Actuakers
One of my all time favorites.
Rexanne
It’s sentimental, ridiculously long and only occasionally funny
Dana
An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.
gridoon2018
The "Inner Sanctum" films, of which I have now seen four, seem to fall somewhere between the "A"- and the "B"-movie categories; they're too "small" for the former, but also too polished for the latter. This one, "Calling Dr. Death", is an above-average little murder mystery that keeps you wondering for quite a while. Lon Chaney Jr.'s voice-overs are very effective - he has a genuinely hypnotic voice. And J. Carrol Naish, who usually played villains, gives a decidedly offbeat performance as a police inspector who seems obsessed with getting Chaney to confess to the crime. My main objection has to do with the way the film telegraphs its surprise ending slightly earlier than it should. **1/2 out of 4.
AaronCapenBanner
Lon Chaney Jr. stars as psychiatrist Mark Steele, who is an amiable man with a loyal nurse named Stella(played by Patricia Morison). Unfortunately, he is married to a wild, mean, and unfaithful wife(played by Ramsay Ames) who refuses to divorce him. After a mysterious blackout one weekend, Dr. Steele has no memory, but is told by the police that his wife has been brutally murdered, and the Inspector on the Case(played by J. Carol Naish) doggedly pursues him, convinced of his guilt. The man she was having an affair with is caught, but did he do it, or someone else? Reasonably good film could have dispensed with the head-in-a-crystal ball routine, but acting is good(especially Naish in a role quite similar to later "Columbo"!) Not bad for a low budgeter.
disdressed12
it may be an old movie,but i liked it.it's a very interesting,well acted murder mystery.the dialogue was quite good,the writing was good and the music adds a real atmosphere of creepiness to the proceedings.there's' not a lot of action.it's more of a psychological character study.and for me,unt9il near the very end,i wasn't sure who the murderer was.Lon Chaney Jr. is the main star.he plays a neurologist/hypnotist who ends up being accused of his wife's murder.the thing about it is,he can't remember the last couple of days,including the day his wife was killed.at least that's what he says.this is part of the Universal Pictures Inner Sanctum Mysteries movie collection.basically,an anthology series along the lines of Twilight Zone and The Outer Limits.anyway,i thoroughly enjoyed this movie,and if you are a Lon Chaney Jr.fan,you might want to check out not only this movie,but the box set collection(five other movies)all starring Chaney.i give Calling Dr. Death a solid 8/10
mgconlan-1
"Calling Dr. Death" is a good movie and its DVD release as part of the "Inner Sanctum" series collection is welcome. Lon Chaney, Jr. wasn't as rangy an actor as Universal clearly thought, but the part of a neurologist tortured by the clash between an unfaithful wife and an obsessive nurse, who blacks out and is unable to tell from his own conscious knowledge whether he killed his wife, suits him perfectly. Patricia Morison is also good in her role as the nurse who (here comes the spoiler) actually committed the murder — it's not such a big surprise given that writer Edward Dein only gave us three suspects and it's clear early on that he wasn't going to make Chaney's character the real killer — as is Ramsay Ames as the faithless wife. In some ways this story is what "Rebecca" would have been if Rebecca had actually been shown as an on-screen character, and it's one of the first uses of the gimmick of the innocent man who can't be sure of his own innocence because he was on a binge when the murder occurred. (Films as diverse as "Black Angel" and "The Morning After" have used that plot trope since.) There are points where the plot of this one creaks big-time, but it's a nicely honed, marvelously atmospheric mystery and director Reginald LeBorg (I love that name and can only wish he'd married actress Veda Ann Borg so she could have been Veda Ann Borg LeBorg, though in real life LeBorg was Gay and one of Gay-rights pioneer Harry Hay's lovers, so named in Stuart Timmons' biography of Hay) seems better suited to a suspense thriller like this than an out-and-out horror movie like the pretty awful "Jungle Woman." It's also nice to see J. Carrol Naish as a good guy for a change, a homicide detective whose dogged pursuit of one suspect even as another is charged, tried, convicted and sentenced to death anticipates Peter Falk's TV character of Columbo.
