MODERATO CANTABILE (1960)

aka SEVEN DAYS ... SEVEN NIGHTS

Anne, the wife of a factory owner in a small French town, is with her young son Pierre as he takes, without enthusiasm, a piano lesson from Miss Girard in her apartment above a small diner. Girard has to continually prompt Pierre to play his piece "moderato cantabile," that is, in a moderate and melodic fashion. Suddenly they hear the awful scream of a woman from the diner. Investigating, Anne sees that a woman has been murdered by her lover. A crowd gathers, including Chauvin, an employee at Anne's husband's factory. They lock eyes, and later, in conversation, she admits she is obsessed with finding out what led to the murder. Chauvin agrees to dig around for information; he thinks she is bored and looking for vicarious adventure, and the same might be said for Chauvin. He follows Anne (usually accompanied by Pierre) around town. Eventually the two meet up at an abandoned house, and he tells her—most likely making up the details—a story of how the couple met, how she became bored with her life (perhaps an echo of how Anne feels in her marriage), and how, he guesses, she asked to be killed. Anne and Chauvin continue meeting, clearly growing attached to each other, but never consummating their relationship. One night at a fancy dinner party that her husband is giving, Anne gets drunk, embarrasses herself with awkward comments, and leaves the house, finding Chauvin alone in the empty diner. They talk; he notes that they have had seven days and nights together but that this must end and he must go. Their last anguished words to each other: he says, "I wish you were dead"; she replies, "Now I am." As he leaves, she lets out a long scream just like the murdered woman did at the beginning of the film. Her husband's car pulls up and he takes her back home.

Though I haven't seen this comparison in other commentaries on the film, this struck me as an existential (and mildly masochistic) version of David Lean's romantic wartime classic Brief Encounter. Over the seven days of the relationship between Anne and Chauvin, all they do is meet and talk; they barely even touch each other. I don't think they even smile at each other; their facial expressions are always tense and guilty. His stories about the diner couple are clearly being spun just so they'll have an excuse to meet up. As in Brief Encounter, not much happens on a narrative level, though the couple in the earlier film seem to come much closer to having a physical relationship than Anne and Chauvin ever do. But Jeanne Moreau (Anne) and Jean-Paul Belmondo  (Chauvin) do a lot of effective smoldering with their eyes and body language. They are attractive and intense actors, and even when the movie's pace bogs down, they remain interesting to watch. Aside from the little boy, the only other character with much presence is the piano teacher (Colette Regis) who disapproves of the boy's recalcitrance and ends by saying she will no longer give him lessons. The look of the movie matches the mood: gray and gloomy. It's based on a short novel by Marguerite Duras and it retains a literary feel throughout. I admit to almost giving up on the long-feeling 90 minute film but Moreau and Belmondo kept me with it. [YouTube]

FRANCIS (1950)

Francis the Talking Mule was the star of a successful little B-movie franchise for Universal in the early 1950s. The Mr. Ed television series of the 60s adapted the same idea of a domesticated animal who talks but only to one particular person. Francis was played by a mule called Molly and voiced by character actor Chill Wills, but the real star of movies was Donald O'Connor, who was 25 but looked a bit younger, as Peter Stirling, the guy Francis talks to. In Burma during the war, Peter, a second lieutenant, is separated from his platoon and stuck in place during a Japanese attack. An Army mule named Francis starts talking to him and gets him out of danger and back to headquarters. He tells his superiors about Francis, but the mule refuses to talk to anyone else and Peter is sent to a psychiatric ward when he spends his days in basket weaving. Despite having no qualifications, Peter is assigned to be a G2 clerk, working in intelligence. At the same time, Miss Gelder, a sexy French woman, arrives looking for sanctuary after being separated from her father. Francis begins feeding information to Peter who acts on it, capturing enemy soldiers, discovering a secret Japanese observation post, and warning of an imminent enemy air attack. He is lauded for his efforts, but each time, he insists that Francis deserves the credit, and each time, he is sent back to basket making. Eventually Francis finally agrees to talk to General Stevens because, being a military mule, he feels he must follow orders. Francis gets press attention, and Gelder is revealed to be a spy (a Tokyo Rose-type broadcaster). Francis is flown to the States as a celebrity, but winds up with Peter, now a small town bank teller. O'Connor (pictured with the mule), who is personable and believable as the somewhat hapless soldier, did five more Francis movies (and did Singin' in the Rain in the middle of them), with Mickey Rooney doing a final one before the series ended. Ray Collins is fine as a colonel, as is John McIntire as the general. Chill Wills voices the mule as an ornery cuss, not as a cutesy Disney character. I probably won’t seek out any more of these, but this was fairly painless fun. [TCM]

