Inner Sanctum

Inner Sanctum is directed by Lew Landers and written by Jerome T. Gollard. It stars Charles Russell, Mary Beth Hughes, Dale Belding, Billy House, Fritz Leiber, Nana Bryant and Lee Patrick. Music is by Leon Klatzkin and cinematography by Allen G. Siegler.

A psychic tells a woman, Marie Kembar (Eve Miller), a story on board a train. He tells of a man, Harold Dunlap (Russell), who after killing a woman makes his way into town and finds he can't leave after a flood renders all residents confined to the area. Taking lodgings in a boarding house, Dunlap finds he is sharing a room with the only witness to his crime...

Clocking in at just over an hour in length, Inner Sanctum is very much in the vein of a quintessential "B" programmer. Part noir suspenser, part Twilight Zone mystery, it's a quirky little picture that manages to blend off-kilter humour with genuine tenseness. Starting off with the ambiguously filmed killing of a woman, who is then unceremoniously dumped on the observation platform of a departing train, the film then unravels in small town Americana in a manner befitting Hitchcock. Enter a group of colourful/eccentric/shifty characters in one boarding house and the story explodes in to an array of fakes, fancies, vagaries of fate, youthful innocence and dangerous sexual attractions. All filmed in a deliberately noir style of murky shades and half lights.

The production value is inevitably low, but it works in the narrative's favour. The acting is a mixed bag, but there is nothing here to hurt the flow or feel of the picture. Standing out are Russell (The Purple Heart) who is wonderfully sly and cunning, Patrick (The Maltese Falcon/Mildred Pierce) who plays the harried mother role with verve and doting dominance, and young Belding has the requisite amount of bratty boyishness and confused innocence. But best of the bunch is Hughes (The Great Flamarion/The Ox-Bow Incident), who slinks her way through the movie making moves on Dunlap even when she knows what he has done! Yes she's that desperate to thrive on danger and get out of this small town nowhereville. This characterisation is just one of the many pessimistic touches that help to make Inner Sanctum a rewarding experience. Killer ending as well! 7/10

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.

'Inner Sanctum' is, although quite interesting and thrilling, wasted opportunity as quality film-noir. The film opens with a scene on a train where elegantly dressed woman meets Dr. Valonius (Fritz Leiber) who tells her the story about woman being killed be her fiancee. We then are thrown in the story in the midst of the killing scene. Harold Dunlap (Charles Russell) accidentally kills the woman who's attacking him. He is shocked by his deed, and rids himself from the body by throwing it on the back of the departing train. Unfortunately, young kid Mike (Dale Belding) sees Harold dumping the package on the train. Harold tries to flee the small town, but all the roads are closed because of the floods. He is picked up by local newspaperman McFee (Billy House), who drops him off at the boarding house ran by his close friend Mrs. Mitchell (Nana Bryant). In there Harold meets a young woman Jean (Mary Beth Hughes), who herself with a shaded past, starts to feel immediate sympathy towards mysterious Harold. Unfortunately, in the same house lives the boy Mike with his mother, and when the stories about the dead woman found on the train, reach the town, Mike starts to but one and one together.

The film has nice eerie atmosphere, and the story inside the story is interesting with Dr. Valonius storyline drawing nice circle around the main plot and neatly tying the knots. But the film seems bit rushed, as the director haven't allowed the psychological tension between the character grow enough. Otherwise neat little film-noir that manages to keep the viewer interested enough to sit through barely over an hour running time.

In the style of Edgar G. Ulmer's Detour, Inner Sanctum is a cheap little film noir, and one that gains all of it's successes from its plot rather any technical elements. The main problem with this film, therefore, is simply that there isn't enough of it; and while the plot and characters that we get introduced to are good, they could have been a whole lot better if the film had more of a budget to play with. The plot focuses on the idea of guilt and its effect on a man that has killed someone. We follow Harold Dunlap, a man that decides to stay at a boarding house after killing a woman at a near-by station. The plot focuses on the interloper, as well as the people already living at the house; and all the thrills are garnered through that. The film is tense and exciting, and it's also a good indication of how times have changed; I mean, would you let your kid sleep in a room that is currently being inhabited by a male guest that you've only just met? Well, you would if it was this kid; as Inner Sanctum features what is probably the most irritating child performance of all time. But aside from that, the cast is strong and the film is well directed by Lew Landers, who also directed Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff in The Raven some years earlier. Recommended to noir fans.

Harold Dunlap (Charles Russell) commits a murder on what he believes to be a deserted train platform. However, the platform isn't as empty as it seems. The witness is a young boy named Mike (Dale Belding) who, at first, isn't quite sure what he's seen. Over time, however, Mike understands he's seen a murder. With Dunlap closing in, can he escape in time and notify the authorities before he becomes the next victim.

Inner Sanctum will never make it on a "Best of Film Noir" list, but it's a decent little film that I found entertaining. Dunlap (Charles Russell), is a ruthless character, capable of just about anything - even murdering a child. Hiding in plain sight in the same boarding house where Mike lives is a nice touch that leads to some interesting situations. Dunlap makes several attempts to get rid of young Mike - like suggesting he go out at night to see the flooded river. The fact that Dunlap and Mike share a room only adds to the tension. The framing device used to tell the story is also a nice touch. At first I thought having a psychic telling Dunlap's story to a stranger was odd and misplaced, but it all makes sense in the end. At 62 minutes, Lew Landers' direction is snappy with, other than one notable exception - the beer can scene, no wasted minutes. The film moves at a nice pace. The films' technical aspects (lighting, cinematography, set design, etc.) are all more than adequate - falling somewhere between that of a big studio production on one end and a Poverty Row production on the other.

While I could probably list a number of things about the Inner Sanctum that bothered me (like the annoying Dale Belding or the misplaced comedy for example), I suppose my chief complaint would be the lack of any real character development. We know Dunlap is a murderer and a killer, but we have not idea why or what motivates him. He's just a murderer - nothing more. He's not a fully fleshed-out, three dimensional person. Another example, when another boarding house tenant, Jean Maxwell (Mary Beth Hughes), falls for Dunlap, there's really no reason for it to happen. She falls for Dunlap because she's expected to fall for Dunlap. While the runtime might have made for a quick moving film, it hurts the overall movie by cutting out the time that might have been devoted to better understanding the characters and their motivations.

In the end, the good outweighs the bad and I can easily rate Inner Sanctum a 6/10.