Calling Dr. Death

the music is very good and a cast with Lon Chaney Patricia Morison J.Carrol Naish makes this a great little b movie. Also Ramsey Ames is Quite stunning as always. These inner sanctum movies are a lot of fun if you are a fan of the thirties and forties Universal horror pictures. The director Reginald Leborg was a skilled director who never got the credit he deserved. The movie has some very interesting camera techniques rarely seen in pictures of this era. Patricia Morison once said that Lon Chaney came up to her and shook her hand and told her that it was an honor to work with her. She was quite touched by this and had a number of nice things to say about Lon in an interview she gave about ten years ago.

Hypnotist's faithless wife is murdered and cops suspect him until a likelier suspect emerges who may or may not be guilty.

Old radio fans no doubt recognize the Inner Sanctum origins of this film and the series that followed. Those old radio half-hours emphasized the mysterious and the darkly psychological and were nearly always entertaining. (In fact, I think the origins of post-war noir lie as much in these radio shows as they do in the better-known movie precursors.) Fortunately, this series, like its radio namesake, trades on the offbeat and chilling, and though these programmers fail to reach the memorable level of Columbia's comparable Whistler entries, the Inner Sanctum movies have their own virtues and are worth catching up with.

This first entry doesn't really grab until the last 15 minutes or so. Then it takes off with a surprise ending and especially with the surreal dream sequence. There's one got'cha in the sequence that shows real imagination. Yes, the storyline doesn't always make sense and I'm still puzzled by some of the relationships. Then too, looks to me like Chaney's not too interested in his part as the psychologist. Catch that one confrontational scene with faithless wife Maria (Ames) where both deliver their lines like they've been woodenly memorized. Nonetheless, Ames is drop-dead gorgeous in her high-fashion gown circa 1943, while Morison (nurse Stella) has the most fetching over-bite this side of Gene Tierney. All in all, this hour of intrigue is spotty but does show promise for future entries.

(In passing—those Chaney voice-overs conveying his private thoughts are a carry- over from radio where they were necessary to prevent "dead air.")

In between making his classic monster films for Universal studios, Lon Chaney was given a periodic break of sorts with this series of modest but enjoyable mystery films based on the popular radio program, "The Inner Sanctum". In them, Chaney sported a dapper mustache and wavy hair, and his central characters often were brooding intellectuals who wowed the ladies and regularly found themselves lost in a tangled web of mayhem. CALLING DR. DEATH was the first of these, with Chaney playing a neurologist named Mark Steele who is hugely successful in everything but his own personal life. His unfaithful wife Maria (the ineffective Ramsay Ames, who later stumbled her way through THE MUMMY'S GHOST) tricked him into a worthless marriage where she manipulates him for wealth and prestige, and Steele would like to put an end to the charade, even entertaining the possibility of murdering her to be freed. Chaney is also in love with his dedicated secretary (Patricia Morison), and she comes to his aid one morning when he awakens at his office on a Monday with no memory of where he was or what he had done throughout the weekend, becoming even more bewildered when it is revealed that his controlling wife has been murdered. The chief suspect is the young man Mrs. Steele was having an affair with (David Bruce from THE MAD GHOUL). J. Carrol Naish is very good in this film as the tough Inspector Gregg, and his constant suspicions of Chaney being the killer make for some interesting exchanges between both actors.

None of the six Inner Sanctum thrillers could be called great movies, but they're quick and entertaining in their own right, and fans all have their own varying opinions of which are the best. Though it's not too hard to guess the outcome of CALLING DR. DEATH, I consider it a fine start to the series, and one of the better efforts. **1/2 out of ****

Shot on a shoestring budget Calling Dr. Death is not a half bad murder mystery. It has elements of I Wake Up Screaming and it anticipates Alfred Hitchcock's Spellbound in its use of hypnotic sequences while a murder suspect is under.

Calling Dr. Death also gives Lon Chaney, Jr. a starring role in a film that's not a horror feature. Chaney plays a neurologist whose wife Ramsay Ames flagrantly steps out on him time and again. But when she winds up murdered it's her married lover David Bruce who winds up in the jackpot. Tried and convicted he's scheduled for execution. Still that doesn't satisfy police inspector J. Carrol Naish who thinks Chaney is the guilty party.

The mark of a good mystery for me is the fact that I did not pick the murderer out early on. In fact one of the strengths of this film is that it shifts your attention from one suspect to another just when you think you figured it out.

Calling Dr. Death is a cheapie from Universal's B picture unit. But it still delivers some fine entertainment.

I hadn't intended to purchase this Set - and only did so after constant prodding by Joe Karlosi; in essence, these films are no worse than the lower-profile sequels of the Universal monster pictures, such as the follow-ups to THE MUMMY (1932) and THE INVISIBLE MAN (1933).

This was the first of six "Inner Sanctum" mysteries all starring Lon Chaney Jr. (with his frequent voice-over linking them rather naively with the concurrent noir subgenre) and featuring portentous - and hilarious - intros by a disembodied head in a crystal ball! It's not too bad in itself, with the plot overly familiar but fairly involving - Chaney's mind goes blank one weekend and when he comes to, discovers his unloving wife has been murdered! Of course, he's the chief suspect of dogged detective J. Carroll Naish (the best thing about the entire film) though it's the woman's lover, named Robert Duval(!), who's actually accused - and convicted - of the crime. The characters are all relatively engaging (Chaney is a celebrated neurologist with beautiful Patricia Morison as his devoted assistant) and the plot development plausible enough, making for an entertaining and fast-paced 63 minutes. The final revelation, then, is at once surprising and satisfying.