TEN CENTS A DANCE (1931)

Barbara Stanwyck, a gum-chewing tough gal, works at the Palais de Dance, a dance hall where men pay the working girls a dime to dance with them. Stanwyck is popular but her boss says she lacks animation and rhythm, blaming it on her troubles with her would-be boyfriend (Monroe Owsley) who lives at Stanwyck's boarding house and has, despite being unemployed, run up some gambling debt. The upper-class Ricardo Cortez comes in one night and, smitten with Stanwyck, just wants to sit and talk to her. He gives her a hundred dollar tip and she asks Cortez to give Owsley a job, which he does, as an accountant at Cortez's firm. Though Cortez continues to dote on Stanwyck, giving her money and a new dress, she decides to marry Owsley. It's easy to see where this pre-Code melodrama is going—Owsley slips into heel mode, losing money at gambling, hiding it from his wife, and staying out till all hours with disreputable pals and loose women. Stanwyck goes back to work at the dance hall and occasionally chats with Cortez who is still in love with her. When Owsley embezzles money from Cortez's firm and is about to be caught, Stanwyck visits Cortez at his high-rise apartment and asks for $5000. Cortez knows he's being played for a chump ("The only love letter to write to a woman: pay to the order of…") but gives it to her anyway. Owsley takes the money and replaces the embezzled amount, then proceeds to berate Stanwyck, assuming she compromised herself. Stanwyck is stuck between the jealous weakling husband and the loving but disillusioned Cortez. What to do?

The credits tell us that this movie is based on the popular song "Ten Cents a Dance," about the rough life of what was called a taxi dancer. It's depressing, telling of torn dresses, trampled feet, only running across "pansies and rough guys," and being too tired to go to sleep back at home. But after the first ten minutes or so, this movie leaves the taxi drivers and their troubles behind and becomes a predictable melodrama about a woman torn between loyalty to a heel and attraction to a rich guy who may think he can buy her for himself. But the outcome is never in doubt, partly due to the casting. We know Stanwyck will stay pure and true to herself (unlike in the infamous BABY FACE of 1933 in which she sleeps her way to the top); Owsley is pinched and passive (and weirdly looks a bit like Pee-Wee Herman) and is clearly not worthy of Stanwyck, whereas Cortez, who sometimes played bad guys, is rich, handsome and dignified, and is willing to wait for Stanwyck to come to her senses. Both actors are good, but Stanwyck is always worth watching—her characters are strong and smart (sometimes street-smart) and she can usually make even one-dimensional characters (like this one mostly is) interesting. Best line, Stanwyck to Owsley: "You're not a man—you're not even a good sample!" Pictured are Cortez and Stanwyck. [TCM]

FOOTPRINTS ON THE MOON (1975)

We see blue-tinted footage of a moon landing, but when an astronaut comes out of the vehicle, he is dragging an unconscious astronaut out who is left on the moon. We see a man named Blackmann at Mission Control shouting instructions. Then we see a woman wake up. She has apparently been dreaming of a movie she saw years ago called Footprints on the Moon. The woman, Alice, a translator living in Italy, discovers she is missing any memory of the last three days and is in danger of losing her job. She then finds strange things in her apartment including a torn-up postcard of a hotel on the Turkish island of Garma, and a bloodstained dress in her closet. She also has visions of an Oriental room with stained glass windows featuring peacocks. Visiting Garma hoping to find answers, she winds up facing more mysteries. People on the island remember her but as a redhead named Nicole. A handsome young man named Harry gets chummy with her, and she vaguely recognizes him, but she hears more unsettling things about Nicole and her paranoid behavior and finds the red wig she wore on the island as Nicole. Visions of the moon movie and the peacock window continue. By this time, I was worrying that lots of details were accumulating that would all not amount to much. Well, we do eventually get a surface explanation of what’s going on, and it turns out that Harry knew her briefly years ago when they were teenagers and and interacted with her a few days earlier as Nicole. When Harry takes her to his family's house, she sees the peacock windows. Is Alice having a breakdown? Is she suffering from some past trauma? Are her paranoid feelings justified?

