` different be probably the word that will spring to mind after a viewing of inner sanctum . it unusual in it choice of milieu and subject matter ( even it choice within that subject matter ) while unusual in it slapdash mixture of tone and act style while even unusual in it length of merely 52 minute . it also leave viewer in an unusual disarray of response . the film most horrifying moment be it very first represent a man ( charles russell ) stab a woman on a railroad siding and dump her body like a sack of meal on the observation platform a the train pull out . ala and a bratty little boy ( dale belding ) be hang around the track this stormy night and witness some of this while since russell doesn not know how much and he try but fail to silence the kid with a crowbar . the storm have wash out road and bridge in the pacific northwest and so russell hitch a ride to a town so little that there no hotel and only a rooming house where it turn out the meddlesome boy live with his harry mother ( the wonderful lee patrick and midpoint between the maltese falcon and cage ) . another resident and mary beth hughes and spot that rarity and an unattached slab of male flesh and and come at him in section and to get him to take her away to san francisco . but russell and like a cunning beast of prey and only have eye for the kid . in it crummy look ( the set consist of the railroad siding and the boarding house and and a back lot park ) and creepy story and as well a in it ultimate surrender to an all powerful and malevolent fate and inner sanctum most resembles edgar g. ulmer detour of three year earlier . but lew lander doesn not quite have ulmer touch ( or and for that matter and ann savage ) . the movie also recall detour in that it seem to have be cobble into coherence from footage already shot once the meagre budget run out . so the final scene be a reprise of the one that open it and and both of them stand a gargoyle bookend to the story that they frame . at the end and however and the murder be preface by a cautionary tale even a prophecy tell to a young woman on the train by an old blind traveler and whose last word be ` don not get off the train . the tale and of course and be the movie we have just watch and evoke an ever repeating and inescapable loop of fate .