DVD Collectors Online

The 39 Steps, a review by Tom

Title: The 39 Steps
Year: 1935
Director: Alfred Hitchcock
Length: 82 Min.
Video: Full Frame 1.33:1
Audio: German: MPEG-2 Mono, English: MPEG-2 Mono
Subtitles:

Stars:
Robert Donat
Madeleine Carroll
Lucie Mannheim
Godfrey Tearle
Peggy Ashcroft

My first Hitchcock movie that I have ever watched. The movie was alright. Of course the story is not something new from today's standpoint, but I can see, that for its time the movie was innovative.

Rating:

(From Alfred Hitchcock Marathon on April 6th, 2009)

The Seventh Victim, a review by Jon

THE SEVENTH VICTIM
4 out of 5

A woman is looking for her sister who disappeared some time before. As she traces her sisters movements, she becomes aware of a Satanic cult.

This one is possibly Lewton's most enigmatic film, Curse of the Cat People included. It is of the highest quality, especially in cast and photography, but the story is especially intriguing. Most of his plots so far have been relatively straightforward. Plenty to think about, but the core stories are typical horror staples.

Here it is less conventional. If not for the presence of the Satanic cult, it wouldn't even be horror, but actually Film Noir, complete with the suitably bleak ending and characters as shadowy as the streets they hide in.

But it is a horror in the best Lewton tradition (the "dark mirror" as Guillermo del Toro said in an interview) and several scenes stand out. A murder in a dark hallway, a shower scene that will remind you of Psycho (although no-one dies, the scary shadow on the curtain could easily have been an inspiration to Hitch) and a nerve-jangling ten minute walk home for one character at the end. I think it was about 10 minutes. Bear in mind like many of these films, The Seventh Victim is just 75 minutes long, so a fair portion of the screentime is rightly dedicated to this scene alone.

It sags in the middle, but I found the subtle religious tone compelling and this film will keep coming back to me over the coming days, more so than the others in this set I think. Ultimately it was a story about faith and will certainly reward repeat viewings. I'm not a religious person, yet I still found a sequence that quotes a line from The Lord's Prayer strangely moving. The whole final section is powerful and I hope some of you watch this film as I'd love to hear others thoughts on what you think it was trying to say.

Even though it was a downbeat end, I did like what seems to be a sick joke at the expense of Film Noir conventions! It's part of a naive romance sub-plot I'd otherwise found annoying, but typical of 40s Noir. Now I wonder if it was there just to set up a sly stab at what must have been a cliche even in 1943. Maybe I'm being too cynical, but after how Greyfriars Bobby was treated in The Body Snatcher, anything is possible!

As always with these films, I may have made this sound a bit weighty, but in fact, it's still a deceptively simple and powerful thriller that might have you treating the shadows in your bedroom with suspicion! And that's all we should ask of the best horrors.

(From Val Lewton Horror Marathon on October 5th, 2008)

The One Where It All Began: The Pilot Marathon, a review by DJ Doena

What's the show about?
All over the world anomalies are suddenly opening and reveal itself as a door to the past. Sometimes predators come through and have to be brought back and the government tries to keep this a secret. A team of scientists and members of the British Home Office work on these cases and try to find a pattern and a way to close these anomalies again.

"Series 1 Episode 1"
Eight years ago the wife of Professor Cutter disappeared without a trace in the Forest of Dean. Now something weird is going on in there again, it's either a huge animal or a giant prank. The professor has to check it out for himself. In the mean time not far from there: A family calls the local zoo because their son has found a strange lizard that must have been set free by someone.

My Opinion
This was another blind buy and I watched the first season today for the first time. At first I was intrigued by the general idea. Basically Jurassic Park without fences or island. But I was constantly thrown off by how these animals behaved. I am certainly no expert on animals but I've seen animal documentaries since the days of Jacques Cousteau and I also watched the amazing BBC documentaries on prehistoric life (great stuff!). And now this series has all these amazing predators that could cause a lot of havoc just by behaving naturally. But that wasn't enough - they had to behave in an un-animal way just to create tension and suspense with the characters.
The characters were OK, but also not exceptional (more stereotypes than individuals). I don't know if I will watch the second season I already own...

(From The One Where It All Began: The Pilot Marathon on September 25th, 2009)