film into something that transcends the normally limited world of B-movie horror. Despite the presence of voodoo rituals and an apparent zombie in the form of the imposing Carrefour (played by the equally imposing Darby Jones), the nature of the actual zombie of the title skirts the line between reality and metaphor. Full credit for that needs to go to the shooting script that Lewton handed to Tourneur.

The path to reach that final draft wasn’t an easy one. In this case, RKO didn’t just assign a title to Lewton; they also gave him source material, and unsurprisingly, Lewton chafed against it. The story for I Walked with a Zombie is credited to Inez Wallace, who had originally written the (supposedly) non-fiction article I Met a Zombie for The American Weekly the previous year. Wallace expanded that into a fictional story treatment that he submitted to RKO, and that became the actual source for I Walked with a Zombie—although it might be more accurate to call it a nominal source, since Lewton had some subversive ideas of his own. Curt Siodmak adapted Wallace’s treatment into the first draft of a screenplay, and since it didn’t appeal to Lewton at all, he asked his associate Ardel Wray to do a complete rewrite on short notice. She did just that, based partly on her own research into the world of voodoo, and also on the real sources that Lewton had in mind for the film: Charlotte Brontë and Daphne du Maurier.

Lewton referred to his vision for I Walked with a Zombie as “Jane Eyre in the West Indies,” which is true enough in its broadest narrative strokes, but the reality is that it’s Jane Eyre mixed with Rebecca, sprinkled with a liberal dose of a surprisingly open-eyed look at the legacy of slavery in the West Indies. Besty (Frances Dee) is a young Canadian nurse who travels to a sugar plantation on the (fictional) Caribbean island of St. Sebastian. There, she’s supposed to care for Jessica (Christine Gordon), the catatonic wife of the plantation owner Paul Holland (Tom Conway). Along the way, she meets Paul’s half-brother Wesley (James Ellison) and their mother Mrs. Rand (Edith Barrett), and she also learns that there’s more going on than meets the eye on St. Sebastian. While acclimating herself to her new surroundings, she ends up overhearing a local Calypso singer (Sir Lancelot) performing a song about what led to Jessica’s downfall:

“Ah woe, ah me!
Shame and sorrow for the family.
The Holland man, he kept in a tower
A wife as pretty as a big white flower
She saw the brother and she stole his heart,
And that’s how the badness and the trouble start...
The wife fell down and the evil came,
And it burned her mind in the fever flame.”

Of course, it was no ordinary fever that led to Jessica becoming a hollow shell of her former self. Betsy’s determination ultimately leads her on an ominous journey to the local voodoo houmfort to try to cure Jessica and return her to Paul’s arms. (Betsy is slowly falling in love with him, but she chooses to express that love through self-sacrifice.) Yet the shame and sorrow of this family runs deep, and Besty’s wishes don’t really align with anyone else’s, Paul included. On the island of St. Sebastian, sorrow has run so deep for so long that death is seen as a release. Not the living death of zombification, either; while Betsy’s eerie nighttime walk with Jessica through the cane fields does serve as a direct visualization of the title I Walked with a Zombie, it’s not really the central image of the film. Instead, that’s the statue of St. Sebastian, pierced with arrows, that sits at a fountain on the plantation.

Voodoo stories often involve natives, but I Walked with a Zombie makes the explicit point that the people of St. Sebastian weren’t really native to it. They’re actually the descendants of the original slaves who were brought to the island on a ship that had this statue of St. Sebastian as its figurehead. While they’re no longer slaves, they still haven’t been freed from subservient roles in the island’s economy. The locals have rechristened the figurehead as Ti- Misery, a symbol of the bondage that led them to St. Sebastian. As slaves, their only hope for freedom from that bondage was the release that’s offered by death. As a result, they still continue to weep whenever a child is born, and celebrate whenever someone passes away. So, it’s entirely appropriate that St. Sebastian/Ti-Misery has found a home on the plantation, and in a bitter irony, it ends up providing a means of release from the shame and sorrow of the troubled Holland/Rand family. One of the most remarkable things about I Walked with a Zombie, especially for a film from that era, is that it’s far more empathetic toward the forcibly transplanted natives of St. Sebastian than it is toward the remnants of the white colonists who first brought them there.

Paul, Wesley, and Mrs. Rand are descendants of those colonial forces, but with the possible exception of Mrs. Rand, they don’t entirely grasp the implications of their own history. Yet they’ve still unintentionally absorbed the effects that it’s had on island life. Paul had warned Betsy earlier that there was no beauty on St. Sebastian, only death and decay, and that everything good dies here. Later on, he admits that he was just trying to scare her, but the truth ran deeper than even he could have imagined. That’s because death is the only true release in I Walked with a Zombie. The bitterest irony of all is the narration that closes the film, since it flatly contradicts the inverted reality of life and death on St. Sebastian:

“Yea, Lord, pity them who are dead
And give peace and happiness to the living.”