If you like your psychological mysteries wrapped up tight, this is not the film for you. [I'll try to avoid obvious spoilers, but I do need to bring up a couple of plot twists.] We get some answers in a lengthy sequence at the end, but those are potentially undercut by the visuals of the last few minutes, which leaves open the possibility that the sinister Blackmann (a cameo from Klaus Kinski, and how much more sinister can you get?) is real and not an old movie memory. This, however, brings up unanswered questions. I feel like most of the puzzle pieces are there but there's maybe one missing. My theory, and one which I have not seen voiced online yet, is that Alice is experiencing some past sexual trauma, as we see a flashback which implies that Harry and Alice had sex in their teenaged past. It's not presented as coerced, but still it's there as a plot thread that isn't worked into the narrative. If you can deal with an ending that leaves you to interpret the situation, I recommend this. The director, Luigi Bazzoni, filmed in the Turkish town of Phaselis which allows him to indulge an attention to architecture and physical place that rivals Antonioni's, and the visuals, though mostly caught under cloudy skies, are attractive. The Brazilian Florinda Bolkan (Alice/Nicole, at top left) gives a one-note performance (that note being confused paranoia) but it's called for her, as her character's background remains largely obscure—if it was a little clearer, the ending would be clearer as well. British actor Peter McEnery (right) is nicely laid back as Harry, which balances out Bolkan's more intense performance. [BTW, virtually all online sources including IMDb refer to his character as Henry, but in the English version I watched, they were clearly saying Harry. Plus, there is a quick shot of him wearing a necklace that says Harry.] The Oscar nominated Russian actress Lila Kedrova has the only other substantive role as a tourist who remembers Alice as Nicole. Some giallo lineage is claimed by some critics because Bazzoni directed a well regarded giallo called The Fifth Cord, but there is little sex or gore, and it's not really a whodunit. I'd never heard of this but it came up in YouTube's algorithm for me and I'm glad to have run across it. The print I saw was clear and sharp, but I think that may have been taken down, and the one that is still up is presented with awful widescreen distortion. Avoid that one. It’s been released recently by a British company on Blu-ray. [YouTube]

THE NIGHT OF THE PARTY (1934)

Newspaper magnate Lord Studholme is throwing a party in honor of Her Serene Highness Princess Amelia of Corsova. Among the guests: Guy, Studholme's secretary; Peggy, Studholme's daughter who is in love with (and might already be secretly married to) Guy; Peggy's friend Joan whom Studholme is trying to blackmail into having an affair; Chiddiatt, a flamboyant writer whose work is always trashed in Studholme's papers. Eventually, police commissioner Sir John Holland, Joan's father, shows up. The group plays a party murder game with all guests playing characters using information given to them on a card. One person is assigned to be the victim and one to be the investigator who interviews everyone and tries to figure out who the killer is. But during this game, the lights go out and a real dead body is found: Lord Studholme. With almost everyone at the party having a grudge of some sort against him, Sir John has his work cut out for him as he investigates for real. This feels like an average Agatha Christie mystery (though it was based not on Christie but on a play by Roland Pertwee who wrote dozens of British films in the 30s and 40s) and it does indeed play out like you'd expect, although the suspects are all let out of the house, and the finale is set in a courtroom instead of a drawing room, and there is a surprising climax. With a running time of one hour, it's compact, feeling like an episode of the modern-day Poirot series, with a full half-hour set up for character development before the murder occurs. The acting is solid all around. Leslie Banks is fine as Sir John; other standouts include Malcolm Keen as Studholme, Ian Hunter (pictured) as Guy, and the always eccentric Ernest Thesiger as the eccentric writer. This is an early film from Michael Powell done mostly in a workmanlike style, though with some nicely fluid camerawork. Entertaining if predictable. Retitled The Murder Party for American release. [YouTube]

THE CRIMES OF THE BLACK CAT (1972)

