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The Val Lewton Horror Collection (Cat People / The Curse of the Cat People / I Walked with a Zombie / The Body Snatcher / Isle of the Dead / Bedlam / The Leopard Man / The Ghost Ship / The Seventh Victim / Shadows in the Dark)
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Genre | Classics, Horror |
Format | NTSC, Box set, Black & White, Closed-captioned, Subtitled |
Language | English |
Runtime | 10 hours and 46 minutes |
UPC | 053939727029 883929271689 |
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Product Description
Product Description
Val Lewton Horror Collection, The (DVD) (5-Pack) Val Lewton, a famous RKO Radio Pictures producer, redefined the horror genre with low-budget, high-box office films. Now available are nine of these horror classics on DVD in the all new Val Lewton Horror Collection. Exclusive to the collection are a new documentary on the producer and 3 of the 9 films.
Amazon.com
Val Lewton's name is synonymous with the subtlest, most mysterious brand of horror filmmaking in Hollywood's golden age, and the nine horror classics he produced at RKO between 1942 and 1946 constitute the most remarkable cycle of creativity in B-movie history. (For the record, the Lewton/RKO legacy also includes two non-horror entries, Youth Runs Wild and Mademoiselle Fifi.)
Before becoming a film producer, the Russian-born Lewton was a prolific writer of pulp fiction, nonfiction, and a couple of pornographic novels. He also worked for years as assistant to David O. Selznick, a legendary producer with a distinctive personal signature--and a flair for grandiosity Lewton himself never emulated. It's ever so revealing that, on Selznick's Gone With the Wind, it was Lewton who came up with the idea for the famous rising shot of the Atlanta railyard filled with Southern wounded, with the Confederate flag streaming above--only he idly proposed it as a joke, never imagining that anyone would actually film such a spectacularly ambitious scene.
In 1942 Lewton left Selznick to undertake a series of horror films for RKO Radio Pictures. The studio would give him a budget around $200,000 per picture and a title RKO deemed to be grabby; Lewton would have a free hand as long as he stayed on budget, used the title, and gave the studio a salable movie of second-feature length (around 70 minutes). Over time, Lewton would increasingly have trouble with studio supervisors, but RKO was the right place for him. Although low in the pecking order among Hollywood majors, the studio made up for its lack of MGM-style glamour and Warner Bros. grit-and-gusto by working in a finely filigreed, almost miniaturist style. The art department under Van Nest Polglase and Albert S. D'Agostino was capable of exquisite artisanry, and in Nicholas Musuraca, a master of low-key cinematography and supple camerawork, Lewton found an invaluable collaborator in creating moody shadow-worlds where what you couldn't see was more disquieting than what you could.
He was also fortunate in having Jacques Tourneur to direct his first three efforts (they had teamed years earlier on the Bastille-storming sequence for Selznick's A Tale of Two Cities). They scored first time out of the gate with both a popular hit and a masterpiece: Cat People (1942). The story involves a pretty young Serbian woman in Manhattan (Simone Simon) convinced that her ancestors had practiced animal worship during the Middle Ages--and that she herself might shape-change into a lithe, ravening panther if her passions were aroused. The film is uncannily successful in keeping the viewer guessing whether this is a phobia borne of morbid obsession and sexual repression, or a genuine, horrific possibility. There are two sequences of matchless artistry and almost unbearable suspense--a lonely, echoing walk through pools of lamplight alongside Central Park, and a late-night swim in a deserted indoor pool--that build to throat-grabbing climaxes and remain milestones in the history of screen horror.
Many critics feel that the second Lewton-Tourneur endeavor, I Walked With a Zombie (1943), is both men's finest work. The title is so lurid that the heroine-narrator (Frances Dee) must shrug it off with her very first words, yet the movie is an amazingly delicate and poetic piece of spellbinding--nothing less than a reworking of Jane Eyre on a voodoo island in the Caribbean. Other horror aficionados prefer the more mainline ferocity of The Leopard Man (1943), an adaptation of a Cornell Woolrich story about a serial killer strewing corpses along the U.S.-Mexican border. Although on one level this is the Lewton film that veers closest to conventional mystery-suspense, there's no end of unsettling ambiguity (another black panther on the loose!) and hints of occultism and religious mania.
