The first of five collaborations between producer Val Lewton and editor-turned-director Mark Robson, this atmospheric horror-noir is probably too low key and talky for many viewers to appreciate, especially once its coven of Greenwich Village devil worshippers are revealed to be the very epitome of the banality of evil. Yet, that is precisely what makes the film so creepy and so influential; far ahead of Psycho, it located true horror in the everyday and eschewed easily dismissed supernaturalism in favor of human weakness as the soil in which terrible things grow. (DVD)