Peter, a blind musician, overhears a conversation in a bar. The voices sound tense—Peter hears a reference to blackmail, and when one of the two, a woman who we see is wearing a white cape and hood, leaves, Peter picks up an unusual scent from her. Peter was stood up by a girlfriend named Paola, a fashion model, and the next day when she opens up a wicker basket in her dressing room, she screams and is found dead with a bloody scratch on her face. As the police investigate, we get to know other people involved: Francoise, the head of the fashion business; Victor, her adulterous husband; Susan, the white-caped woman who is also a drug addict; Helga, a lesbian model who didn't get along with Paola; and Burton, Peter's faithful valet who never trusted Paola. The police think that Paola died of a heart attack, but Peter conducts his own investigation with help from Paola's roommate Margo. This being an Italian-made giallo, many genre conventions show up: in addition to the blind character, the fashion house setting, and adultery, there are people slashed with knives, baroque methods of murder, plotholes galore (I can't really summarize the last half of the movie because I'm not clear about all the details and I have no desire to watch it again), some choppy editing, and terrible dubbing, especially when overlapping dialogue is used. We're not surprised, given the English title, that a black cat is responsible for some of the deaths, let loose with poison on its claws and attracted to the victim by a dose of a catnip-like scent. Despite the many plot problems, the ultimate solution is satisfying, though I could not tell you exactly what happened or even why all the murders were necessary. Though Anthony Steffan is top-billed as Peter, he turns in a weak performance; much better are Giacomo Rossi Stuart as the playboy Victor and Shirley Corrigan as Margo. Sylva Koscina is fine as Francoise, though she's mostly absent from the middle of the movie. Umberto Raho is nicely sly as Burton. For much of the film, there isn't much gore, only a cat's severed head (and I never figured out how it got that way or who did it), but near the climax, there is a shockingly graphic and unsettling shot of a killer slashing a woman's breasts, inspired perhaps by the shower scene in PSYCHO, that I actually had to turn away from. The Italian title translates to Seven Shawls of Yellow Silk—the baskets with the cats are covered in yellow silk. Generally, it's an ineptly written and ineptly filmed mess, but I guess you could say that about many giallo films. [YouTube]

CHARLIE CHAN AT THE OPERA (1936)

At the Rockland State Sanitarium, an amnesiac who has been there for seven years spends his evenings playing the piano and singing arias. One night, he sees a newspaper story announcing the return of opera diva Lilli Rochelle to Los Angeles after many years away and that triggers a response: the man remembers that he was the celebrated opera singer Gravelle who was assumed to have burned to death years ago in an opera house fire. He suspects that Lilli, who was his wife, conspired with her lover, the singer Enrico Barelli, to make sure he died in the fire, and his only thought now is to get revenge as both Lilli and Barelli are in town performing the opera Carnival, with Barelli singing the part of Mephisto, for which Gravelle was known. (This backstory is revealed in bits and pieces throughout the movie.) Complicating the situation: the arrival of Lilli's young unacknowledged daughter Kitty, from her marriage to Gravelle, who is seeking to get her mother's permission to marry the handsome Phil Childers—more backstory doled out over time. Gravelle knocks out Barelli and takes his place on stage for his big aria, at the end of which, his character stabs Lilli's character as the curtain falls. After the opera, when Lilli is found dead in her dressing room, as is Barelli in his, Gravelle, now in hiding in the theater, is the chief suspect. But could it be someone else? Like Whitely, Lilli's husband who knew that she was carrying on with Barelli?; or Anita, Barelli’s wife, who knew Gravelle was present in the theater?; maybe Phil, tired of waiting for Lilli's permission to marry Kitty? Or maybe it was Gravelle all along. Charlie Chan and his son Lee help Inspector Regan solve the case.

This is an interesting entry in the Chan series. For starters, Warner Oland has a co-star who gets equal billing: Boris Karloff, who plays Gravelle (pictured above left). In fact, the film's onscreen title card reads "Warner Oland vs. Boris Karloff." Partly due to the writing of the character and partly due to his own performance, Karloff is the first Chan supporting player who outshines him. You'll notice I barely mentioned Chan in the summary; although he is present throughout the whole film, and seems to have as much dialogue as in any other Chan movie, he almost fades into the background, between Karloff and the complex backstory which gets related during the first two-thirds of the film—though Oland holds his own in the few scenes he shares with Karloff. Keye Luke, as Lee, gets to spend some time in opera company costume as he helps his dad gather evidence. Karloff goes a bit over the top, but it's fully justified, seeing as he’s playing an opera singer who has spent years in an asylum. Old reliable Thomas Beck (at right) turns up in his fourth and final Chan movie as Phil, and his fiancée is played by Charlotte Henry, best known as Alice in the all-star 1933 ALICE IN WONDERLAND. William Demarest is the racist jerk of a cop who keeps mocking Chan to his face; he winds up with grudging respect for Chan but doesn't really get the comeuppance he deserves. B-talent fills out the rest of the cast: Margaret Irving makes for a bland Lilli, and Gregory Gaye (Barelli) and Frank Conroy (Whitely) don't get much to do aside from act suspicious. Guy Usher is effective enough as the inspector. The writing is about average, with some plotholes here and there; like, why are Lilli and Barelli still sneaking around together after seven years? It has an almost real-time setting, with most of the action set during and right after the performance of the opera. Oscar Levant wrote the music for the opera. Nice in-joke: the stage manager insists, "This opera's going on tonight even if Frankenstein walks in!" [DVD]

