Val Lewton: Difference between revisions

{{quote|''It is perhaps characteristic of Lewton's career that this film ''[I Walked with a Zombie]'', one of the rare pieces of pure visual poetry ever to come out of Hollywood, was seen by hardly anybody but ... bloodthirsty chiller fans.''|'''Joel E. Siegel''', ''Val Lewton: The Reality of Terror''<ref>quoted in Ivan Brunetti's comic strip "Produced by Val Lewton", printed in ''Schizo'' #4</ref>}}

 

 

In 1942, Charles Koerner placed him in charge of the "B"-picture unit at RKO. Lewton had to follow three rules for each film:

 

What followed was a series of clever subversions: Koerner gave him a lurid horror title, and Lewton turned it into something subtle and meditative, while still making it appropriate enough to the title that his superiors wouldn't get annoyed. He made ten films under this system:

* ''I Walked with a Zombie'' (1943) -- ''[[Jane Eyre]]'' in the West Indies, with the mad wife affected by a voodoo curse.

* ''The Leopard Man'' (1943) -- A leopard hired for a nightclub performance escapes and terrorises a town.

* ''The Seventh Victim'' (1943) -- A woman searching for her sister discovers a Satanist cult.

* ''The Ghost Ship'' (1943) -- New crewmember suspects his captain is crazy; the rest of the crew believe the ship is haunted.

* ''Mademoiselle Fifi'' (1944) -- A Prussian Lieutenant holds up a stagecoach, demanding that a beautiful young passenger "dines" with him.

* ''The Body Snatcher'' (1945) -- An early Nineteenth Century doctor is blackmailed by the very cabman ([[Boris Karloff]]) he gets his dead bodies from. Also features [[Bela Lugosi]] in [[Those Two Actors|his final film with Karloff.]]

* [[Actually Not a Vampire]]: ''Isle of the Dead''.

* [[Adaptation Expansion]]: ''Isle of the Dead'' and ''Bedlam'' are adaptations of paintings.

* [[Continuity Snarl]]: It has been argued that ''The Seventh Victim'' takes place in the same continuity as ''Cat People'' and ''Curse of the Cat People''. Tom Conway plays a psychiatrist named Louis Judd in ''Cat People'' and ''The Seventh Victim'', and this is possibly the same character. (He seems to have a generally similar personality.) Some say ''Seventh'' is a prequel to ''Cat People'', since {{spoiler|Judd apparently dies at the end of ''Cat People'', and this is confirmed by another character in ''Curse''}}. Others say ''Seventh'' might be a sequel and that Judd's mention of a woman who went mad is probably a reference to Irena from ''Cat People'' (although he says this woman is now in an asylum, but {{spoiler|Irena also dies at the end of ''Cat People'', and this is also confirmed in ''Curse''}}). Actress Elizabeth Russell appears in all three movies, but her presence each time is rather strange and mysterious, so it is possible she was playing the same character, or someone completely different, each time.

* [[Hollywood Voodoo]]: ''I Walked with a Zombie'' has zombies and dolls. It also has a religious ceremony, however, which our unnerved heroine must brave in order to meet with the houngan.