Very well executed

The Worst Film Ever

It’s an especially fun movie from a director and cast who are clearly having a good time allowing themselves to let loose.

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

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.

This film turned out to be more of a lesson for kids: why kids shouldn't go out after dark, "You can get hurt" like Mike's mom kept saying throughout the film to Mike. Also a minor lesson in why young ladies shouldn't fall for the mysterious stranger bad guy image. That's basically how this film was summoned up.This film is a comedy half the time, and a drama the other half. Lots of focus on the kid Mike. Mike likes to go out after dark and he gets in lots of trouble with his mom for doing so. As I said earlier, this film is a lesson on why kids shouldn't go out after dark - mainly.The other focus is Harold Dunlap - the reason we are suppose to be watching this film to begin with. Harold committed murder - really in self defense - and is on the run from the police.You'd think this film would focus more on the "Inner Sanctum" world of Harold with things like hearing his thoughts & odd things he does & says but the film is not like that. Oh he does a couple of odd things throughout the film not like one would think nor do we ever hear his thoughts. It's more of a focus on Mike and Harold's relationship with him.It's an alright film but it does not play out like one would like it to or think it would be. I still kinda like the film.6/10

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.

I caught this B film noir quickie on a public domain DVD too, and it held my interest for it's brief running time. Handsome but sinister-looking Charles Russell is the killer on the run from the law who hides out in a small-town boarding house. Trouble is, the only witness to his crime (murdering a woman at a train station, then putting the body on the departing train) is a young boy who is the son of the widowed owner of the boarding house! The kid idolises him first, then grows to fear him as he realises that the nice guy he met at the station is really a killer. The blonde, sultry niece wants him too, but for other reasons.It all runs along neatly, as well as can be expected for a B feature. Russell becomes genuinely frightening as we realise he will do anything to shut the kid up. The real interest of the film, however, is in the beginning and ending. It seems at first as if the events of the film are a flashback, as a pretty young woman listens to a fortune-teller not to hop off the train. But, after we've seen Russell's tale, we go back to the train scene, and we actually end up at the beginning again. The woman listening to the story runs off the train, ignoring the fortune-teller, to her death. But why? Is she so enthralled by his tale that she somehow wants it to happen to her? Is she so spooked that she thinks Russell has already killed someone (he hasn't)? She doesn't know him from a bar of soap, and the poor guy really does seem to have had fate tap him on the shoulder. But is he a ruthless bastard anyway, with his treatment of the innocent young boy? Hmm, fascinating