Death is a consistent theme throughout Lewton’s work. While he may not have felt an innate affinity for the horror genre, his obsession with mortality provided plenty of fodder to fuel effective horror stories. Death was the only possible release from the travails of life in I Walked with a Zombie, but for Lewton’s fourth horror film The Seventh Victim, it’s not just an escape, but rather something to be fervently desired. The Seventh Victim opens with a quotation from one the Holy Sonnets by John Donne: Thou hast made me, and shall thy work decay?:

“I run to death, and death meets me as fast,
And all my pleasures are like yesterday.”

For Donne, Thou hast made me, and shall thy work decay? Is an earnest plea for God’s grace in the face of the impending terminus of this life. Yet in The Seventh Victim, there’s no grace to be had in this world or even in the next, because in a perverse irony, the ostensible subject matter of The Seventh Victim is Satanism. Lewton doubtless intended this quotation to be taken at face value, and yet its source provides an ironic contrast to the events that take place in the film, offering a hope that’s denied to any of its characters. There’s also some gamesmanship at play here, because while the quotation is taken from Holy Sonnet I, it’s deliberately misattributed as being from Holy Sonnet VII instead. Donne’s Holy Sonnet VII: At the round earth’s imagin’d corners is actually a vision of the Christian apocalypse where the trumpets sound and the souls of the faithful are reunited with their bodies. Needless to say, there’s no such Christian comfort to be had in The Seventh Victim.

Lewton wasn’t above manufacturing quotations to suit his purposes, but in this case, he used a real quotation and manufactured the citation in order to align it with the title that RKO had given him. In a strange way, that provides an interpretive key to The Seventh Victim. Lewton loved using the power of the imagination to suggest that there may be more things happening in his films that meets the eye, but in The Seventh Victim, there’s actually less. Sometimes, a number is just a number, and everything can be taken at face value.

Initially, the title referred to a young woman trying to track down a murderer before she became his seventh victim, but as the screenplay passed through multiple hands including Charles O’Neal, Dewitt Bodeen, and Lewton himself, the story developed into something else entirely. Mary Gibson (Kim Hunter) is attending a boarding school when she discovers that her sister Jacqueline (Kim Brooks) has gone missing and is no longer paying her tuition. Mary leaves school in order to find Jaqueline, starting at the cosmetics company La Sagesse that was once owned by her sister. The new owner Ester Redi (Mary Newton) won’t offer any assistance, so Mary ends up enlisting the help of attorney Gregory Ward (Hugh Beaumont), Dr. Louis Judd (Tom Conway), a local poet (Erford Gage), and a private detective (Lou Lubin). Eventually, their search leads to a secret society of Satanists called the Palladists, who have declared Jaqueline to be their seventh victim. The Seventh Victim also stars Isabell Jewell, Evelyn Brent, and Ben Bard.

Dewitt Bodeen had attended an actual meeting of Satanists as research for The Seventh Victim, and he was surprised to discover how ordinary that they seemed. That insight ended up informing the design of the Palladists and the film a whole. Despite the ominous-sounding title, there are no ancient prophecies or apocalyptic machinations at play in The Seventh Victim, and no altars, goats, or Latin rituals, either. There’s no numerological significance whatsoever to the fact that Jacqueline is to be their seventh victim. She just happens to be the seventh person who has betrayed the confidence of the society, so she’s the seventh person that they’ve condemned to death as a result. Yet even that’s less portentous than it sounds, since the Palladists are sworn to non-violence. Instead, they’re actively trying to persuade an already suicidal woman to kill herself.

Lewton may be renowned for only suggesting the supernatural and leaving everything to the imagination of viewers, but in The Seventh Victim, even the suggestion of the supernatural has been eliminated. The threat posed by these Satanists is entirely a temporal one, and rather than stealing the souls of their victims, the death that they offer is still seen as a form of release. The spirit world may or may not be real in The Seventh Victim, but death is the same regardless. Instead of the ultimate evil represented by the Prince of Darkness, it offers the banality of evil with those who have lost faith an any real higher purpose to life. In other words, this is workaday Satanism. In that respect, it’s actually a good thing that RKO had broken up Lewton’s partnership with Jacques Tourneur, so Lewton turned to editor Mark Robson to direct The Seventh Victim instead. Tourneur’s visual flair might have worked against the thematic core of the film, while Robson’s more straightforward and workmanlike direction served these workaday Satanist perfectly.

