Michael O'Keefe
Reginald Le Borg directs this horror and mystery film from the Inner Sanctum franchise. Professor Norman Reed (Lon Chaney, Jr.) falls in love with a beautiful woman, he meets while on vacation in the South Seas. He returns to his college community to some excitement over his new book and mixed emotions about his exotic new wife Paula (Anne Gwynne). She is given a cool reception, especially from Ilona (Evelyn Ankers), who thought Reed was returning to her. Most of the town is thinking that Paula is a voodoo princess that can conjure supernatural phenomena. Jealousy, death and strange events lend to hardship for the island beauty to adjust to life among vicious suspicions. Is she actually a superstitious witch? A very strong cast also features: Ralph Morgan, Lois Collier, Phil Brown, Harry Hayden, Elisabeth Risdon and Gertrude Astor.
bkoganbing
These Inner Sanctum stories that Lon Chaney, Jr. starred in over at Universal Pictures are the only ones out there where he actually gets the girl. He usually didn't star in parts that called for him getting the girl. But not only does he get the girl in this case Anne Gwynne, but he's got women falling all over the place for him including Evelyn Ankers, Elizabeth Russell, and even the Dean of Women in the college where Chaney plays an archeology professor Elizabeth Risdon gives him the old fish eye.Chaney tells this one in flashback as he describes bringing home a bride from the South Seas. It's Gwynne who is the daughter of a colleague, but was raised by the witch practitioner on the island and taught all the voodoo tricks of the trade. Not exactly material to be in the faculty wives club.Anyway Chaney gives the air to Evelyn Ankers and Evelyn ain't about to take being dumped lying down.No use in going through the rest of the film as bad things start happening to folks around the campus. It's pretty obvious who's responsible. In a camp sort of way Weird Woman is a whole lot of fun.
Scott LeBrun
"Weird Woman" is the second in the "Inner Sanctum" film series, an adaptation of the Fritz Leiber, Jr. story "Conjure Wife". It's good fun in the tradition of the Universal black & white thrillers, taking a psychological approach to its story of college campus politics. Lon Chaney, Jr. is likable as always in the role of Professor Norman Reed, who meets a lovely young woman, Paula (Anne Gwynne), in an exotic setting. The young woman is extremely superstitious, and it's suspected later that she could be using black magic to help Norman, whom she marries, to get ahead. It turns out that somebody else is scheming, and scheming, to make life Hell for both Norman and Paula. Now, anybody watching can easily figure out Whodunit, but as directed by Reginald Le Borg, this entertaining little movie moves right along, with some amusing plot twists and supporting characters. Evelyn Ankers, who'd been Chaney's co-star in the horror classic "The Wolf Man", does well here in a change of pace role as a colleague with whom Norman had been involved. It's particularly interesting to note all of the attention Chaney gets from the opposite sex here, as no less than three females, including Lois Collier as adoring student Margaret Mercer, fixate on him. The theme is a pretty good one, of superstition vs. reason; Paula takes the former so seriously that it's devastating for her when Norman forces her to destroy her totems. She and Norman eventually have to work to clear his good name when he's implicated in both a suicide and a murder. The movie overall is no great shakes, but it's still an agreeable diversion, and like many of the genre films of the era, it has a reasonably short running time, telling and wrapping up its story in a trim 64 minutes. The same story would again be filmed as "Burn, Witch, Burn" in the 1960s and "Witches' Brew" in the 1980s. Seven out of 10.
Alex da Silva
Professor Lon Chaney Jnr (Norman) returns from the jungle with his new wife Anne Gwynne (Paula). He slips back into life at the college but his wife has brought with her a multitude of voodoo trinkets. Two other women at the college, Elizabeth Russell (Evelyn) and Evelyn Ankers (Ilona), don't take kindly to Paula and her jungle ways. Two deaths follow and the guilty party must be brought to justice. Will superstition win the day and dish out some justice? It's a well-paced film that has good performances from all, especially Elizabeth Russell. She is both funny and scary and has a very direct, no-nonsense approach which gives her the best lines. Evelyn Ankers is also good as Ilona. We know who the guilty party is as the film unfolds but this does not take any mystery away from the proceedings as we are never quite sure what to expect next. There is something lacking with the lead female role, though.
AD
