StyleSk8r
At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.
Rosie Searle
It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.
Aspen Orson
There is definitely an excellent idea hidden in the background of the film. Unfortunately, it's difficult to find it.
jadedalex
'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!
dougdoepke
You just know when the movie opens with Dr. Velonious's (Lieber) white-capped face more craggy than Mt. Everest that the remainder is a must-see. Seems the aristocratic doctor is something of a psychic. Aboard a train during a fierce rainstorm he warns a comely brunette not to use a nail-file since it could stab her. He then proceeds with a dark tale told in flashback of just such a happening.It's noir all the way, from railways of fate to doom-ridden characters to a mysterious spider woman, except in this case it's a man. When Harold (Russell) shows up at the boarding house, the ladies are smitten. Heck, even sterling bad girl Mary Beth Hughes flutters more eyelash than sheets in a windstorm. Except Harold's got more on his mind than a dalliance. Instead, he's after the mischievous little boy who knows he stabbed a woman with a nail-file, of all things. Seems like what goes around comes around, which is definitely the case here.Catch that great array of colorful supporting characters. Few could shift from fat-man joviality to sneaky malice faster than Billy House; or maybe the oddest looking boy in movies, Dale Belden in a fine pivotal performance; or Hughes who could easily lead a parade of Hollywood's favorite cheap blondes. Then there's lead actor Russell who remains a deadpan enigma throughout. He's new to me, but does well as a man of mystery. And who could have expected hack director Lew Landers to meld these components, including a good tight script, into such a stylish whole. Likely, it's the artistic highpoint of a long career. I guess my only gripe is the cheap forest sets that nevertheless manage the right noirish atmosphere.Fans of the old radio show should be pleased with the results, though I don't think there were more movie follow-ups. Too bad. Nonetheless, this little 60-minutes remains an obscure sleeper, with one of the best fatalistic endings on record.
Zbigniew_Krycsiwiki
Here is another film (similar to 1939's Trunk Crime) which, in the hands of Hitchcock, could have been much better: and old guy on a train relays to a passenger the story of a man who killed his girlfriend in the darkness on a train platform, taking refuge in a boarding house, only to find that a small boy who witnessed the killing also lives in the same boarding house. The kid can't quite place where he knows the guy from, and the killer obviously will do anything to keep the kid quite.Effective lighting and shadowy look to the film help overall, but I can't figure out why the bizarre framing device of having the story being seemingly relayed in flashback by the old guy, only to actually begin at the end of the film? The old man says that he "had a disagreement with a watchmaker" and has "boycotted time-pieces ever since", so, does that somehow give him the ability to see into the future? Or was this just a badly planned gimmick film? The little kid is effective in some scenes, and silly in others, especially with that stupid hat with the propeller on it; a better actor in that particular role would have helped considerably.
Robert J. Maxwell
The framing story is pretty interesting. A dark young lady is on a train and a mysterious older man strikes up a conversation with her. There's something odd about the guy. He stares unblinkingly at her. He doesn't move. He seems to sense things beyond those we're capable of sensing. For instance, he knows the time to the minute without looking at a watch.Then he spins a tale of a woman who got off the train in a small town and was murdered by her fiancé, whom she was to meet at the station. There is a dissolve. The rest of the movie shows us the story being told by the queer old dude, except for the final few minutes. In the old man's narrative, the murderer, Charles Russell, dumps the body back onto the train and then find himself stuck by the agency of a flood in this small town.The movie follows him as he finds a room, chats with the family and their friends, is the object of some moves by a blond who looks like Betty Grable, as so many blonds did in 1948. But Russell acts sinister. He rarely smiles, and then only in a forced manner. The body has been found on the train and some of the towns people begin to wonder about Russell. I won't give away the ending.It's a dull movie. It's inexpensively made, there's nothing of particular interest in any of the characters or their situations. The attempts at humor are lowbrow and dated. Russell himself, whose performance should spark the whole enterprise, does nothing. He's not haunted by the murder or by anything in his past. He simply walks through the part looking grim. There was some potential in the relationship between his character and the wised-up blond, Mary Beth Hughes, but it goes nowhere.It might have made a good radio play, on the "Inner Sanctum" program so popular in the 1940s, but it's a sluggish and uninteresting movie.