Ultimately, despite the presence of these ineffectually malevolent Satanists, The Seventh Victim is about existential dread divorced from any spiritual context. Jaqueline originally turned to the Palladists because of her own obsession with mortality, not due to any real interest in the spirit world. For Jacqueline, life is nothing more than the unbearable heaviness of being. She’s kept a noose tied to the ceiling in her apartment, but even the Palladists haven’t been able to provide the impetus for her to use it. Instead, that ends up coming from an unexpected source: her next-door neighbor Mimi (Elizabeth Russell). Mimi is terminally ill and has confined herself to her apartment, but after a brief conversation with Jacqueline, she decides to take a night on the town one last time. Mimi plans to eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow she’ll die. For Jaqueline, on the other hand, all such pleasures are like yesterday. That leaves her with only one direction to turn, and it’s only too willing to meet her just as fast as she can run to it.

Cinematographers J. Roy Hunt and Nicholas Musuraca shot I Walked with a Zombie and The Seventh Victim (respectively) on 35mm film using spherical lenses, framed at the full Academy aperture of 1.37:1 for their theatrical releases. Both of these new 4K masters were based on 4K scans of the original nitrate camera negatives, with digital cleanup performed by Resillion. No HDR grade has been applied to either of them, but they’re presented in SDR with 10-bit color instead of the standard 8-bit color of Blu-ray. (More on that in a moment.) While the negative for I Walked with a Zombie was in relatively good condition, the negative for The Seventh Victim contained mold residue that couldn’t be completely eliminated from the final picture.

Despite that fact, both films look nearly spotless in 4K. Maybe the mold on The Seventh Victim couldn’t be completely cleaned up, but whatever damage that may remain isn’t even noticeable from normal viewing distances. The opening titles and any footage affected by optical transitions look softer than the surrounding material, and there’s one closeup near the end of The Seventh Victim that was created in post by zooming in with an optical printer, which looks particularly rough. (There’s also some haloing visible around the characters during the opening credits of I Walked with a Zombie, but that’s an artifact from the original opticals.) Otherwise, there’s as much detail visible as is humanly possible—although expectations need to be tempered in that regard. An eighty-year-old nitrate negative simply isn’t going to offer as much resolution as newer negatives, and there really isn’t 4K worth of fine detail visible in either of these presentations. The grain may be slightly better resolved, but that’s about it.

That said, there are still benefits to having both of these films available in 4K. While some people may complain about the lack of an HDR grade, the overall exposure latitude of vintage nitrate negatives like these never had that much dynamic range to begin with. However, the move to 10-bit color means that there are quadruple the gradations between pure white and pure black than what’s available with the 8-bit color of Blu-ray. At a minimum, that means that there’s less chance of any banding being visible on some displays. Yet it also means that while there may not be 4K worth of actual picture detail, there’s more detail in the grayscale, with a smoother, more natural-looking image. It’s still not necessarily dazzling by modern standards, but it’s absolutely gorgeous and filmic. There’s nothing to criticize here in terms of grayscale, contrast, and black levels.

Audio for both I Walked with a Zombie and The Seventh Victim is offered in English 1.0 mono LPCM, with optional English SDH subtitles. Both tracks are relatively clean, although there’s a bit of hiss audible in the background (it’s more noticeable in The Seventh Victim). The dialogue has a touch of excessive sibilance to it, but nothing too distracting. Roy Webb contributed the scores for both films, and even though these vintage recordings have limited frequency response and dynamics, they’re still quite effective.

I WALKED WITH A ZOMBIE (FILM/VIDEO/AUDIO): A/A/B+
THE SEVENTH VICTIM (FILM/VIDEO/AUDIO): A/A-/B

Criterion’s 4K Ultra HD release of I Walked with a Zombie and The Seventh Victim is a two-disc set that includes both films on one UHD. The second disc is a Blu-ray with 1080p copies of the films. There’s also a 24-page foldout booklet featuring essays by Chris Fujiwara and Lucy Sante, as well as credits and restoration notes. Aside from the supplemental audio tracks, all of the extras are offered on the Blu-ray only:

DISC ONE: UHD

• I Walked with a Zombie:
  • Audio Commentary with Kim Newman and Stephen Jones
  • The Secret History of Hollywood Audio Track
• The Seventh Victim:
  • Audio Commentary with Steve Haberman
  • The Secret History of Hollywood Audio Track

DISC TWO: BD

• I Walked with a Zombie:
  • Audio Commentary with Kim Newman and Stephen Jones
  • The Secret History of Hollywood Audio Track
• The Seventh Victim:
  • Audio Commentary with Steve Haberman
  • The Secret History of Hollywood Audio Track
• Deliver Us from Evil (HD – 47:00)
• Shadows in the Dark: The Val Lewton Legacy (Upscaled SD – 53:24)
• The Origins of the Zombie (HD – 12:42)
• The Secret History of Hollywood:
  • Jean Brooks (HD – 53:14)
  • Tom Conway (HD – 69:53)
• I Walked with a Zombie Trailer (HD – 1:04)
• The Seventh Victim Trailer (HD – 1:14)

