Satanists.....split personalities obsessed with felines.....mental institutions abusing their patients....corpse thefts for medical research....obsessions with the undead. Just some of the subjects of the Val Lewton unit at RKO that lasted only four years. The dream-like photography of these cult thrillers fascinate film students to this day, and are studied by horror filmmakers who have utilized many of the aspects that these films have made legendary. If there is a genre called horror noir, then Val Lewton created it.A great look at the life and career of this cult film figure, exploring the concepts of the technology that to some aspect is really the star. Big names like Karloff, Lugosi, Simone Simon, Tom Conway and Henry Danielle added box office interest, but ultimately it is the look of the film that remains the focus of conversation with aficionados of his work. Photography, lighting, editing, shadowing and music are important aspects of his work, revealing more than the words of the characters even do. If you ever have the chance to see his films on a big screen, I highly recommend it. The echoes of silence become so much more frightening in what he has his technical crew doing. What makes these films more fascinating is that there is a sensuality in the themes, and much is left to the imagination. More ironic is the fact that Lewton only produced these films, directing only the director, and many of those men went onto impressive careers of their own. You can tell by the narration of legendary modern director Martin Scorsese is that he was greatly influenced into going into filmmaking by seeing these films as a kid. Certainly, the earlier horror films of James Whale and Tod Browning had some influence on the technology that Lewton took a step further. I can get watch his films over and over and pick up something new every time. Make that his movies and this documentary.

Born in Yalta in the early 1900s to Russian parents, film producer Val Lewton was raised in America by his mother and sister, honing a colorful imagination even through his years at military school; he wrote articles and published a few pulpy stories before landing in Hollywood as protégé to David O. Selznick. Selznick turned out to be a helpful boss but was no father-figure, rarely if ever giving Lewton credit for the work he did on pictures such as "Anna Karenina" and "Gone With the Wind". A movie-producing offer eventually came from financially-strapped RKO, who hoped a series of low-budget thrillers would get them back in the black, and Val Lewton was on his way. This documentary on Lewton's career (produced in conjunction with Turner Classic Movies by Martin Scorsese, who also narrates) is nearly bereft of details on Lewton's personal life, mostly due to the fact no documents exist of his recorded voice. Photos and letters written by Lewton help to fill in the gaps, but we never get much sense of the reported turmoils and trouble Lewton went through while working in Hollywood. We also are not privy to much information that went on in the RKO offices with each new Lewton release, only that his films were "successful" up to and including 1946's "Bedlam". If all or most of his films were so popular, what accounted for Lewton's anxieties? He and his wife raised two children--a girl who is unaccounted for here, and a son who has grown up seemingly in the dark regarding his father's business affairs--but what happened to his supporters? Editor Mark Robson and director Robert Wise, themselves protégés of Val Lewton, later found success on their own but failed to extend an olive branch to Lewton once tastes in Hollywood changed. Yet, instead of acknowledging the fact that Lewton was out of step with the times, Robson and Wise are left looking like false friends. The special is clip-heavy, with a finely-tuned parallel atmosphere to compliment the array of sequences, yet it doesn't cut very deep. Still, if the central desire here was to create an interest in Val Lewton's productions for audiences unaware of his languid, elegiac and stylized mood pieces, then "The Man in the Shadows" certainly succeeds. It thoughtfully whets the appetite for an evening's worth of Lewton product, and the artful way in which he was able to combine good and evil with the most subtle of touches.

Martin Scorcese waxes poetic over one of his favorite talents, Val Lewton, the producer of cult classics such as The Cat People, The Seventh Victim, I Walked with a Zombie, etc. Lewton's unique outlook on life was present in all of his dark films, which were actually B horror movies with some heavy messages. The most interesting of these for me was The Cat People, which I first saw as a child, and Curse of the Cat People, which I saw recently, and these were my main reasons for watching this documentary, that and the fact that Nazimova was his aunt. I confess that I saw The Seventh Victim and either I wasn't paying attention or I'm thick or both, but I didn't get it. I'm not a horror person so I definitely wouldn't be able to get through anything else of his.Of interest was the fact that he started off in movies working for David O. Selznick, so he learned from a master. The other interesting thing is that not much is really known about Lewton himself, evidently a very private person. Like many artists, he wasn't fully appreciated while he was alive - which wasn't long. He died when he was 46.The Cat People remains one of the most fascinating movies ever made, and it was good to hear one person comment that the Kent Smith character seems like a really nice guy but actually isn't -- my feelings exactly; and what a treat to see the child Veronica Lake lookalike, Ann Carter Newton, all grown up, and hear what she had to say about making The Curse of the Cat People.Viewers should find this interesting, and if you like the genre and aren't familiar with Lewton's work, you will be inspired to see it.

Val Lewton: Man in the Shadows (2008) ** 1/2 (out of 4) Martin Scorsese produced and narrates this documentary that takes a look at the life and career of producer Val Lewton who hated the horror genre but become best known for his horror titles like The Body Snatcher, Bedlam, I Walked with a Zombie and Cat People. I personally find many of Lewton's horror movies overrated but they are popular so I understand the need to do a documentary on them but to do one on Lewton never really made much sense to me. It's even more senseless when you consider that another documentary, Shadows in the Dark was just made in 2005. As with that documentary, there really isn't much to Lewton so we learn very little. He didn't do interviews, didn't have any on camera stuff and in reality there's very little known about him so we don't learn a thing. When they discuss the movies we still don't learn anything outside the fact that Lewton hated horror movies and didn't want to work with Boris Karloff. Since there's nothing to Lewton I just can't justify having two documentaries about him and in the end neither of them do much. Roger Corman, Robert Wise and Japanese director Kiyoski Kurosawa are the only movie people interviewed and both only get a few clips.