Martin Scorcese takes a producer credit and also narrates this documentary a brief overview of the film career of Val Lewton the B-movie horror producer who worked at RKO in the 1940's. Val Lewton had been employed at MGM and hooked up with independent producer David O. Selznick for a while. After the disaster that was The Magnificent Ambersons and Orson Welles getting kicked off the lot of RKO. Val Lewton was put in charge of their horror film division in order to make a quick profit on some of Welles existing sets.
Much to the surprise of the studio executives Lewton made some very good which in this case equals profitable, low budget horror movies using the existing talent at RKO . Jacques Tourneur, did good work with Lewton. Robert Wise and Mark Robson started their directing careers with Lewton and horror stars Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi appeared in his films.
What sets Lewton apart from other horror film producers is that he actually made very good films. Stuck with titles like Cat People, Curse of The Cat People, The Leopard Man , I Walked With a Zombie and The Body Snatcher amongst others. Lewton's production team turned out what at times very poetic films in the horror genre. Many critics think that Lewton was a big influence on Alfred Hitchcock.
How's this documentary? Well it's all right I guess nothing special. It made me want to revisit some of Lewton's films. Scorcese narrates in a very soft almost inaudible voice. To bad Scorcese didn't take away some of the lessons from Lewton's film making style. Lewton rarely made a film over 90 minutes. Considering the bloated running times of his last couple of films , Scorcese could have learned a lesson or two.
The film was written by the director Kent Jones, the running time is 77 minutes.
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