40's Inner Sanctum Series Part One

CALLING DR. DEATH

(1943)

Dir - Reginald Le Borg

Overall: GOOD

 

Universal kicked-of their six-film Inner Sanctum series with Calling Dr. Death; a breezy noir thriller that establishes the common motifs that would run through most of them.  The isolated, floating crystal ball head of David Hoffman ominously opens things up before the main story, (which features Lon Chaney Jr. in the lead), kicks off and ultimately drops a mysterious murder on us.  It was apparently at Chaney's insistence that inner dialog narration was added to Edward Dein's script, which was a wise move for these films as it both keeps the momentum going when less action is happening on screen and helps us stay invested in his character's psyche.  The plot twist is easy to spot due to the small amount of characters only logically pointing to one culprit, but the inevitable reveal is still cleverly handled in a sensationalized manner where Patrica Morison is tricked under hypnosis to give us a visually fetching montage.  Most of the psychological concepts are pure over-simplified Hollywood nonsense, but there is enough attention to detail as well as a cursing pace and a solid performance from Chaney to keep one on board.

 

WEIRD WOMAN

(1944)

Dir - Reginald Le Borg

Overall: GOOD

 

The second entry in Universal's B-level block of films based off of the Inner Sanctum radio serial is an adaptation of Fritz Leiber's Conjure Wife which was famously perfected eighteen years later by director Sidney Hayes as Night of the Eagle.  Here given the sensationalized title of Weird Woman, it joins the series' leading man Lon Chaney Jr. with his frequent co-star Evelyn Ankers as well as Anne Gwynne and Elizabeth Russell.  This was probably the most dashing role that Chaney ever got where no less than three different women are obsessively smitten with him, which forces one of them to resort to faux-jungle voodoo, another to manipulation, and another to melodramatic frustration.  Though the story is markedly different and condensed, fans of both the source material and Hayes' British masterpiece will recognize the bare-bones similarities.  It makes for a talky sixty-three minutes, but director Reginald Le Borg keeps things moving as agreeably as can be expected and the performances are professionally solid.  By her and the studio's own admittance, Ankers was miscast as the villain, but it is interesting at least to see the generally innocent scream queen in a less sympathetic and more sinister light.

 

DEAD MAN'S EYES

(1944)

Dir - Reginald Le Borg

Overall: MEH

Director Reginald Le Borg helmed the first three entries in Universal's Inner Sanctum series and his last Dead Man's Eyes is also the first one to suffer a drop in quality.  A reason for this is the redundant nature of the script by first time screenwriter Dwight V. Babcock which has its own gimmicky hook of Lon Chaney Jr. playing a recently-made blind man, but also retreads the identical finale used in the previous year's Calling Dr. Death where Chaney dupes the true villain into revealing themselves while the police listen in.  There are far wackier and more convoluted plots out there to be sure, but this one is just silly enough not to take seriously and the story never picks up enough steam to get moving.  Chaney for his part is efficient yet unremarkable as the joyous painter turned bitter handicap, but he does as good of a job as any other professional thespian would at playing a wide-eyed character whose optical proficiency has left them.   Most of the supporting cast is interchangeable, but it does include the "Venezuelan Volcano" Acquanetta as well as Jean Parker, who had a busy career for a few decades and whose character here has the less than flattering nickname of "Brat".