Chamando a Morte

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.

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.

Dr. Steele (Lon Chaney Jr.) is a psychiatrist married to a cheating wife who refuses to give him a divorce. He's in love with his nurse (Patricia Morison) who loves him back. Then he blacks out one weekend and awakens to find his wife was brutally murdered. Did he do it or is he being set up?

The first of Universal's "Inner Sanctum" series based on a popular radio show of the time. It's introduced by a floating head in a crystal ball (!!!!). Not a horror movie as believed but a murder mystery. It was made on no budget with a half hour script padded to an hour (notice how many times J. Carrol Naish's policeman hounds Chaney). Also I had the murderer figured out about 20 minutes in but I had no idea why. Still, for what it is (a low-budget B picture) it's not bad. Chaney is OK and Morison and Naish are actually very good. This is not some unsung cinema masterpiece just a quick, efficient B movie. There are worse ways to kill an hour.

Calling Dr. Death (1943) is the first of six Inner Sanctum films starring Lon Chaney, Jr. The film is a dark mystery-thriller about a neurologist named Dr. Mark Steel and his cheating wife Maria. Maria has a lover which has upset Dr. Steel. Dr. Steel and his nurse Stella Madden has developed a closeness but refrains themselves from a romance. Maria goes away for the weekend but has been found murdered. The police are investigating while Dr. Steel feels he may have murdered his own wife... the question is did he (Dr. Steel) kill her or was it someone else?

A good watch if you like film-noir, mysteries, and the Universal classic horror films.

8/10

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.