Horrorfest 2023: Thirteen Women

Thirteen Women

Screenplay by Bartlett Cormack and Samuel Ornitz

Based on the novel by Tiffany Thayer 

Directed by George Archainbaud

Starring Irene Dunne, Ricardo Cortez, Jill Esmond, Myrna Loy and Florence Eldridge

USA, 1932

Although she gets fourth billing, Myrna Loy is the real star of THIRTEEN WOMEN, a pre-code horror flick with a mostly-female ensemble cast. It's the story of the grown-up members of a college sorority who have each written to a "swami" for their horoscopes. They each get back an unfortunate letter describing their impending doom. Some laugh it off, others are afraid, but everyone freaks out when tragedies, including death, begin to befall the women.

Irene Dunne plays one of the last on the list, who has a letter warning her something bad is going to happen to her little kid and you'd think Myrna Loy is one of the sorority sisters, too, but no -- she's the villain!

Turns out Loy is the assistant to the "swami" (C. Henry Gordon), and is actually either controlling him through manipulation or straight up super natural means -- it's never quite explained. But, she's altering the horoscopes to the sisters, seemingly causing them each to die or experience tragedy just through the act of suggestion. As in, once it's in their heads, it becomes a self fulfilling prophecy. Or, maybe, there is mind control going on here. It's hard to say.

I'm used to seeing Myrna Loy mostly as the wise-cracking lush Norah Charles, so it's interesting to see her here as a dramatic heavy. Honestly, even though she commands the screen and steals the movie, it's clear that she's not a natural villain. Maybe this is more of an indictment of the rest of the movie than it is praise for Loy, but either way it's worth a watch for her.

A word of warning, though. As the movie progressed, race increasingly became a part of it. First, I was surprised to find out Myrna Loy was playing someone of at least partial Eastern descent -- I guess I should have known, but I just accepted her for what she is (a white lady) and didn't think twice about it, until the movie itself brought it up. 

Part-way through other characters start to make sure to mention that she's "Hindu" (the movie's term), and when we reach the climax, her ethnicity turns out to be a huge part of her motive. So, if this kind of stuff doesn't sit well with you, don't watch it, but it is an interesting artifact of its time when you unpack the motive behind her plot: as someone of mixed ethnicity, she thought the only way for her to survive in the world was to pass as white, and when the sorority sisters at her school made that impossible, she marked them for murder. This is a product of its time in more ways than one -- it's not just the racist attitudes, it's also the fact that they're discussed openly -- something that would not have happened in a post-code genre picture.