This week’s mystery movie was the 1943 RKO picture “The Seventh Victim” and there’s a bit of a story to go with it. On Sunday, I had dinner at Musso and Frank with Mary Mallory and Alexa Foreman, formerly head researcher at TCM, who was in town for the TCM Classic Film Festival. The restaurant was packed with TCM fans and we happened to see Eddie Muller of the Film Noir Foundation and his wife, and (to do a bit of name-dropping) Quentin Tarantino. Over dinner, I asked Mary and Alexa to suggest this week’s mystery movie. They came up with several movies that aren’t in the Daily Mirror vaults, but then hit on “The Seventh Victim” and so here we are.

“The Seventh Victim” stars Tom Conway, Jean Brooks, Isabel Jewell and Kim Hunter in her screen debut, with Evelyn Brent, Erford Gage, Ben Bard, Hugh Beaumont, Chef Milani and Marguerita Sylva. It was photographed by Nicholas Musuraca, with art direction by Albert S. D’Agostino and Walter E. Keller. It was produced by Val Lewton, written by Charles O’Neal and DeWitt Bodeen and directed by Mark Robson.

It’s available on DVD with “Shadows of the Dark” from Amazon.

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This week’s mystery movie has been the 1956 Columbia picture “Wicked as They Come,” with Arlene Dahl, Phil Carey, Herbert Marshall, Michael Goodliffe, Ralph Truman, Sidney James, David Kossoff, Faith Brook and Frederick Valk. The screenplay was by Ken Hughes (who also directed), from a story by Robert Westerby and Sigmund Miller based on the novel “Portrait in Smoke” by Bill Ballinger. Music was by Malcolm Arnold, conducted by Muir Mathieson.

The movie opened in Los Angeles on Jan. 16, 1957, as the second half of a double bill with “Nightfall,” starring Brian Keith and Anne Bancroft, at the RKO Hillstreet and Whittier theaters, and at local drive-ins. (Yes, drive-ins in January).

As far as I can determine, it has never been commercially released on DVD or VHS.

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This week’s mystery movie was the 1951 film “He Ran All the Way,” directed by John Berry, with John Garfield, Shelley Winters, Wallace Ford, Selena Royle, Gladys George, Norman Lloyd and Bobby Hyatt. The screenplay was credited to Hugo Butler and Guy Endore (actually Dalton Trumbo) based on the novel by Sam Ross. The photography was by James Wong Howe with music by Franz Waxman.

It is available from Kino films on DVD and Blu-Ray. It will be shown during the TCM Classic Film Festival on April 29 at noon at the Egyptian Theatre, with Dennis Berry, the son of director John Berry, and Hollywood Reporter film critic Todd  McCarthy.

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This week’s mystery movie has been the 1937 Warner Bros. picture “The Case of the Stuttering Bishop,” with Donald Woods, Ann Dvorak, Anne Nagel and Linda Perry. It was directed by William Clemens from a screenplay by Kenneth Gamet and Don Ryan, based on a story by Erle Stanley Gardner.

It doesn’t appear that the film was ever commercially released on VHS or DVD.

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This week’s mystery movie has been “Die Buchse der Pandora” or “Pandora’s Box,”  the 1929 Nero film directed by Georg Wilhelm Pabst from a screenplay by Ladislaus Vajda, photographed by Gunther Krampf, with Louise Brooks, Fritz Kortner, Franz Lederer, Carl Goez, Krafft-Raschig, Alice Roberts, Daisy d’Ora, Gustav Diessl, Michael v. Newlinsky and Siegfried Arno.

The earliest showing I can find in Los Angeles is a 1962 revival at UCLA in which “Pandora’s Box” was screened in a series with “Fires on the Plain,” “The Cousins,” “Sunset Boulevard” and “M.” The earliest screening I can find in New York is a 1959 showing at the High School of Fashion Industries auditorium.

The movie is available in a Criterion Collection edition.

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