Inner Sanctum

You could be forgiven for having never heard of this curious little movie, but if you get the chance to see it, my advice would be to give it a go. It's a mix of thriller noir and twilight zone oddity. The characters are a total joy, some are funny, some are incredibly over the top, but each is totally endearing. Harold on the other hand is very dark, very measured, very well acted by Charles Russell. The storytelling was so good, so original, and gave us a really unusual twist. 8/10

This rather dark film noir with its uneasy comics (Roscoe Ates, Nana Bryant, and Billy House who even repeats his checkers trick from The Stranger) and desperate heroine (Mary Beth Hughes), is further strengthened by the forceful performance of Charles Russell who manages to make his rather ambivalent drifter somewhat sympathetic. Admittedly, he is helped in this goal by the obnoxious loudmouth and light-on-brains Mike, who, whether by accident or design, is made even more repulsive than the screenplay requires by the over-enthusiastic acting of Dale Belding. Fortunately, when the script gives her a chance, Mary Beth Hughes comes to the rescue with her animated portrait of the girl who wants to escape her small town "prison". In keeping with the nocturnal atmosphere of the radio series, most of the action takes place at night. However, although the picture is big on atmosphere, despite its obviously limited budget, it is somewhat deficient in characterization and motivation. The screenplay overstates the one-dimensional comic interludes, but dwells little on the forces that drive the main characters. Why does Russell murder the girl? Is it an accident? Self-defense? The script hints at these factors. But why hint? And what is the background to this meeting? So many questions remain unanswered.

I caught this B film noir quickie on a public domain DVD too, and it held my interest for it's brief running time. Handsome but sinister-looking Charles Russell is the killer on the run from the law who hides out in a small-town boarding house. Trouble is, the only witness to his crime (murdering a woman at a train station, then putting the body on the departing train) is a young boy who is the son of the widowed owner of the boarding house! The kid idolises him first, then grows to fear him as he realises that the nice guy he met at the station is really a killer. The blonde, sultry niece wants him too, but for other reasons. It all runs along neatly, as well as can be expected for a B feature. Russell becomes genuinely frightening as we realise he will do anything to shut the kid up. The real interest of the film, however, is in the beginning and ending. It seems at first as if the events of the film are a flashback, as a pretty young woman listens to a fortune-teller not to hop off the train. But, after we've seen Russell's tale, we go back to the train scene, and we actually end up at the beginning again. The woman listening to the story runs off the train, ignoring the fortune-teller, to her death. But why? Is she so enthralled by his tale that she somehow wants it to happen to her? Is she so spooked that she thinks Russell has already killed someone (he hasn't)? She doesn't know him from a bar of soap, and the poor guy really does seem to have had fate tap him on the shoulder. But is he a ruthless bastard anyway, with his treatment of the innocent young boy? Hmm, fascinating

Say what you will about B noir films, but every once in a while, you come across one that is practically perfectly made. This is one of these gems. A man commits justifiable homicide (I would have set him free) against a really obnoxious woman who attacks him with a nail file. Unfortunately, he compounds his mistake through a series of unfortunate events; a flood, an eye-witness bad boy down by the tracks, an intellectual blond who constantly reads (the only one I have ever seen in cinema), and a flood. This poor guy gets the book of fate thrown at him. You are rooting for him all the way; even when he does heinous things. Not to be missed.

This "Twilight Zone" like story is of a man who kills a woman and dumps her body on the back of a passenger car on a train leaving town. Weather conspires against him and he ends up in a boarding house, biding his time. Unfortunately, there is no way out of town and the boy living at the same house saw him dump "something" on the train. Pieces begin to be put together and he must start covering his tracks. The boy is no fool, but starts by feeling an alliance with the man. Once news of the murder gets out, lots of stuff happens. The problem is the old word "verisimlitude.' It's just hard to believe that the events could transpire as they do. There is a relationship with a restless woman which confuses things, and, of course, this boy is going to be hard to silence. There's also a story within a story, where the young woman who is eventually murdered is being counseled by an old psychic man aboard the train. I won't say any more. It's a reasonably good movie with some nice twists and turns.

INNER … is exactly what it promises to be--yet somewhat better. Mrs. Hughes and Russell are good and even, though morally objectionable, likable leads. It's made with some sense of economy, varied and suspenseful. The supporting characters are well sketched. INNER … starts confusingly, with a succession of scenes given backwards (the descending from the car, THEN the picking, AND THEN the railway station episode); anyway, the device is nice. For its time, INNER … is disturbingly violent; the atmosphere is caught with great gusto, and, if Russell's character remains unexplored and unexplained, blank, as it were, he nevertheless functions in the flick. Thou may not like this kind of movies, so unpretentious and modest; but you can not ask them to be something they are not meant to be.