RKO promoted Tourneur to A-movies after this; Lewton would never again have so masterly a directorial partner. Yet in a weird sense (which is only appropriate), this underscores how much Lewton--with his wealth of arcane historical lore and storytelling archetypes, his quiet, patient attention to detail, and his taste for oblique narrative--was the essential auteur of all his films. Promoting first Mark Robson and then Robert Wise from the editing table, Lewton went on to make the deeply mysterious The Seventh Victim (1943) and The Ghost Ship (1943), two films in which such grotesque elements as Satan worship and murderous psychopathology are folded away inside eerily drifty, almost becalmed sleepwalks into eternal night. The Seventh Victim--a movie populated with more walking dead than Lewton's out-and-out zombie picture--is one of the cinema's supreme meditations on the ways lives brush against one another in the spaces of a great, impersonal city. And The Ghost Ship (the rarest of Lewton's films, owing to a ruinous copyright suit) is like a fever dream from which the viewer never awakens.
That's enough for a legacy, surely. Yet there remain The Curse of the Cat People (1944), a sequel that is not quite a sequel, a pretend-horror movie that's really a contemplation of the fragility of childhood; Isle of the Dead (1945), a doomed reverie about travelers who escape the Goya-esque chaos of a 19th-century war only to be beset with plague on a miasma-shrouded island; The Body Snatcher (1945), an atmospheric Robert Louis Stevenson adaptation that invokes the grisly history of graverobbers Burke and Hare, and supplies a together-again-for-the-last-time occasion for Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi; and Bedlam (1946), the Hogarth painting come to life to portray the real-life horrors of an 18th-century insane asylum. Bedlam's critical and box-office failure ended Lewton's quasi-independent status at RKO; he would live to make only three other, unsuccessful films.
James Agee, the premier American film critic of the 1940s, reckoned that Val Lewton was one of the three foremost creative figures in Hollywood--an assessment yet more impressive when we consider that the other two were Charles Chaplin and Walt Disney. His greatest films--Cat People, I Walked with a Zombie, The Seventh Victim--are towering achievements, and even his half-realized projects are haunting experiences, the products of an utterly distinctive sensibility. This is an extraordinary collection. --Richard T. Jameson
Product details
- Aspect Ratio : 1.33:1
- Is Discontinued By Manufacturer : No
- MPAA rating : NR (Not Rated)
- Package Dimensions : 12.3 x 5.9 x 3.1 inches; 1.1 Pounds
- Media Format : NTSC, Box set, Black & White, Closed-captioned, Subtitled
- Run time : 10 hours and 46 minutes
- Release date : October 4, 2005
- Subtitles: : English, Spanish, French
- Language : English (Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono)
- Studio : WarnerBrothers
- ASIN : B000A0GOEQ
- Number of discs : 5
- Best Sellers Rank: #108,112 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)
- #4,079 in Horror (Movies & TV)
- Customer Reviews:
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The Cat People is one hour and twelve minutes and was released in theaters on December 25, 1942. Basically the story is about Irena Dubrovna who is of Serbian decent. She believes she is from a long line of cat people who believe whenever she has a craving for sex she will turn into this cat person and kill her lover. So when Irena marries Oliver Reed she won't seal the deal with a kiss or sex. And that boys and girls is the movie in a nutshell and even today I still don't understand that movie. Some footnotes about this movie. The Cat People was the first movie produced by Val Lewton. The movie was filmed in eighteen days and look for Alan Napier who played Alfred the Butler from the Batman television show. The Cat People is an interesting movie and gets an A.
