The Frozen Ghost - 1945

The Frozen Ghost - The Inner Sanctum #4

Film number four in the six-film series of Inner Sanctum shorts (the longest being 67 minutes long) in which Lon Chaney, Jr., faces a psychological crises as girlfriends, employment and reality seems to go off the rails until clever thinking and observation puts things right.

In The Frozen Ghost, Chaney is a professional Mentalist named Alex Gregor who uses hypnosis as part of a stage act (his assistant being Evelyn Ankers, Chaney's co-star in various other films such as Ghost of Frankenstein, The Wolf Man, North to the Klondike, Son of Dracula, and another from the Inner Sanctum series, Weird Woman - 1944). Gregor becomes suddenly fearful of his powers after he angrily begins to hypnotizes a heckler in the audience at one of his shows and the man suddenly drops dead.

Distraught, Gregor (Chaney) breaks off his engagement to Maura Daniel (Evelyn) and goes into hiding at a wax museum run by Valerie Monet (actress Tala Birell, who appeared in other series such as The Whistler films, and Philo Vance). Ms. Monet is delighted with her famous guest and soon has romantic designs on him, however, she must get in line as her young assistant Nina (Elena Verdugo) is also smitten with the melancholy Gregor (Chaney seems to play the entire Inner Sanctum series in a mode of moody depression). Meanwhile, love-sick Maura (Evelyn Ankers) is searching all over town for him, too.

Douglas Dumbrille appears here as a straight-talking Inspector Brant, a far cry from his typical roles as secondary villains and corrupt figures of authority in other films. There's also a little levity in his characterization, with the frustrated Inspector at one point shouting "I'm not paid to think. I'm paid to find clues and close cases," followed with a slight drag of reaction as that little mantra gets a few dead-pan seconds to sink in.

The Inspector is convinced Gregor's mentalist powers are merely tricks, and therefore when the bodies start to pile up, he is certain none of this is being perpetrated through Gregor's fictitious mental powers. However, Gregor himself is rapidly becoming more panic-stricken, believing his mental "powers" have gone rogue and his gaps of memory are shielding his mind from terrible activities.

Then Maura tracks down where he's been hiding at the museum and she argues with Monet over Gregor, and with all these women throwing themselves at him, the museum's technician (Martin Kosleck) is exhibiting more and more frustration because he is infatuated with the young Nina, and he is jealous of this intruder who gets all of the female attention. He is also frustrated because there's not a lot of appreciation for how powerfully adept he is at constructing the wax exhibits featured in the building.

The film transfer in the Inner Sanctum DVD set for The Frozen Ghost isn't perfect, there are some Moiré patterns that appear in sequences in which the scan to digital is somehow mismatched with some kind of patterning in the print being used for the transfer. Sound and contrast seem fine.

More Lon Chaney Jr.:

Lon Chaney Jr

Man-Made Monster – 1941

The Mummy's Tomb - 1942

Calling Dr. Death - 1943

Frankenstein Meets the Wolfman - 1943

The Frozen Ghost - 1945

Strange Confession - 1945

The Indestructible Man - 1956

Alligator People - 1959

Inner Sanctum Mysteries: The Complete Movie Collection (Calling Dr. Death / Weird Woman / The Frozen Ghost / Pillow of Death / Dead Man's Eyes / Strange Confession) - AMAZON

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Original page August 14, 2015 | Updated July 2021