Inner Sanctum (1948)

Any more news about the gal who had her heart manicured?

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

Charles Russell is "Harold Dunlap" who has gone into hiding in a rural boarding house after accidentally killing his fiancée on a railway platform. He soon discovers that the son of one of the boarders "Mike" (Dale Belding) saw him at the station and as the boy begins to put two and two together, "Dunlap" starts to panic. At just about an hour, it moves along well enough with just the boy and the killer holding it together; the other cast are rather annoying (particularly the boy's mother - Lee Patrick, and the landlady - Nana Bryant). Fritz Leiber has quite a curious duo of rather prophetic cameos too.