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I. Commentary by Greg Mank with Simone Simon
II. Theatrical Trailer
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a. English
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c. Espanõl
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I Walked with a Zombie is one hour and eight minutes and was released in theaters on March 17, 1943. The movie is told in first person and it is about a nurse from Canada named Betsy Connell (Frances Dee) and she tells about her time how she once walked with a zombie. She is employed by Paul Holland (Tom Conway) to take care of her zombie like wife Jessica Holland (Christine Gordon). As for the rest of the story it is too confusing to write about and the ending is something weird. You have to go to the Internet Movie Database or en.wikipedia.org to find out the rest. The only thing I hated about this movie was the commentary; due to their British accent I could not understand them and I don't believe they stuck to the movie most of the time. I Walked with a Zombie gets a B.
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I. Commentary by Kim Newman and Steve Jones
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The Leopard Man is one hour and six minutes and was released in theaters on May 8, 1943. Jerry Manning brings a leopard to Kiki Walker to upstage her rival act Clo-Clo. Clo-Clo uses her castanets to frighten the leopard and the leopard runs away. After the leopard run away there are three deaths and only one is due to the leopard. The other two may or may not be attribute to the leopard and the suspense builds up to the last six minutes of the film. Just like the last two movies Val Lewton keeps you on your seat till the very end of the movie to find out what really happened. By the way the leopard used in this movie is the same on used in the Cat People. The Leopard Man gets an AAA+++.
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I. Commentary by William Friedkin
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The 7th Victim is one hour and ten minutes and was released in theaters on August 21, 1943. The story starts of when Mary if summoned to the office of a boarding school where she is attending and finds out that her sister Jacqueline Gibson has not paid the bill in months. Mary quits school and heads to New York City to find her sister. She seeks help from Gregory Ward, a lawyer, to help find Jacqueline. It is somewhere in the middle of the movie that Jacqueline was part of a devil occult and left. The group philosophy is no killing, but six members in the past have left the group and wind up dead; therefore that is where the title of the story comes from. In the end though you are left guessing whether or not she did it. I am not going to say what it is or I would be giving away the rest of the movie. Just like the last three movies are kept on you seat till the end of the movie to find out the whole story. In this movie you might recognize a young Hugh Beaumont who would go on to fame as Fred Ward on Leave It to Beaver. The 7th Victim gets a B+.
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I. Commentary by Steve Haberman
II. Shadows in the Dark: The Val Lewton Legacy
III. Theatrical Trailer
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a. English
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The Ghost Ship is one hour and nine minutes and was released in theaters on December 24, 1943. The movie is about a Third Officer named Tom Merriam who is first voyage is aboard the ship the Altair. At first everything is smooth sailing. But after the second death on the ship Tom suspect that Captain Will Stone is the murderer because one of the crewmen confronted the Captain earlier. During the course of the movie you can see Captain Stone slowly losing his marbles. When Tom is trapped on the ship Captain Stone tries to kill him. The big finish is something to see with the fighting knife scene with Captain Stone and Finn the Mute. Shortly after the movie came out there was a lawsuit over The Ghost Ship and it was of fifty years before it was ever seen again. The Ghost Ship is a very good suspense movie and gets an AAA+++.
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The Curse of the Cat People is one hour and nine minutes and was released in theaters on March 2, 1944. This movie is the follow up to the Cat People and is set about six years after Irena Dubrovna death. Oliver Reed and Alice Moore are now married and have a six year old daughter named Amy. Amy is somewhat of a troubled child because she is always day dreaming and has a hard time making friends. One day while Amy is out trying to make friends gets teased and runs into the old house where a retired actress lives with her daughter. She throws Amy a ring and she takes it home where Edward the butler\cook tells Amy it is a wishing ring. Amy sit necks to the family pond and wishes for friend. Irena comes back to life and becomes Amy friend. One day dad finds out about Amy friend, takes her to her room and spanks her for lying. Amy calls for her friends and goes looking for her. In the end Irena saves Amy life. That is sort of the cliff note version. Due to the film running over budget and ran nine days behind schedule. The Curse of the Cat People was the smallest profit margin of all Val Lewton's film. Just like some of his other films, reused sets from the Magnificent Ambersons were used in this film. The Curse of the Cat People is a good but not great movie and gets a B+.
