Inner Sanctum (1948)

Like most old movies, "The Inner Sanctum" needs to be seen with the mindset of the period in which it took place. It's not a bad story - it's about fate, from the point of view that we each have a destiny and walk right into it.The beginning of the story takes place on a train, when Harold Dunlap (Charlie Russell) attempts to escape his wife by leaving the train in a small town. She chases after him, and as they're fighting, she goes after him with a nail file. He retaliates by grabbing it and killing her with it. He puts the body back on the train just as it's leaving the station.Moments later he hears a "hi" and realizes he's not alone - it's a freckled faced kid named Mikey (Dale Belding).Harold has to stay in town due to problems with the roads, and he winds up at a rooming house run by Mike's mother (Lee Patrick). Here's where we run into trouble. Mike's mom is overprotective, yet this kid was out in the pitch black hanging around alone at a railway station. She's a little tight on space, so she puts her new boarder, Harold, in with Mike. I guess times were more innocent then. At one point, suspicious that Mike knows it was him at the station, Harold takes off his shirt to show the kid he doesn't have any cuts. Nowadays it takes you right out of the movie,While at the boarding house, Harold meets the pretty girl who's been around the block, Jean (Mary Beth Hughes), which complicates matters.The end has a neat twist.This film would have been much better served at a different studio and starring people like Bogart and Bacall or Ladd and Lake. Mary Beth Hughes is very cute, but the script would have packed more punch with some weightier names.It's okay, directed by the prolific Lew Landers, and runs about 62 minutes.

Despite the odd and rather mystical wraparound segment, INNER SANCTUM is a very ordinary type of film noir with underwritten characters and a distinct lack of drive to keep it moving along. It concerns a ruthless killer who finds himself trapped in a small town one night due to localised flooding. He decides to spend the night at a boarding house only to discover to his consternation that a witness - a young boy - just happens to live there too.Although the plot is an intriguing one, it's the pedestrian execution that lets this film down. It has a strictly workmanlike feel to it, with no suspense and plodding direction from Lew Landers, who once made THE RAVEN with Boris Karloff but who ended up churning out seemingly hundreds of cheap B-movies throughout the 1940s. The cast is undistinguished too, and a film with a bratty kid in it is always going to be a chore to sit through. The only person of note is the cadaverous Fritz Leiber, playing the narrator; his son, Fritz Leiber Jr., would go on to become one of the 20th century's finest writers of science fiction and fantasy.

You just know when the movie opens with Dr. Velonious's (Lieber) white-capped face more craggy than Mt. Everest that the remainder is a must-see. Seems the aristocratic doctor is something of a psychic. Aboard a train during a fierce rainstorm he warns a comely brunette not to use a nail-file since it could stab her. He then proceeds with a dark tale told in flashback of just such a happening.It's noir all the way, from railways of fate to doom-ridden characters to a mysterious spider woman, except in this case it's a man. When Harold (Russell) shows up at the boarding house, the ladies are smitten. Heck, even sterling bad girl Mary Beth Hughes flutters more eyelash than sheets in a windstorm. Except Harold's got more on his mind than a dalliance. Instead, he's after the mischievous little boy who knows he stabbed a woman with a nail-file, of all things. Seems like what goes around comes around, which is definitely the case here.Catch that great array of colorful supporting characters. Few could shift from fat-man joviality to sneaky malice faster than Billy House; or maybe the oddest looking boy in movies, Dale Belden in a fine pivotal performance; or Hughes who could easily lead a parade of Hollywood's favorite cheap blondes. Then there's lead actor Russell who remains a deadpan enigma throughout. He's new to me, but does well as a man of mystery. And who could have expected hack director Lew Landers to meld these components, including a good tight script, into such a stylish whole. Likely, it's the artistic highpoint of a long career. I guess my only gripe is the cheap forest sets that nevertheless manage the right noirish atmosphere.Fans of the old radio show should be pleased with the results, though I don't think there were more movie follow-ups. Too bad. Nonetheless, this little 60-minutes remains an obscure sleeper, with one of the best fatalistic endings on record.

Late in the game film revisiting of the classic radio anthology series. Several years prior to this Universal released a series of films starring Lon Chaney Jr based on the series. In that series Chaney played a different character in each supernatural tinged story. Here there are no big stars. The story begins on a train where a strange man who seems to know the time with out a watch and knows the rain route having never been on it before, tells a fellow passenger the story of someone who got off a train when they were warned not to. The bulk of the film is the story told which concerns murder and attempts to cover it up with the clearly visible sting in the tail of how the story is a warning of future events. Its a good but unremarkable little film, one where you can pretty much guess whats going to happen (which is the reason I'm sparse on details, if I tell you any more than I have you'll figure it all out in about ten minutes). Its worth a look but its far from memorable because its so easy to know whats going to happen.