Simply Perfect

Sick Product of a Sick System

Good story, Not enough for a whole film

One of the most extraordinary films you will see this year. Take that as you want.

Bored and restless on a lengthy train trip, a young woman listens to a mysterious passenger tell a tale of a murderer forced to hide out in the town where he committed the crime in this low budget film noir entry. The film features an alluring femme fatale, some great hard-boiled dialogue ("you're very pretty when your lips aren't moving") and some excellent tracking shots throughout various gardens at night. The movie has, however, attained a mixed reputation over the years and it is easy to see why. The tone is inconsistent with several borderline comedic scenes that subtract from the desperation and paranoia of a murderer on the run. Dale Belding is also awful as the sole witness to the murder: a teenager who lives at the bed and breakfast place where the murderer is forced to hide out. Between his silly trusting of strangers, shrill high pitched voice and constant yapping on about his overprotective mother, it actually reaches the point where one hopes that the protagonist succeeds in his plan to permanently silence the boy! Belding aside though, this is a fairly decent watch. The initially incongruous prologue actually fits in very well and the film concludes with surprising food for thought.

Like most old movies, "The Inner Sanctum" needs to be seen with the mindset of the period in which it took place. It's not a bad story - it's about fate, from the point of view that we each have a destiny and walk right into it.The beginning of the story takes place on a train, when Harold Dunlap (Charlie Russell) attempts to escape his wife by leaving the train in a small town. She chases after him, and as they're fighting, she goes after him with a nail file. He retaliates by grabbing it and killing her with it. He puts the body back on the train just as it's leaving the station.Moments later he hears a "hi" and realizes he's not alone - it's a freckled faced kid named Mikey (Dale Belding).Harold has to stay in town due to problems with the roads, and he winds up at a rooming house run by Mike's mother (Lee Patrick). Here's where we run into trouble. Mike's mom is overprotective, yet this kid was out in the pitch black hanging around alone at a railway station. She's a little tight on space, so she puts her new boarder, Harold, in with Mike. I guess times were more innocent then. At one point, suspicious that Mike knows it was him at the station, Harold takes off his shirt to show the kid he doesn't have any cuts. Nowadays it takes you right out of the movie,While at the boarding house, Harold meets the pretty girl who's been around the block, Jean (Mary Beth Hughes), which complicates matters.The end has a neat twist.This film would have been much better served at a different studio and starring people like Bogart and Bacall or Ladd and Lake. Mary Beth Hughes is very cute, but the script would have packed more punch with some weightier names.It's okay, directed by the prolific Lew Landers, and runs about 62 minutes.

'Inner Sanctum' has nothing to do with the radio show, and the title hardly prepares one for a rather ugly story. To me, this is quintessential film noir...low budget, a dark film that plays like a nightmare.Charles Russell is hardly the face of evil, as say, Robert Mitchum could play. But this man does not look right. An early scene sees the man killing a woman, and then quite willing to murder a boy. He menacingly tells the Mary Beth Hughes' character twice: 'you're real pretty, when your lips aren't moving...'There is a mysterious psychic doctor character who relates the gruesome tale to a woman on a train. This was a very clever ploy to give the whole piece a 'recurring nightmare' effect, another outstanding feature of film noir at its best.Is it a great movie? I was a bit disappointed in the ending. I found the usually pleasing Lee Patrick more than a bit abrasive as the doting mother. But I was fascinated in the piece enough to watch it twice. Like the movie 'Strange Illusion', the movie stays in your head...much like a recurring nightmare!

When somebody knows the time automatically without even having to look at a watch, they are somebody whose warnings should be heeded. For the female passenger on the seat next to him, listening to his story of a murderer on the run might seem like a minor time-killer, but when destiny calls, you will be there to answer the phone.The story the elderly man tells concerns the killer on the run (Charles Russell) who picks up a ride with a chatty salesman (Billy House) who drops him off at a boarding house run by Nana Bryant. Ironically, staying there is the kid (Dale Belding) who saw Russell drop the body on a departing train, afraid to tell because his rather abusive mother (Lee Patrick in an extremely obnoxious performance) will hit him. Russell hits it off with Bryant's pretty sexpot niece (Mary Beth Hughes), a 9:00 girl in a 5:00 town who longs for life outside the boarding house. Russell, worried that the kid knows more than he's telling, plots to silence him.Some outlandish plot developments diminish what might have been an intriguing poverty row film noir. Belding, the freckle-faced kid, initially comes off as goofy and meddlesome (getting giggles with his toothy grin), but as his dangerous situation increased, he begins to win more sympathy. Veteran stutterer Roscoe Ates only gets to do a bit of his stuttering act for a moment, playing a drunken resident of the boarding house whose obviously had one too many. That's a relief, considering that his over-kill of this schtick from movies of the 30's made this gag tired beyond amusement.There's a brilliant denouncement at the end which wraps up everything neatly and explains everything in short and sweet detail. As far as film noir goes, this bottom of the bill second feature may not be great, but elements of the plot's structure will keep you rivited none the less.