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III. Commentary by Greg Mank with Simone Simon
IV. Theatrical Trailer
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a. English
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b. Français
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The Body Snatcher is one hour and eighteen minutes and was released in theaters on May 25, 1945. The story is about a body snatcher (played by Boris Karloff) who digs up dead bodies and sell them to Dr. Wolfe MacFarlane so he can use them in his anatomy classes. Cabman John Gray (the body snatcher) starts killing so Dr. Wolfe MacFarlane an adequate spinal specimen to practice for an upcoming operation on a child's back. When he finds out that the dead woman is the street singer and that Gray has also killed Joseph, Wolfe feels he must stop Gray. Also Gray has a secret about Dr. Wolfe that he uses for blackmail. Dr. Wolfe visits Gray to bribe him to just go away and refuses the bribe. A fight develops and Dr. Wolfe kills John Gray. That is not the ending of the movie and I don't want to give away the rest of the movie. Also there is more to the movie and I gave the edited version the Body Snatcher. This movie would mark the last time that Boris Karloff and Béla Lugosi would be pared together. Some of the scenes were left over sets from the Hunchback of Notre Dame. The only thing I did not like about this movie was the commentary by Steve Haberman and Robert Wise. Robert Wise more or less talks about his career with RKO and Val Lewton and Steve Haberman talks about the movie but only for fifteen minutes of the film though he is on longer. The Body Snatcher is a good suspense horror film and gets an AAAA++++.
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V. Commentary by Steve Haberman with Robert Wise
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a. English
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Isle of the Dead is one hour and eleven minutes and releases in theaters on September 1, 1945. The main story is nine people are trapped on an island where there is plague has infected the people and now live in self-imposed exile. While waiting out the plague Madame Kyra convinces General Nikolas Pherides (Boris Karloff) that Thea is a vrykolakas or a vampire because she is nearby when the people die. Boris Karloff was two weeks in production with this movie when Boris Karloff needed a back operation. When he recovered work was already started on the Body Snatcher. So when the Body Snatcher was completed, he went back to shooting the Isle of the Dead two weeks later. The movie is set around the First Balkan War (1912-1913). Isle of the Dead holds you in suspense to the end guessing what is going on. Isle of the Dead gets an AAAA++++.
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Bedlam is one hour and nineteen minutes and was released in theaters on May 10, 1946. Bedlam is based on William Hogarth's A Rake's Progress, and a hospital in England. The movie is set in 1761 England and is about St. Mary's of Bethlehem Asylum. Master George Sims (Boris Karloff) runs the asylum and treats the patients with cruelty. Master George Sims tricks Lord Mortimer into sending Nell Bowen into the asylum because she wants to make reforms. In the end Master George Sims is put on trial by the inmates he mistreats and Nell is helped into escaping by one of the patients. Bedlam would mark Val Lewton last movie with RKO Studios and his first movie not to make a profit. Also this movie would be the last paring of Boris Karloff and Val Lewton. Also this is the only Val Lewton movie to have a happy ending. Bedlam is a good movie to watch though is does not have the previous suspense as his other movies. Bedlam gets an AAAA++++.
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Commentary by Tom Weaver
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a. English
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Val Lewton's nine great films are finally grouped together on one magnificent boxed set from Warner Home Video called THE VAL LEWTON HORROR COLLECTION. The movies average 70 minutes and are grouped two to a disk as convenient evening-length double features. The fifth disk has THE SEVENTH VICTIM sharing space with an original hour-long documentary called SHADOWS IN THE DARK: THE VAL LEWTON LEGACY. Start with it as an introduction. Each disk has elegantly lurid poster art for the two movies on that disk.
