WEIRD WOMAN (1944)
If you're like me, you quake in your mukluks at the first wrinkle of winter. To be ever so specific, you shun Christmas. This isn't our holiday. It's a gray cloud, so it does have a silver lining. More often than not, what does Santa bring? Gift cards! I used one to purchase a posh, mulberry-dangled (or maybe it's magenta) box set containing all six films in Universal's Inner Sanctum series. If you aren't familiar, this was a modestly budgeted array of supernatural mysteries cranked out in the early 40's. Weird Woman was the second commodity on the docket, and while I wouldn't call it an outright fright flick, I would label it as...frightfully fun. I'll wait for the laughter to die a cute death.
Lon Chaney Jr. stars as Norman, a professor who values reason above superstition. Paula, his island native wifey-poo, was brought up to believe in voodoo. Suffice to say, the honeymoon phase doesn't last terribly long. The actual meat of the plot is frustrating in that it's on the convoluted side. I confess to yawning too much as Weird neared its climax, but that wasn't the movie's fault. The cast is killer (genre paramour Evelyn Ankers shows 'em how it's done), the atmosphere is aces (the opening shots are pickled in rain showers; I enjoy both pickles and raindrops), and the 63-minute running time is appropriate for such a picture. Check it out.
PS - There is a remake of sorts.
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