Shadows in the Dark: The Val Lewton Legacy

Legendary producer Val Lewton who made some of the scariest horror films of all time finally gets a documentary about his life and the movies. It quickly (but fully) covers his early life and explains how he got to work for RKO Pictures and produce "The Cat People", "I Walked With a Zombie", "Bedlam", "The Body Snatcher", "The Leopard Man", "Isle of the Dead", the long unseen "Ghost Ship" and "The Seventh Victim". "Curse of the Cat People" is pretty much ignored but that's understandable--it's not really a horror film despite the title. They talk to coworkers, relatives, friends, other horror directors and film historians who get into how he made the films and why they're so important. What I find most interesting is that the studios GAVE him the titles and told him to make a story out of the title! It's incredible what classics he made with no money and just a title to work on. If you're a fan of his horror films (like me) you'll find this absolutely riveting. At 53 minutes it also doesn't wear out its welcome. Just fascinating. A 10 all the way.

When there's something I enjoy as much as the Val Lewton movies, I simply cannot get enough information. Shadows in the Dark: The Val Lewton Legacy is a fascinating look at the man and his work. The documentary covers everything from Lewton's arrival in America as a child to his early work for David O. Selznick to the nine horror films he made for RKO. The stories and details of Lewton's life and films are presented through a series of interviews with experts on cinema, directors and screenwriters working today, and Lewton's son. The documentary obviously focuses and spends most of its runtime on the RKO period. The film makes it clear that what I've come to know as the "Lewton Look" was as much a budgetary issue as a conscious decision on his part. The only complaint I have is that it wasn't longer.

For many average film-goers the name of Val Lewton means absolutely nothing. For genre enthusiasts(in horror)the name begins to have greater meaning, and if you are a horror fan of the the horror films of the 30s and 40s - then Val Lewton is not just an important name but a giant. Val Lewton was a producer that produced a group of atmospherically charged, elegantly filmed, subtly contexed films from a period roughly from 1942 to 1945 or so. These films were horror films that were meant to help dig RKO out of the mire that Orson Welles had put them in with his Citizen Kane and The Magnificent Ambersons. RKO would give Lewton a title and he would assemble the script, the director, the crew team, the actors, and then blend them all together to make not only viable box office hits but some of the most powerfully symbolic, metaphorical, suggestive horror films ever made. Included in these films were Cat People, I Walked with a Zombie, The Body Snatcher, and The Leopard Man. Shadows in the Dark chronicles Lewton's impact in the genre and gives us some information about his life. It is a short(53) minutes that goes by very pleasantly and leaves you wanting to know more about the man and his films. Horror icons and writers such as George Romero, William Freidkin, Richard Matheson, and so on give their takes on the legacy of Lewton and his films. Val Lewton's son is on hand to probably give the best insights into the world of his father. This is a wonderful documentary that comes with the five disc set released in 2005 with 9 of Lewton;s films. Although the documentary is very engaging and has lots of information in it I had not realized, I had wished that they would have examined each film in a bit more depth. It certainly left me hungering for more.

With a collection of Hollywood horror big guns talking about the films they love, this documentary on the life and career of Val Lewton is bound to make make you want to dive into his best known horror films.

Focusing on the nine horror films that Letwton made for RKO this film is as much about what is scary and the horror film's changing face as it is about its subject. Lewton, he produced the films and had input on the scripts, pretty much changed the face of horror as we know it. Gone were the monsters we could see, killed mostly due to budgetary considerations, and in their place we were given monsters of the mind, with horrors we never saw, only imagined. The films ended up being scarier as a result because the monster could be what ever we imagined it to be and not a man in a suit. Lewton's work foreshadowed the films of the 1960's including Hitchcock's Psycho.

This is a breezy 53 minutes that really only suffers in that you don't want it to end. Packaged as part of a DVD box set of the films, I'm hard pressed as when to say you should watch the film, before you dive into the films or after. I don't think it matters so long as you see it.

A great overview of Lewton's career. Especially good because it ties the mid-century and modern creators of horror cinema back to Lewton as an influence. I could have listened to some of them talk for another half-hour. Harlan Ellison is especially insightful and generous with his praise of Lewton's style of filmmaking.

I think it could have gone a bit deeper into Lewton's psyche and how that played into the subtext of his films, but that's also been covered extensively elsewhere, so maybe this was better off with the approach it took.

I do wish that my favorite Lewton film, Curse of the Cat People, had gotten more than a cursory mention at the end. The films that seemed to get the most time spent of them were Cat People, I Walked with a Zombie, The Leopard Man, The Seventh Victim and The Body Snatcher -- the last of which this documentary definitely convinced me that I need to see soon. It's a glaring hole in my movie watching.