JUNGLE HELL (1956/1958)

In an Indian jungle village, people have been suffering from caustic burns after handling some shiny rocks that were dug up nearby. One of those rocks has been placed on a small stone shrine by Shan-Kar, the village high priest, and declared holy. A native child seems to be hovering near death while being treated by the priest. Sabu, the designated Jungle Boy of the tribe (which is an honor, even though his only duty seems to be guiding hunters through the jungle), takes the boy to Dr. Morrison who treats him for radiation burns. Morrison's boss in London sends Dr. Pamela Ames to the jungle to investigate and it turns out the "burning rocks" are bits of uranium, dug up inadvertently as trees are being felled to provide wood for a new stockade. An elephant hunter named Trosk arrives and rival Jungle Boy Kumar is sent to travel with him, angering Sabu and leading to some fisticuffs when Sabu finds out that Kumar has been stealing from Trosk. Trosk decides that he wants to take some of the uranium but he winds up dead in a tiger attack. Morrison half-heartedly proposes to Pamela and that's pretty much it.

After I watched SABU AND THE MAGIC RING, this came up as a YouTube suggestion. It wound up being a rather miserable movie watching experience. I don’t think it's an exaggeration to say that almost 40% of the movie is stock footage of elephants and other jungle animals and landscapes. Two of the animal attack scenes involve an actor wrestling a large stuffed plush animal. The narrative peters out anti-climactically. The backstory to the film is more interesting than the film. In 1956, an hour-long pilot episode was made for a jungle adventure TV show starring Indian actor Sabu who, after having had a decent career as a juvenile actor in the 40s, needed a comeback. The pilot didn’t sell (nor did the pilot that became MAGIC RING), but in 1958, it was padded out with stock footage to some 80 minutes and released in the States as a second feature. A year or two later, it was reworked further and released as Jungle Boy, with the added plotpoint of UFOs revealed to be behind the presence of the burning rocks.  This is the non-UFO version I watched (and oddly, it has a 1964 copyright date), but it was so bad, I don't want to track down the other film; one would think that the sci-fi element would make it better but online critics say that's not so. Poor Sabu, over 30 at the time, is the best thing about this. He is still youthful and energetic and gives his all to his performance. The other leads are sluggish and unconvincing: David Bruce is Morrison, the ostensible hero who never gets a chance to be heroic; K.T. Stevens is the colorless Pamela. George E. Stone, a familiar and likable character actor best known as The Runt in the Boston Blackie mysteries, is OK but has little to do. Sabu's real son is the little boy in the beginning, and even he's a disappointment, never acting like he's in any discomfort despite his radiation burns. For no reason, there’s a plane crash and footage of an elephant giving birth, and did I mention the mostly irrelevant stock footage that pads out the movie? IMDb gives 1956 as the United States release year, but using the Newspapers.com website, I could find no reference to it playing in theaters until 1958, though a few 1956 articles mention that Sabu was filming a TV pilot. The only point of interest I could find was that characters use the currently trendy greeting "Namaste." Do not bother. [YouTube]

CHANCES (1931)

