Podcasts
Embracing Lesbianism and Satanism in ‘The Seventh Victim’ [Horror Queers Podcast]
She only did her…hair
After a wild month that has included gay panic in Creep, a TV musical in Buffy the Vampire Slayer‘s ‘Once More, With Feeling’ and our 150th episode extravaganza with The Lost Boys, we’re closing out the month with a slam dunk 1940s film noir. That’s right: it’s finally time for a Val Lewton classic with The Seventh Victim and who better to join us than queer author David Demchuk, author of Red X.
In the Mark Robson-directed film, naive teenager Mary (Kim Hunter) travels to the big city to find her missing sister Jacqueline (Jean Brooks), who has run afoul of a group of Satanists called the Palladists. Thwarted by Esther Redi (Mary Newton), the new owner of Jacqueline’s cosmetics empire, and Jacqueline’s “hair dresser” Frances (Isabel Jewell), the younger sister leans on Jacqueline’s “friends” Dr. Louis Judd (Tom Conway) and lawyer Gregory Ward (Hugh Beaumont) to assist her in her search. Will the idealistic ingenue be able to navigate the dangers of the inky black and white city and find her sister before a terrible fate befalls them both?
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Episode 153 – The Seventh Victim (1943)
Stay away from the wine because we, along with celebrated queer author David Demchuk, are covering our first Val Lewton film: The Seventh Victim (1943).
The HEAVILY queer coded text is a nice alternative to our Universal Monster films, though we recommend having a comedy for when you finish because this movie is grim and nihilistic! Also, should we become Satanists? Because the Palladists don’t seem that bad!
Up for discussion: disdain for the male characters, Lewton’s classic “cat jump” sequence, and Frances’ emotional outburst as confirmation of a lesbian relationship.
Plus: Joe gushes over Jean Brooks’ performance, Trace cannot remember the poet’s name, and David questions Redi’s decision to put the logo of her secret society on a perfume bottle.
Cross out The Seventh Victim!
Coming up on Wednesday: We’re headed to Rochester for a look at the possibly homophobic, and definitely confused gay antichrist film, Fear No Evil (1981)!
P.S. Subscribe to our Patreon for more than 150 hours of additional content! This month, we’ve covered Amazon Prime’s I Know What You Did Last Summer series, SyFy’s Slumber Party Massacre remake, the original Resident Evil and Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City!
Maybe you haven’t thought about your good friend Sweeney Todd in a while, or maybe you have. The 2007 movie is a bit of a memory, though a fond one – it has a healthy 86% on Rotten Tomatoes, for what it’s worth. But 2023’s Broadway revival starring Josh Groban, who your mom thinks is “so talented” (she’s right!), was enough of a hit that its run was extended.
It appears we’re in a bit of a Sweeneyssaince.
For the uninitiated, Sweeney Todd is the story of a barber who kills his customers and disposes of the bodies by passing them off to pie shop owner Mrs. Lovett, who uses them as a special ingredient. But there’s more below the trap door.
Sweeney Todd isn’t just a late 70s musical that turned into a movie; it started as a penny dreadful called The String of Pearls: A Domestic Romance (author unknown), told week-to-week in the 1840s. Penny dreadfuls were essentially fiction zines featuring serialized stories that were usually horror-based and cost a penny, leading to the very literal nickname.
The String of Pearls differs from the more well-known Sweeney Todd plot in that it follows the investigation of a missing persons case that leads to the reveal of Sweeney and Mrs. Lovett’s arrangement, as opposed to the more modern iteration which treats audiences to the duo hatching their homicidal plan and then giving the worst haircuts ever. What a delightfully wild reveal that must have been if you were a reader in Victorian London after weeks of wondering what had become of the missing sailor carrying a string of pearls to deliver to a lovely girl.
Kristen and Will discuss the history and future of Sweeney Todd and works inspired by it this week on Guide to the Unknown. Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts to get a new episode every Friday.
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