INNER SANCTUM: This one’s a real twist of the knife. It’s not a mystery for the audience—we see the whole dirty business from the jump. It’s a mystery for the poor sap at the center of it, a piano man named Harold Dunlap who’s on the lam after he kills a woman. He thinks he’s in the clear. He’s wrong.
He ends up holed up in a boarding house, the kind of place where the walls have ears and the shadows got eyes. But it’s not the cops who are closing in; it’s a kid. A young witness who saw him do the deed. So Dunlap, a man who thought he was a victim of circumstance, starts turning into the very monster he’s running from. He tries to get rid of the boy, but every move he makes just digs him deeper into the hole.
This whole picture feels like a man being haunted by his own dark soul. It’s got that cheap, gritty look of a B-movie, all fog and rain and claustrophobic rooms. But it’s what’s inside the frame that’s so good. It’s the constant, gnawing dread. The film’s a short one, a little over an hour, but it packs a punch that some of the big-shot pictures can’t even dream of.
And just when you think you’ve got it all figured out, the film pulls the rug out from under you with a final twist. It’s a reminder that some stories aren’t just about what happened, but about who’s telling the tale.
Jack Hammer. Watching the shadows, even the ones in plain sight.
- The Killing (1956) by Stanley Kubrick
- Kiss Me Deadly 1955 Dir: Robert Aldrich
- The Night of the Hunter 1955
- DETOUR (1945): The Long Road to Hell
- INNER SANCTUM (1948): A Man on the Run, From Himself
- SUNSET BOULEVARD: Where Dreams Go to Die
