Calling Dr. Death
| Calling Dr. Death | |
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| Directed by | Reginald Le Borg |
| Produced by | Ben Pivar |
| Written by | Edward Dein |
| Starring |
Lon Chaney, Jr. Patricia Morison J. Carrol Naish |
| Music by | Paul Sawtell |
| Cinematography | Virgil Miller |
| Edited by | Norman A. Cerf |
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Production
company |
Universal Pictures
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| Distributed by | Universal Pictures |
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Release date
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Running time
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63 minutes |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
Calling Dr. Death is a 1943 Inner Sanctum film noir mystery film. The "Inner Sanctum" franchise originated with a popular radio series and all of the films star Lon Chaney, Jr.. The movie stars Chaney, Jr. and Patricia Morison, and was directed by Reginald Le Borg. Chaney, Jr. plays a neurologist, Dr. Mark Steele, who loses memory of the past few days after learning that his wife has been brutally murdered. Aware of his wife's infidelity and believing he could be the killer, Steele asks his office nurse Stella Madden to help him recover his lost memories.
A respected neurologist, Dr. Mark Steele (Lon Chaney, Jr.) treats his patients successfully with hypnosis, but has troubles of his own from a marriage falling apart, that he cannot treat himself in the same way. His wife Maria (Ramsay Ames) is cheating on him on a regular basis, which is something Mark is well aware of. When Maria returns home one night in the early morning hours after a rendez-vous with her lover, Mark finally tells her that he has had enough and that he wants a divorce. Maria, who is leading a very comfortable life as a doctor's wife, refuses her consent to a divorce, and laughs at him as she does so. That night Mark has a dream about strangling his wife to death.
When Maria goes away for the weekend, Mark decides to leave and gets into his car and drives off. Come Monday morning he wakes up in his office only to learn that he is suffering a mental blackout and that the memories of the weekend is missing. He is informed by the police that his wife has been murdered, and that her face was disfigured by some kind of acid. Mark begins to worry about not remembering the slightest thing about his own actions during the weekend.
His worries increase after finding a button from his own jacket near where his wife's body was found. He starts suspecting that he himself has done off with her. His nurse, Stella Madden (Patricia Morison) tells him not to air his suspicions to the police until he knows more. The police go on to arrest Maria's lover, an architect named Robert Duval (David Bruce), for the murder. Inspector Gregg (J. Carroll Naish), one of the detectives on the case still believes that Mark is the murderer. Duval's disabled wife (Fay Helm) pays Mark a visit, trying to convince him to help her prove that her husband is innocent.
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