David Hoffman as the uncredited Host of the Inner Sanctum pictures.
While the Inner Sanctum films do bear a superficial resemblance to Columbia's B-picture series based on the radio series THE WHISTLER - in that they all feature the same lead actor in an anthology of different atmospheric thrillers - any resemblance should be inverted as THE WHISTLER's March 30, 1944 premiere followed that of CALLING DR. DEATH on December 17 of the previous year, by a few months - enough time to have been made in legitimate response to it. However, as is also true of most WHISTLER films, you cannot really call most Inner Sanctum films "mysteries" in the accepted sense because they are not about presenting clues to help the viewer solve crimes; nor are they particularly innocent in encouraging people to regard them as horror, with their exploitative titles and shared opening footage of a disembodied head (David Hoffman) babbling its forebodings from a crystal ball in an eerily empty, book-lined room ("This... is the Inner Sanctum!"). They are more accurately suspense pictures, moreso about human (most particularly abnormal) psychology, assembling stories from aspects of the uncanny and evoking atmospheres of encroaching dread. Chaney was hardly Universal's most flexible actor, but his roles in these half-dozen films are remarkably well-tailored to the tragic persona that became his with his performances in OF MICE AND MEN (1939) and THE WOLF MAN, and actually put forth his finest work for the studio outside the latter, his best-known characterization. |
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| Lon Chaney hypnotizes Patricia Morison in this promo shot for CALLING DR. DEATH. |
Seen today, the three LeBorg films exercise particular interest. They share a certain uniformity not carried over into the final three, which is primarily expressed through the use of whispered internal monologues and fascinating montage sequences used to illustrate the Chaney characters' oppressed states of mind. CALLING DR. DEATH was scripted by Edward Dein, who had previously written for the FALCON series and provided dialogue for Val Lewton's THE LEOPARD MAN; he would subsequently write Universal's JUNGLE WOMAN, THE CAT CREEPS, and CURSE OF THE UNDEAD, as well as different entries in the FALCON, LONE WOLF and BOSTON BLACKIE series, which explains the film's neat fusion of horror and noir elements.
Seen today, CALLING DR. DEATH is of particular interest for introducing elements that would become common to the Italian giallo thrillers of the 1970s: Chaney plays Dr. Mark Steele, a neurologist who has made successful use of hypnotism in his practice, who suffers a black-out covering a period of a few days during which his wife (Ramsay Ames) is murdered - which together present us with the untrustworthy protagonist and the hero who knows but cannot recall important information needed by the investigation. J. Carroll Naish plays the persistent Inspector Gregg, who thinks Steele guilty, and Patricia Morison is Steele's devoted secretary, the delightfully named (one might even say SPOILISHLY named) Stella Madden. One would have to call CALLING DR. DEATH a "whodunit," but given the stylistic touches and tropes it introduces, it is also more than just this.
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| Voodoo doll Evelyn Ankers in a nice double-exposure from WEIRD WOMAN. |
WEIRD WOMAN - based on the Fritz Leiber novel CONJURE WIFE (subsequently filmed as BURN, WITCH, BURN) - is one of the best and most atypical films in the series. Though Chaney occupies center-stage throughout, it's very much a woman's picture and was in fact scripted by one, Brenda Weisberg, who had just written THE MAD GHOUL for Universal and would go on to write THE MUMMY'S GHOST and the original story for THE SCARLET CLAW, generally accepted as the finest of the company's modernized Sherlock Holmes pictures with Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce. Though much simplified (and sanitized) from the Leiber novel, the value of the book's core idea comes through as confident, somewhat arrogant, college anthropology professor Norman Reed (Norman Saylor in the book, Chaney) discovers that his wife Paula (Tansy in the novel, Anne Gwynne) - whom he met as the adopted daughter of a voodoo priestess while researching a book of native superstitions in the tropics - is furtively guiding the successful trajectory of his career with the very mumbo-jumbo he's built a career on debunking. He confronts her with his discoveries and demands that she stop, which instantly makes him more vulnerable to other witchery locally in play among the ambitious wives of his fellow academics than he could ever have suspected.
There is a satirical element here involving the highly competitive lifestyle within academia, which can also be carried over into similar lifestyles such as those within politics or even show business, but also an important serious analysis of the domestic roles played by men and women circa the 1940s, the latter often being asked to put their own beliefs aside to follow those of their men, for no better reason than masculine vanity. It's also interesting that this Universal adaptation renames Leiber's Tansy with the name of its parallel series' Ape Woman; one wonders if the script might have been envisioned at one time as a co-vehicle for its new star, Acquanetta (who would turn up in the next Inner Sanctum instead). This is a very well-crafted little film, made all the stronger by an exceptional cast that includes Evelyn Ankers (in a rare antagonistic role), Elisabeth Risdon, and CAT PEOPLE's always effective Elizabeth Russell.
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| Lon Chaney suffers a medicine chest mishap in DEAD MAN'S EYES. |
The next film in the series, DEAD MAN'S EYES, marked the screenwriting career of Dwight V. Babcock, an established short story writer for BLACK MASK since 1934 who had more recently broken into novel-length work with A HOMICIDE FOR HANNA, published by Knopf in 1941. In this story, Chaney plays Dave Stuart, a struggling fine artist who suffers his worst luck while finally achieving his breakthrough work with a portrait of his exotic model, Tanya (Aquanetta). Dave is engaged to Heather Hayden (Paula Kelly), daughter of wealthy Stanley "Dad" Hayden (Edward Fielding), who's quite fond of his prospective son-in-law - and hooked on a daily routine of refreshing his tired eyes with an eyewash labelled Acetic Acid. When Tanya overhears discussion of Dave's pending nuptuals, she excuses herself and makes a little mess in the bathroom that she straightens by carelessly returning the bottles to the medicine cabinet, mixing up Dave's Acetic Acid with an almost identical bottle of the far worse Boric Acid, which really has no business in anyone's medicine chest. The dreaded mistake happens, Dave goes blind, and aging "Dad" Hayden makes a new addition to his will, ensuring that Dave will receive his corneas in a transplant procedure in the event of his death. When "Dad" turns up... "Dadder than a doornail," you might say... the incapacitated Dave seems the least likely suspect, but persistent Captain Drury (Thomas Gomez) must take into account that he also had the most to gain from his death. No film in the series exceeds co-billing length, and this 64m item can hardly be accused of overstaying its welcome.
As with the first film in the series, LeBorg and Babcock establish some early giallo traits here - notably, the art milieu of Argento's THE BIRD WITH THE CRYSTAL PLUMAGE (1969) and the use of a blind protagonist as detective as in THE CAT O' NINE TAILS (1971). It's surprising that the story interjects no dark side to the subject of cornea transplants, as the inheritance of other's organs always has in films, from Robert Weine's THE HANDS OF ORLAC (1924) to Eric Red's BODY PARTS (1991), based on the Boileau-Narcejac novel CHOICE CUTS. This was the first of three Inner Sanctum titles to be photographed by DP Paul Ivano, who had previously shot Robert Florey's acclaimed short THE LIFE AND DEATH OF 9413, A HOLLYWOOD EXTRA (1928), Josef von Sternberg's THE SHANGHAI GESTURE (1941), Julien Duvivier's FLESH AND FANTASY (1943), as well as some additional photography for FRANKENSTEIN (1931) and QUEEN KELLY (1932). For a film completed in less than two weeks, DEAD MAN'S EYES is remarkably polished and shot through with memorable noir images.
TO BE CONTINUED
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