CAT PEOPLE, I WALKED WITH A ZOMBIE, and LEOPARD MAN were all directed by Jacques Tourneur. They are gems of the supernatural, masterpieces done on an impossibly low budget with gorgeous sets and photography to hide the budget. CAT PEOPLE stars French actress Simone Simon as a woman descended from a race of cat people. She marries architect Kent Smith with the warning that he must never kiss her or the curse will continue with him. Tom Conway introduces the role of psychiatrist Louis Judd here that he will play in other Lewton tales. And Jane Randolph will also appear in many Lewton films. CAT PEOPLE is renowned for "the bus scene" and "the swimming pool scene", masterpieces of terrifying horror with nothing actually shown.
I WALKED WITH A ZOMBIE has been called Val Lewton's version of JANE EYRE, but fans of Charlotte Bronte will probably be disappointed. Lewton's movie is about zombies, normal people, and devil worship on a Haitian sugar plantation. Like all Lewtons it has a stunning use of soundtrack (or lack thereof), magnificent photography, and the suggestion of violence. This also applies to THE LEOPARD MAN, which is actually an adaptation of Cornell Woolrich's brilliant BLACK ALIBI novel. There is a leopard loose and several killings that take place in a carnival time New Mexico desert town. Dennis O'Keefe and Margo star here. Based on these three "B" suspense movies, Jacques Tourneur is definitely a director to be reckoned with. I am not that familiar with him.
No less than four of the nine Val Lewton productions were directed by Mark Robson, who started out as a film editor for Lewton and later directed masterpieces like my favorite PEYTON PLACE (1957). The four Lewtons/Robsons are THE SEVENTH VICTIM, ISLE OF THE DEAD, THE GHOST SHIP, and BEDLAM. THE SEVENTH VICTIM is Lewton's crowning achievement for me, a chilling and powerful and brilliantly made "B" programmer about devil worship and a missing sister in Greenwich Village. Kim Hunter made her film debut here, and LEAVE IT TO BEAVER's Hugh Beaumont has a key supporting role as a lawyer. The ending is unforgettable. THE GHOST SHIP was out of circulation for sixty years (!) because of copyright problems. It is a powerful would-be adaptation of Jack London's THE SEA WOLF. In the role of his career, Richard Dix plays an authority-crazed sea captain who lets a man be killed. When first mate Russell Wade reports the crime, he finds the rest of the crew siding with Dix until, one by one, they realize Wade is telling the truth. The only flaw here is a curiously abrupt ending.
ISLE OF THE DEAD and BEDLAM both star Boris Karloff at his best, given a literate script for a change. In ISLE, a group of people (including a possible vampire) are held hostage on an eerie Greek island during a war in 1912. Karloff plays a Greek general. The art direction is notable here, as it is with BEDLAM, which is the nickname for St. Mary's of Bethlehem Asylum in 1761 London. Karloff runs the place with vengeance. These are four of director Mark Robson's best films ever.
Also starting as an editor at RKO (on CITIZEN KANE and THE MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS!), Robert Wise directed THE BODY SNATCHER and co-directed (with Gunther V. Fritsch) THE CAT PEOPLE for Lewton. Both films are "B" programmer masterpieces for me, Lewton at his best. THE BODY SNATCHER teams Karloff as a grave robber, Bela Lugosi as his scared but loyal assistant, and Henry Daniell as the doctor who needs the bodies for scientific research in 1840's Edinburgh. This is a terrifying adaptation of a Robert Louis Stevenson novella. And CURSE OF THE CAT PEOPLE has a young child conjuring up the ghost of her dead mother in a secret garden and making friends with an old woman in a haunted house. Once again, the production design and photography and fine performances help hide the minimal budget.
