BY HANK REINEKE
If you had been reading the Hollywood trade paper Variety in the early winter of 1942, you
would have expected that the screen rights to the popular Inner Sanctum radio series had gone to 20th Century
Fox. In early March of ’42, the paper reported
“20th Century Fox was assuring
itself of a mystery story backlog by closing a contract with the Inner Sanctum
publishing outfit.†On 22 March, the
paper reported that Fox would shoot three Inner
Sanctum films a year. The studio’s
deal with the publishers of Inner Sanctum,
Simon and Schuster, was a cool $100,000. Variety reported that Ralph
Dietrich – a reliable producer with no directing credits - was set to helm the first
Fox feature “The Creaking Door.†It all
sounded pretty exciting… except, of course, for the fact that none of this
would actually happen. It wasn’t until a
year later, March of 1943, that Variety
would make small mention that Universal Studios would be producing a series of Inner Sanctum films. What happened to 2oth Century Fox’s
involvement would be, much like the tales spun on the popular radio show, a
mystery.
If Lon Chaney Jr. wasn’t the star of the six Inner Sanctum films that Universal churned
out between 1943 and 1945, I doubt the series would have ever received the
white-glove Blu ray treatment they have received on Mill Creek’s Inner Sanctum Mysteries: The Complete Film
Collection. It’s mostly the devoted fans
of Golden Age Horror movies that have embraced this rickety series as part of
the studio’s canon. Few could deny that all
six of the films fall far short of classic
status, but there’s still a lot here for one to enjoy. That is, as long as you keep your expectations
relatively modest. If you’re a fan of
Universal’s second-tier monster movie franchises from this same time period,
you will undoubtedly find comfort in watching a score of familiar faces parade
across the screen: Lon Chaney, Evelyn Ankers, Ramsey Ames, Fay Helm, J. Carrol
Naish, Acquanetta, Martin Kosleck, Anne
Gwynne and Ralph Morgan, just to name a few. The names, if not the faces, of the folks working behind the camera will
also be familiar to fans of low-budget 1940s films, horror and otherwise: Reginald LeBorg, Ben Pivar, Edward Dein and
Wallace Fox.
For my part, I personally get a kick out of seeing the
ever-lovely - and often victimized - Evelyn Ankers slip easily into the role of
villainess in one episode. Ankers had been
famously terrorized by Chaney Jr.’s cursed Wolfman and his foot-dragging Mummy
Kharis. Here in Weird Woman (1944), the second Inner
Sanctum mystery, the actress shines as Ilona Carr, a manipulative, conniving
and jilted ex-lover of Chaney’s. On one
level, one can understand her jealously-fueled rage. Prior to setting off on a research expedition
to an island in the South Seas, Chaney’s Professor Reed and Ankers’ college
librarian Carr had been romantically engaged. Upon his return to the U.S. with sultry and exotic child-bride Paula (Anne
Gwynne) at his side, Chaney coldly dismisses Ankers feelings for him. Chaney probably had it coming when he
dismisses his and Ankers’ earlier romantic entanglement as a mere “pleasant
flirtation.â€
Though one could hardly describe Weird Woman as a lost cinematic gem – nor a surviving one - it
might very well be the most fun entry of Universal’s Inner Sanctum series. It’s
not a great film by any means, but it’s a mystery chock full with superstitious
nonsense. The film’s South Seas scenes
are memorable – if, perhaps, for all the wrong reasons – as the setting is
decorated with carved spooky totems, drum-thumping tribal dances, death chants,
enchanted medallions, witchcraft and voodoo practices.
Technically, describing this film as a mystery might be something of a stretch:
the audience is oddly allowed to follow each step of Carr’s bitter plan of
revenge as it unfolds. Much as in the
case with Calling Dr. Death (1943), the
first Inner Sanctum, the movie is not
so much a whodunit? but rather an
obvious exercise in “Who else could have
done it?†There’s no reason to involve
Sherlock Holmes to unravel the mysteries presented in this series. The clues are all but telegraphed.
So where did the series go wrong? There have been no shortage of criticisms in
scholarly journals and film books that hulking Lon Chaney was ill-suited to be
cast as such cerebral types as doctors and college professors. Upon the release of Calling Dr. Death, even the critic from Variety noted that the brooding actor, “from a marquee standpoint
isn’t ideally cast.†There’s more than a
kernel of truth to the charge. But in Chaney’s defense I’d submit that - in
some manner of speaking - the actor was perfectly
cast. Like his anguished Lawrence Talbot,
Chaney is left completely unsettled by mysterious circumstances (mostly) not of
his own doing. In the case of the Inner Sanctum, Chaney’s troubles are not
brought on by an unforgiving cycle-of-the-moon calendar nor by an ancient
Egyptian curse. In all honesty, it’s mostly
the crazy women in his life that bring him to the brink of mental and emotional
collapse.
I’m sorry, ladies, but it’s true. The sultry women featured in the series are,
on four occasions at least, the root cause of Mr. Chaney’s angst. And, boy, does he suffer at their hands: In Calling
Dr. Death he’s a neurologist who suffers the ignominies of a selfish,
cold-hearted and unfaithful shrew of a wife. In Weird Woman, he’s a member
of Monroe College’s Department of Ethnology, an esteemed author of the ground-breaking
sociological work Superstition vs. Reason
and Fact. Following that expedition to
the South Seas, Chaney’s suffering balloons twofold: he now must contend with both
an unreasonable child-bride who clings to her native occult superstitions and,
secondly, from a jealous ex-paramour with plans to derail both his marriage and
his career. In Dead Man’s Eyes (1944), he’s a gifted portrait artist blinded by
the carelessness of his female modeling subject who inadvertently switches bottles
of eye wash and acid on the studio’s shelf. In the series sixth and final entry, Pillow
of Death (1945), Chaney plays the unfaithful married lawyer Wayne Fletcher…
who may or may not have murdered his spiritual medium of a wife.