Isle Be Seeing You

The zombies are walking the isle
They're somber, not schlocky or vile
With its soft, twilight hush
It's no coffin of mush
But a combo of chills, shock and style.


James Ellison, Christine Gordon, and Darby Jones in I Walked With a Zombie (Jacques Tourneur; 1943). We hope you've enjoyed our Countdown to Halloween focus on Val Lewton. Stay tuned for more Lewton, horror, sci-fi, and monster fun in November.

Walk Show

In this place "Even stars come to die,"
Their last trace a bright scar in the sky
"But the great ones still glow
On the Late, Late, Late show,"
Their new faces bizarrely awry.

David Cairns with Surly Hack

Paul Holland (Tom Conway) explains his views on shooting stars and life in the Caribbean to Betsy Connell (Frances Dee) in I Walked With a Zombie (Jacques Tourneur; 1943). Here is the dialog from the scene:

Paul Holland: It's not beautiful.

Betsy Connell: You read my thoughts, Mr. Holland.

Paul Holland: It's easy enough to read the thoughts of a newcomer. Everything seems beautiful because you don't understand. Those flying fish, they're not leaping for joy, they're jumping in terror. Bigger fish want to eat them. That luminous water, it takes its gleam from millions of tiny dead bodies. The glitter of putrescence. There's no beauty here, only death and decay.

Betsy Connell: You can't really believe that.

Paul Holland: Everything good dies here. Even the stars.

My Chair Lady

You stay in a bare, lonely room

Each day you prepare in the gloom
At the end of your rope
You descend without hope
Your way is despair, angst and doom.



Jean Brooks is The Seventh Victim (Mark Robson; 1943), one of the darkest films from producer Val Lewton.

Manhattan Hell-o-drama

For her sister she'll search the Big Apple

With a mystery church she will grapple
They're not pentecostal
But despotic and hostile
A twisted, besmirched kind of chapel.

David Cairns

Kim Hunter takes a sinister subway ride in The Seventh Victim (Mark Robson; 1943).

The Trump TrainWreck

The Troll-King is not feeling well
His poll numbers tottered then fell
Though the clown tries to cheat
He'll go down in defeat
And his soul will be rotting in hell.

The Seventh Frail

Make friends with the Satan obsessed
You end up deflated, depressed
Thoughts rife with despair
For life you don't care
You spend what's left waiting...to rest.


Jean Brooks in The Seventh Victim (Mark Robson; 1943).

The New York Daily Noose

There's a death cult at work in the village
And its methods are lurking and killage
These are scum, running loose
If they come with a noose
Hold your breath, your neck jerks, now keep stillage.

David Cairns

Jean Brooks might become The Seventh Victim (Mark Robson; 1943) of a satanic cult in Greenwich Village.

Captain's Outrageous

Seafarers, abstain from hard drinking!
Be careful when chains starts in clinking
The sot in command
Has got out of hand
Beware of his brain's errant thinking.

Captain Will Stone (Richard Dix) goes homicidal in The Ghost Ship (Mark Robson; 1943).

The Captain's (a) Mess

Here's a captain who rules like a god
He's a crapulent, foolish old sod
Though nautically skilled
He ought not have killed
His mind snapped, so he's cruel and quite odd.

David Cairns

Richard Dix stars in The Ghost Ship (Mark Robson; 1943).

Shipping Yarn

In this thriller a freighter's en route
And our chilling narrator's a mute
Someone's pelted with chains
And as Skelton explains
There's a killer predating to boot.

David Cairns

Richard Dix captains and Skelton Knaggs narrates The Ghost Ship (Mark Robson; 1943).

Simone Simon Says

An imaginary friend is just charming
Nothing tragic portends, it's disarming
But on Lewton's dark screen
It's less cute: the unseen
Makes the fragilest blend: sweet/alarming.

David Cairns

Simone Simon and Ann Carter in The Curse of the Cat People (Gunther von Fritsch and Robert Wise; 1944), the most magical of the films produced by Val Lewton.

Cat People are Strange

She's French, and a proto-sex-kitten
With a wrench, you are totally smitten
But with passion aroused
She will slash her espoused
Jaws clench and your throat's getting bitten.

David Cairns

Tom Conway, Simone Simon and Kent Smith star in Cat People (Jacques Tourneur; 1942).

Swimsuit Issues

Like to think that I'm far from a prude

I don't blink when a star plays half-nude
Soaking wet in a suit?
Nothing better, she's cute!

In the drink or your arse is cat food!

Jane Randolph as Alice Moore in Cat People (Jacques Tourneur; 1942).