If I had to pick a favorite Val Lewton movie, I'd pick THE SEVENTH VICTIM, but THE BODY SNATCHER and CURSE OF THE CAT PEOPLE would be right behind. These are such elegant and intelligently written and beautifully made tales of horror and the supernatural. They are guaranteed to give you sleepless nights. Buy THE VAL LEWTON HORROR COLLECTION from Amazon.com, if you can afford it and admire the horror genre, for Christmas. It retails for $60, but Amazon has it for $42. That is more than reasonable for nine movies plus a documentary.
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Well the answer (in my opinion) is very, very nearly. Close enough to make this a very worthwhile purchase.
Those two take some matching .. they are the two most notable ones.. but if you like them you should be pretty happy with all the others.
And hey.. you get commentary tracks on.. some of them.. Superb ones.. especially on 'I walked with a zombie'
Be aware this is a region one.. But let me tell you.. i bought a R1 player mainly so i could then buy this set.. and well worth doing so.. it's that good.
That's the real extent of my knowledge.Now,after having watched all nine of the films(out of order),I can tell you Lewton was definitely someone with a totally different mindset for 1940s Hollywood.He didn't have a bunch of guys dressed up in monster suits running around terrorizing the towns folks.Instead each film became a set piece working on many levels,creating moods and through clever manipulation of sight and sound(or lack thereof),getting the audience to fill in the gaps with their own imaginations,much like the lost art form of the "silent" movies.He created some beautiful psychological melodramas whose influence can be seen in later films on the big and little screen.The Caine Mutiny owes a lot to the captain of Lewton's The Ghost Ship,and many of the later Twilight Zone eps were shot using the Lewton style,The Jungle with John Dehner being a prime example.Now let's look at the films themselves.For this occasion I will dispense with my usual rating of each one,but instead opt for an overall grade.
The first disc has Cat People and The Curse of the Cat people.The Cat People(released Dec/42)stars Simone Simon,Kent Smith and Tom Conway.This has Smith falling for Simon and marrying her.But he soon finds that her fears from her past in a small Serbian town get the better of both of them.When he is forced to divorce her the heat ramps up and in the end Simon commits suicide by opening a panther cage.This is a film that "plays"with the audience.Is the old town "curse"Simon speaks of real or just in her mind? The wonderful use of shadows and well placed sound effects drive this picture and it remains one of his most powerful today.
The Curse of the Cat People(released March/44)stars,Simone Simon,Kent Smith and Jane Randolph.Smith and his wife from the last film are here again.They now have a young daughter who is very introverted and loves to play alone,in fact making up fictional play friends.When her newest friend becomes Smith's ex from the first film(Simon), everyone gets worried.Is she real or just in the imagination of the girl? This film beautifully explores the mind of a young child and her realistic reactions to every day stimuli.
The second disc has I walked with a Zombie and The Body Snatcher.I Walked With a Zombie(released Mar/43)stars,James Ellison,Frances Dee and Tom Conway.This story concerns a young Canadian nurse who gets a job to care for a lady in the Caribbean.The lady in question appears to be in a constant trance.Before long the nurse is involved with local voodoo superstitions,something she was ill prepared to handle.This film is another Lewton set piece and his lighting and music creates a beautiful and deliciously somber mood.
The Body Snatcher(released May/45)stars,Boris Karloff,Bela Lugosi,Henry Daniell and Edith Atwater.Karloff shines as the unwanted thorn in the side of Daniell.Karloff is the man Daniell has relied on for years to get bodies for teaching purposes.But there is more to this sour relationship than meets the eye.When Daniell can take no more the characters spin wildly out of control until the last terrifying moment.This film works on many levels and Karloff does a superb job as the wretched body snatcher
The third disc finds Isle of the Dead and Bedlam.Isle of the Dead(released Sept/45) stars Boris Karloff and Ellen Drew.This is a tale set during the Greek wars of 1912.Karloff is a well known,but not well liked,general in the Greek army.Because of the amount of dead the plague has broken out all around the battle field.While visiting an island where he wife was buried to pay his respects,he finds the grave has been despoiled.He inquires at a nearby house and he and the occupants soon find out that they are now under quarantine for the plague.There is also some evil presence afoot.Will it take their lives before the plague does? And who or what is this evil? The last question is definitely what keeps you on the edge of your seat throughout most of the film.Another Lewton specialty-misdirection.