The I Walked with a Zombie commentary pairing writer and editor Stephen Jones with author and critic Kim Newman was originally recorded for the 2005 Val Lewton Horror Collection DVD boxed set. (While that set was a port of their previous LaserDisc boxed set, all of the commentary tracks save for The Body Snatchers were new additions.) The two of them have an energetic conversation, enthusiastically pointing out details like how the opening shot is actually non-narrative and has nothing to do with the rest of the film. They compare details from the script to how things were actually worked out on film. That includes some subtle details like how Wesley is probably possessed by the voodoo call when he takes the arrow from the statue of St. Sebastian at the end. They also discuss how Lewton’s obsession with death informed all of I Walked with a Zombie.

Steve Haberman’s commentary for The Seventh Victim was also recorded for the 2005 DVD boxed set. Haberman traces the history of the script, noting that Lewton always did an uncredited final rewrite of his own, and compares the details in the shooting script to how they’re executed in the film. He also provides plenty of information about the cast and crew of The Seventh Victim, and provides the backstory for why RKO broke up the Lewton/Tourneur partnership and forced Lewton to find a different collaborator on this film in the form of editor Mark Robson. He also addresses some of The Seventh Victim’s thematic concerns. While much of the information that Haberman provides was clearly derived from Joel E. Siegel’s Val Lewton: The Reality of Terror (including the possible lesbian subtext in the film), it’s still a good overview.

Both I Walked with a Zombie and The Seventh Victim include tertiary audio tracks that feature excerpts from Adam Roche’s The Secret History of Hollywood podcast. Roche covers myriad details about each of the productions, but he also provides the broader context surrounding Val Lewton’s career, including his time spent working under David O. Selznick. Naturally, none of this is scene-specific, but it’s still a great way to learn more about Val Lewton and all of the people who traveled in and out of his sphere of influence.

Deliver Us from Evil is a new interview with Imogen Sara Smith about I Walked with a Zombie and The Seventh Victim. She offers an overview of Lewton’s working methodology at RKO, and explains the stylistic ingredients that directors Jacques Tourneur and Mark Robson brought to the table. While I Walked with a Zombie and The Seventh Victim may seem superficially dissimilar, she demonstrates many parallel themes and elements that are common to both films. Smith sees Lewton’s work as not just being about the unseen and imagined, but also about the unknowable central ambiguity of life.

Shadows in the Dark: The Val Lewton Legacy is a documentary on Lewton’s contributions to the world of horror that was originally produced in 2005 for the Val Lewton Horror Collection DVD set. Produced by Constantine Nasr and narrated by James Cromwell, it offers a witch’s brew of interviews with various filmmakers, writers, critics, and family members, including William Friedkin, Joe Dante, Guillermo Del Toro, George A. Romero, John Landis, Mick Garris, Robert Wise, Harlan Ellison, Ramsey Campbell, Richard Matheson, Neil Gaiman, Steve Haberman, Stephen Jones, Kim Newman, Sara Karloff, and Val E. Lewton. Shadows in the Dark traces Lewton’s life from his childhood to his untimely death at the age of 46, and the participants provides some diverse perspectives on the common themes and elements across his work.

Aside from two original Trailers, the rest of the extras include The Origins of the Zombie, from Haiti to the U.S., which consists of relevant excerpts from the 2018-2020 web series Monstrum, hosted by Dr. Emily Zarka for PBS Digital Studios. There are also more extended excerpts from The Secret History of Hollywood, featuring Adam Roche talking about the lives and careers of both Jean Brooks and Tom Conway. Taken collectively, that’s all of the available archival extras from previous releases of I Walked with a Zombie and The Seventh Victim, plus one new one and a variety of other archival materials.

More importantly, both of these films have been long overdue on physical media in HD, let alone Ultra HD. (While I Walked with a Zombie has been available on Blu-ray in Japan, it was an inferior port of an older master.) I Walked with a Zombie and The Seventh Victim look nearly pristine in these new 4K masters, and for many fans, pairing them together offers the ultimate Val Lewton double feature. Add in a weighty set of extras, and you have yet other one of the best releases in a year that’s been filled with best releases. This set from Criterion gets the highest possible recommendation—and Halloween is just around the corner, so share the love with your fellow Val Lewton fans.

- Stephen Bjork

(You can follow Stephen on social media at these links: Twitter, Facebook, and Letterboxd).