On a foggy London night in 1914, soldiers Jack Ingleside (Douglas Fairbanks Jr.) and his brother Tom (Anthony Bushell) are catching a train to visit their mother while on furlough. Jack flirts with a young woman who laughingly puts him off but says she's sure they will meet again. The next day at the family mansion, Jack does see her; she's Molly Prescott (Rose Hobart), a childhood friend now all grown up. Jack doesn't remember her, but Tom does as he nursed a crush on her all these years. Jack flirts with Molly at the seaside, saying that Tom "doesn’t care a thing about girls," and they share a passionate kiss. When Mom tells Jack about Tom's unspoken feelings for Molly, Jack decides to give her up and begins openly courting a visiting girl, irritating Molly and leaving an opening for Tom to move in. When the brothers are called up for combat duty in France, Molly reluctantly tells Tom she will wait for him. On the battlefield, Tom pines away for Molly, but while on a short leave in Calais, Jack runs into Molly; they have sex on a beach and she gives him a small picture of her with a loving inscription. Back on the front, Tom sees the picture and thinks it's meant for him. When Jack tells him the truth, Tom is angry, feeling "chucked" by both of them. During a major battle, the two brothers reconcile, but ultimately only one will survive to return to Molly. This is a thoroughly average and fairly predictable wartime romantic melodrama, enlivened by good performances by the leads. Fairbanks comes off as casually likeable, and Bushell as sweet and a bit naive. Neither character comes off as completely at fault or as faultless in the situation. As is the Hollywood way in movies with two male friends butting heads over a woman, the focus is more on the men than the woman. Hence, Hobart's character is slightly underwritten but she's fine in the role. Mary Forbes is her usual reliable self as the mother. At the time, the country house set was the largest single set ever built at First National (which was part of Warner Bros.) though it doesn't draw a lot of attention to itself. The last battle scene is very well done. Overall, even if it's not a standout, I'd say it exceeded my expectations. Pictured are Bushell and Fairbanks. [TCM] 

Two INNER SANCTUM mysteries: THE FROZEN GHOST and PILLOW OF DEATH

The last two of the six Inner Sanctum movies made by Universal in the mid 1940s. THE FROZEN GHOST (1945) concerns mentalist and hypnotist Gregor the Great. At a performance one night, a drunken heckler causes trouble. Gregor puts him into a trance, whispers to himself, "I could kill him," and the man drops dead. The police clear him, saying the man was an alcoholic with a weak heart, but Gregor, haunted by guilt, breaks his engagement with his stage assistant Maura and quits his profession. His manager George gets him a job as a lecturer at Madame Monet's wax museum. Monet and her niece Nina like Gregor's company which irritates Rudi, their rather tightly wound wax sculptor, formerly a disgraced plastic surgeon, who is jealous of their attentions to Gregor. Sparks fly when Maura returns and Rudi accuses Gregor of trying to romance the young Nina. Monet goes missing; Rudi has placed her in suspended animation and hidden her away, apparently planning on turning her into a wax statue, and he plans to do the same thing with Nina. Discussing the story further would necessitate spoilers, and even though this isn't a great movie, the big plot twist is a good one. As with the other films, Lon Chaney (Gregor) is the weak link. We just don't see what it is that this lumpy lug has that would lead him to be attractive to all the female characters. But everyone else is good. Milburn Stone is George, his sympathetic manager; Evelyn Ankers (Maura) is a familiar B-movie face; Douglas Dumbrille plays a slyly eccentric police inspector. Best of all is Martin Kosleck, a specialist in playing slimy characters, as Rudi—he is convincing as a psycho and is the main reason for watching this. BTW, there is no ghost; the title comes from a reference to "freezing" both Monet and Nina. Pictured at left is Kosleck with a statue of Attila the Hun. [DVD]

In PILLOW OF DEATH (1945), young Donna Kincaid is running around with her boss, lawyer Wayne Fletcher, and Donna's Aunt Belle, a spinster whom Donna lives with, isn't happy, mostly because Wayne is married, though supposedly planning on getting a divorce. When Wayne's wife Vivian is murdered (by suffocation, hence the silly movie title), the police (and Aunt Belle) initially suspect Wayne, but Belle isn't happy when Capt. McCracken lets Wayne go for lack of physical evidence. We meet other characters: Sam, Belle's brother who plays up rumors that their house is haunted; a medium named Julian who claims he predicted Vivian's death; Belle's cousin Amelia who is a great believer in Julian; Bruce, a nosy neighbor who has a thing for Donna. There is a seance, and Wayne starts hearing his wife's voice calling to him from her tomb. This one of the best of the Inner Sanctum movies. It's basically a nicely atmospheric old dark house movie which holds out the possibility that there are supernatural goings-on. Chaney is a load of anti-charisma but he's a bit more effective here than in some of the other outings, being sympathetic while holding out the possibility that he might not be after all. Again, a good supporting cast is welcome. Brenda Joyce is OK as Donna, but better are Clara Blandick (Belle), Rosalind Ivan (Amelia), and J. Edward Bromberg as the medium. This last film in the series will keep you guessing to the end as to who is behind what. Don’t let that silly title keep you away. Pictured at right are Bromberg and Blandick. [DVD]