Bedlam(released May/46)stars Boris Karloff and Anna Lee.Karloff is the keeper of the local insane asylum.He has the favour of a local society man but his consort is not as kind in her thoughts and actions towards him.When the chance comes Karloff has her committed and she must somehow survive amongst the lunacy and degradation around her.The inmates manage to capture Karloff and put him on "trial".When they set him free he is killed,but not by one you expect. Again misdirection rules the day here,as does the superior script and Karloff's presence.
The fourth disc has The Leopard Man and The Ghost Ship.The Leopard Man(released May/43) stars Dennis O'Keefe and Margo.A local talent manager persuades his client to bring a leopard on a leash into a local nightclub as a publicity stunt.The animal escapes and is soon responsible for the death of one young lady.However the deaths don't end there.When they find the body of the leopard outside of town they realize that the leopard has had nothing whatsoever to do with the deaths ,other than the first.Who is it? Will they catch him/her? Again the title has little to do with what you think the plot will consist of.The acting is solid and tension builds beautifully throughout until the climax and the real killer is caught.More of the Lewton touch as the judicious use of sight and sound permeates this film.
Ghost Ship(released Dec/43)stars Richard Dix.Dix welcomes a new third mate onto his ship.Both men have much in common in their background,however Dix's bonhomie and fatherly advice begins to slowly but surely break down over time.When the third mate realizes the captain has a screw loose and men are dying at his hands,he cannot get anyone to help him.Eventually he becomes the captains target.Will he live to tell the tale? This is a Lewton mood piece once again.The title has nothing to do with ghosts of the spiritual kind but of men becoming ghosts within their own skins.The entire cast is running on all eight cylinders.
Disc five contains The 7th Victim and the documentary Shadows in the Dark:The Val Lewton Legacy.The ninth and final film is the 7th Victim(released Aug/43),starring Tom Conway,Jean Brooks,Isabel Jewell and Kim Hunter.This one finds a woman who lives at a boarding school.However her sister who pays the tuition has not done so for the past six months.Something has happened to her sister and she cannot find her.Through a lot of hardship she eventually manages to track her down but it is a sister who has changed and is involved with a devil worshiping society.When the sister wants out of this society they insist she kill herself;the seventh only to do so in the history of the sect.Will her little sister save her in time? Another Lewton mood piece and the clues/red herrings mount up considerably.There is more to every character we come across in this film than meets the eye.
The documentary Shadows in the Dark on this disc is 7l minutes long.I have not watched it yet but look forward to it after I write this.An FYI.This has always been my way,as I do not want documentaries or featurettes to influence my thinking on my reviews whatsoever.
Finally there has been a sixth disc added, and it is the documentary Val Lewton:The Man in the Shadows.This one is about 87 minutes long and is narrated by Martin Scorsese.Again.I look forward to watching it.It seems they have taken the original 2005 release of this set and have just added this disc in on top of it.They have a cream coloured wrap around piece that partly imitates the outside of the original box and holds the extras disc in place.
Technically speaking all films are in full screen mode and are clear and crisp.However many do exhibit periodic defects throughout.Considering their age,this is not unexpected.Each disc is in a separate snap case with two films per disc.
All in all we have a wonderful collection of the major films of a little known producer/writer at RKO.His influence continues to extend to writers ,directors and producers to this day.Lewton made sophisticated and smart "horror" films on a shoe string budget.He elevated the most mundane material to a level that had never been done before,or since.And he appears to have put a cadre of talented people around him;directors,writers,actors,etc,to accomplish just that.He used many of this same staff on most of his pictures he did and they worked wonderfully together.There are very few folks in the industry that could be said to have had such an impact as Lewton,with such little recognition.This set will hopefully change that.4-4 1/2 stars.