The Silver Screen Oasis

I originally entered this piece at IMDb on July 25, 2001. Has anyone on the the SSO boards seen this movie?

Since this black and white B flick is only under an hour I doubt that it will ever see the light of day on video. It's too bad since it is an unusual and tidy little mystery of the late 1940's. A Seer (fortune-teller) brilliantly played by Fritz Leiber predicts that a young girl (Mary Beth Hughes) will encounter tragedy on a train. It all comes together when a man (Charles Russell) fleeing from the law for a murder hides out in a boarding house. Other than the gorgeous Miss Hughes and handsome Mr Russell the boarders include the delightful Nana Bryant, feisty Lee Patrick, freckled faced kid Dale Belding and Billy House. Above-par B film fare especially for Noir fans.

In the meantime, the movie is now available on DVD, and I intend to get hold of it.

Sounds quite interesting. Thanks for the Heads-up...


vallo

This is a pretty good little B picture, made by arrangement with Simon & Schuster, the same publishers with whom Universal "agreed" when they made their series of "Inner Sanctum" thrillers with Lon Chaney Jr. a few years previously.

Agree with your summary, Mongo, except that Dr. Valonius warns the girl not to get off the train. It's when she does that tragedy occurs.

A dark, moody little film from director Lew Landers, who also directed 1935's THE RAVEN, with Karloff & Lugosi, and 1943's RETURN OF THE VAMPIRE, also with Lugosi.

Available from Alpha Video and definitely worth a look!

I watched Inner Sanctum on Archive.org and found it enjoyable,with a hint of the supernatural and a good ending.

I watched a poor copy of this thriller and enjoyed it nonetheless. The INNER SANCTUM brand was attached to many things. B movies, radio plays, even a series of books if I understand correctly. I don't know much about this topic, but it intrigues me. That, I must suppose, was the intention! I've rekindled this thread because I have nothing better to do!

I remember hearing an Inner Sanctum radio show when I was a kid. I also think that I might have seen a very early MAD magazine takeoff on it.

Here's an archive of radio shows from the series:

It is an excellent B Movie Film Noir. I love it and would like seeing it again in the near future too.

This is a great little noir. Too often it gets confused with a series of "B" films put out by Universal. Each of the series entries had its own title, but Universal always emphasized the "Inner Sanctum" connection, as shown below:

Here's the film at the Internet Archive: https://archive.org/details/Inner_Sanctum_movie.