The Seventh Victim

Kim Hunter as Mary

A prequel of sorts to Cat People, 1943’s The Seventh Victim is also something of a warm up for Rosemary’s Baby – Satanists in New York! – and the debut of Kim Hunter, who plays the little girl lost in the big city. It’s a bit of a mad film, not quite all adding up but stoked with atmosphere, all kicking off with schoolgirl Mary (Hunter) being called into the principal’s office at her school because her older sister, Jacqueline, has not been keeping up with the payments on the fees. She’s gone missing, it seems. So Mary heads to New York to find her, and there tangles with one New York type … Read more

A Matter of Life and Death

Marius Goring in A Matter of Life and Death

A movie for every day of the year – a good one 29 December UK pays off Second World War debt, 2006 On this day in 2006, the last working day of the year, the British Government made the last of 50 payments to the US and Canada, money it had borrowed off them in 1945 at the end of the war, when the British economist John Maynard Keynes had been dispatched to Washington with the begging bowl. With the national debt standing at 180% of gross domestic product, the government had expected, or hoped for, a grant. Instead it was offered a loan, on terms of 2% interest annually, a rate that … Read more