Harold Dunlap (Charles Russell) commits a murder on what he believes to be a deserted train platform. However, the platform isn't as empty as it seems. The witness is a young boy named Mike (Dale Belding) who, at first, isn't quite sure what he's seen. Over time, however, Mike understands he's seen a murder. With Dunlap closing in, can he escape in time and notify the authorities before he becomes the next victim.Inner Sanctum will never make it on a "Best of Film Noir" list, but it's a decent little film that I found entertaining. Dunlap (Charles Russell), is a ruthless character, capable of just about anything - even murdering a child. Hiding in plain sight in the same boarding house where Mike lives is a nice touch that leads to some interesting situations. Dunlap makes several attempts to get rid of young Mike - like suggesting he go out at night to see the flooded river. The fact that Dunlap and Mike share a room only adds to the tension. The framing device used to tell the story is also a nice touch. At first I thought having a psychic telling Dunlap's story to a stranger was odd and misplaced, but it all makes sense in the end. At 62 minutes, Lew Landers' direction is snappy with, other than one notable exception - the beer can scene, no wasted minutes. The film moves at a nice pace. The films' technical aspects (lighting, cinematography, set design, etc.) are all more than adequate - falling somewhere between that of a big studio production on one end and a Poverty Row production on the other.While I could probably list a number of things about the Inner Sanctum that bothered me (like the annoying Dale Belding or the misplaced comedy for example), I suppose my chief complaint would be the lack of any real character development. We know Dunlap is a murderer and a killer, but we have not idea why or what motivates him. He's just a murderer - nothing more. He's not a fully fleshed-out, three dimensional person. Another example, when another boarding house tenant, Jean Maxwell (Mary Beth Hughes), falls for Dunlap, there's really no reason for it to happen. She falls for Dunlap because she's expected to fall for Dunlap. While the runtime might have made for a quick moving film, it hurts the overall movie by cutting out the time that might have been devoted to better understanding the characters and their motivations. In the end, the good outweighs the bad and I can easily rate Inner Sanctum a 6/10.

Despite the odd and rather mystical wraparound segment, INNER SANCTUM is a very ordinary type of film noir with underwritten characters and a distinct lack of drive to keep it moving along. It concerns a ruthless killer who finds himself trapped in a small town one night due to localised flooding. He decides to spend the night at a boarding house only to discover to his consternation that a witness - a young boy - just happens to live there too.Although the plot is an intriguing one, it's the pedestrian execution that lets this film down. It has a strictly workmanlike feel to it, with no suspense and plodding direction from Lew Landers, who once made THE RAVEN with Boris Karloff but who ended up churning out seemingly hundreds of cheap B-movies throughout the 1940s. The cast is undistinguished too, and a film with a bratty kid in it is always going to be a chore to sit through. The only person of note is the cadaverous Fritz Leiber, playing the narrator; his son, Fritz Leiber Jr., would go on to become one of the 20th century's finest writers of science fiction and fantasy.

I picked up the "Midnight Mysteries" cheapo DVD set for some other noirs (THE SCAR, THE RED HOUSE, WOMAN ON THE RUN) but I hadn't seen this one before. A low-budget thriller in which a murderer hides out in a boarding house... but one of the occupants may have witnessed his crime. There's nothing too special going on here, but it has a brisk pace, some snappy dialogue, and Mary Beth Hughes (most famous for THE OX-BOW INCIDENT, or perhaps the Mystery Science Theatre fodder I ACCUSE MY PARENTS) is a steamy presence. Radio star Charles Russell isn't particularly riveting or anything, but he carries the film well enough. Some of the comic relief is kinda stupid, but some of it actually works. The child actor who plays a key role is a bit annoying, but not intolerably so.

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.