 The original story for the film (outlined by DeWitt Bodeen (qv))  was to be about an orphaned heroine caught in a web of murder  against a background of the Signal Hills oil wells. If she didnt  find out the killers identity in time, she would become his seventh  victim. Producer Val Lewton (qv) wanted the story to go in a  different direction and called in a second writer to help reshape  it.