Calling Dr. Death

Dir. Reginald Le Bord

63 Minutes

USA

1943

Starring: Lon Chaney Jr., Patricia Morison, J. Carrol Naish, David Bruce, Ramsay Ames, Fay Helm

**1/2/*****

First film in the set of six in Universal's "Inner Sanctum" mystery series, all starring Lon Chaney Jr. Interestingly, these feel like they pre-date what would eventually become anthologized horror, even including an Twilight Zone-type opening of a disembodied head floating in space with the same lines entering the viewer into the Inner Sanctum.

Calling Dr. Death is a quick piece at barely over an hour in length, with Chaney playing a neurologist with a poor relationship with his nagging wife. He awakens on Monday morning with no recollection of the weekend and discovers that his wife has been murdered. He turns to his lovely nurse (Patricia Morison) to hypnotize him into recovering his lost memories. There is an oddness to the picture, with director Reginald Le Borg going towards a dreamy style, complete with an intrusive and consistent whispered narration by Chaney as he both presents his life situation and assesses the drama. It is a far cry from even the best of Universal's "creepy' output of the time, but accomplishes its B-intentions without going too far beyond any hint of ambition. Le Borg keeps things moving at a modest pace, and there is more interest regarding his style and rhythm than in the actual mystery itself which is fairly easy to crack. And Chaney is his usual (mostly awful) self, and the set of films has a real troubling tension of masculine possession of its (awful and unfairly shrewish) female characters, typically embodying some kind of evil (this is blown up into insanely bizarre ways in the second film of the series Weird Woman).

October 27th, 2019