A man (Charles Russell) accidentally kills his fiancée as he exits a train. Just as the train pulls out, he drops her body on the rear platform. No one saw him do it, but someone does see him at the otherwise deserted station: a mischievous, freckle-faced boy. Later, he's walking along a road when the town's newspaper editor stops and gives him a lift. The editor tells his passenger that a flood has washed out the bridge. For now, there's no way out of town, so he takes the stranger to a boarding house. Fate decrees that of all houses, this is the one where the boy lives. The boy thinks he recognizes the new boarder. The new boarder thinks it's time to get rid of the boy. And a sexy blonde (Mary Beth Hughes) living at the house thinks it's time to run off with a man she knows is a murderer. "Inner Sanctum" is a stand-alone film based on the radio series of the same name. That program was also the basis for Universal's godawful movie series, starring Lon Chaney, Jr., that had ended just two years before. "Inner Sanctum" is nothing like those films and much better. The story is efficiently told with sharp dialogue, an excellent framing device and good performances. Everyone involved worked well within the constraints of a small budget; and the movie remains an entertaining thriller that fits snugly into the latterly-invented genre of Film Noir.

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.

I old B-movies--particularly anthology horror films like the Whistler series. So, when I found this particular film, I was pretty excited. And, while the film starts off pretty good (with a nice creepy intro), it bogs down with plot problems and holes that could have been worked out with a decent editing and re-write. The film begins with an obnoxious lady on a train talking with a weird old guy with psychic powers. He can see the future and the lady, at first, doesn't believe him. However, after his little predictions come true, he then tells her a tale about a nasty woman who is killed due to her nastiness--an obvious allusion to this woman! I liked this, as it was a warning for the woman to mind her ways...or else! The story begins oddly, as the main character (a guy) is described as a nice, ordinary guy. However, his behaviors show that he's NOT nice nor ordinary but a sociopath! It seems this guy is engaged to a horrible woman---a woman who attacks him! In the process, she accidentally stabs herself with her nail file and dies! Hardly a normal death, but one that the guy could probably explain away to the police. Instead, however, he throws her body onto a passing train and then hopes that no one connects him to the death. This is improbable, but possible. BUT, when the guy thinks a kid can connect him to the death, he then wants to kill the kid--this is NOT the act of an ordinary guy at all! Now I must admit that this kids IS one of the more annoying ones in film history--so if the guy had killed him just for that reason, it would have been understandable!! Plus, the kid really DIDN'T see anything and there was no reason to kill him--at least not to a rational person! So, the story seems to hinge on a guy who behaves stupidly and makes irrational decisions (more occur in the story, believe me). Had the guy really been a normal person caught up in circumstances, it really could have been a good film. As it was, it never made sense and the viewer couldn't really connect with the characters. The man was evil, the kid SUPER-annoying and the parents seemed like they were encouraging pedophilia when this strange man came to their home and they suggested he bunk with the kid!! I mean, they didn't even know the guy more than two minutes before suggesting he and the kid share the room! Creepy and nonsensical. With the basic kernel of a story, it sure should have been better. Bad writing, however, undid it. By the way, despite the very silly hole-ridden plot, the film DID have a pretty cool ending...I've gotta give it that!

When the local DVD store owner told me that he had ordered something by the name of INNER SANCTUM, I thought that he was talking about the low-budget Universal series of the 40s with Lon Chaney Jnr. Eventually, I found out that the film on this Alpha DVD is another obscure entry from the seemingly bottomless pit of film noirs. As it turned out, this is an effective, brisk and surprisingly watchable little thriller with the clever (if hardly unexpected) framework of a spiritualist (the craggy-faced Fritz Leiber) foretelling the fate of a train passenger (Eve Miller) without her realizing it still packing a wallop. The main narrative, then, concerns a man disposing of the body of his girlfriend at a train station, being seen by an inquisitive young boy and afterwards being "trapped" inside the boy's household by a stroke of bad weather. The film, or rather the plot, has some similarities to Edgar G. Ulmer's DETOUR (1945; the man hitchhikes his way into town) and THE WINDOW (1949; the child witness) but the characterizations, especially of the man (a moody Charles Russell) and a girl who knows too much (a lovely Mary Beth Hughes) are well-rounded enough to make the film survive on its own notable if unassuming merits. Among the guests at the household in which the man finds himself a lodging are the usual coterie of eccentrics: the boy's mother (Lee Patrick) provides a hilarious scene in which she reveals at table that she's a widow in search of a new father for her uncontrollable son and this sends two other guests - including Roscoe Ates reprising his dim-witted, stuttering act from Tod Browning's FREAKS (1932) - scurrying off to their rooms in horror!