The history of this movie starts with Simon and Schuster, who, starting in the 1930s, began publishing a series of mystery titles under the name "Inner Sanctum." The Inner Sanctum series was the inspiration for a popular radio series that ran from 1941 to 1956. If you've ever heard the old horror host clip, "Pleasant dreams, hmmmm?", that's from Inner Sanctum. Actually, Inner Sanctum was a huge influence on the concept of horror hosts in general, alongside other Old Time Radio champ The Whistler, so I owe much to this series due to the eventual creation of the DC characters Cain and Abel (heads of the delightful House of Mystery and House of Secrets series and main characters in Neil Gaiman's Sandman). It wasn't long before Universal capitalized on the success of the radio show and began making a series of Inner Sanctum films, all of them starring Lon Chaney Jr. in a series of increasingly implausible roles. Pillow of Death was the last of them, and thus the most bizarre. It is also, besides the moderately-okay Weird Woman, the only one of the series which doesn't suck total shit--quite the opposite, in fact. It has swiftly become one of my favorite '40s horror films of all time, because the content is nothing short of utterly ludicrous.
Wayne Fletcher (Lon Chaney Jr.) is a lawyer married to Vivian, whom he is having problems with. At the center of these problems is the affair Wayne is having with his secretary Donna Kincaid, niece of the wealthy heiress Belle Kincaid. In a strange subversion of 1940s norms, Belle's brother, comic-relief big-eater Sam, supports the affair. However, as suspicion mounts over the late-night interactions of the pair, Vivian is murdered. Wayne, obviously, is the chief suspect. Belle calls in her psychic friend, Julian Julian (presumably the father of the live-action incarnation of the Mario Brothers), to prove Wayne's guilt. Indeed, it seems that Vivian's spirit names Wayne as the murderer--Julian is also an impersonator and ventriloquist, however. This isn't admissible in court, of course, but Donna has a second admirer, a local boy named Bruce who has stalked her since they were kids. Bruce will stop at literally nothing to win Donna from Wayne, but as both Sam and Belle join the corpse pile, one has to wonder--who is the real killer in all this mess?
As in Phantom Ship, I'm going to reveal who the killer is, because that's an essential part to how the charm of this movie works, but let's build to that. This is an Old Dark House movie, and the Kincaid house is ostensibly haunted, which is why they work in the spiritualism angle. Spiritualism usually gets pretty silly in these movies but here it's taken to a new level. Both Belle and her sister Amelia are deep believers in mediumship--they supported Vivian because she was Julian's medium. There's a point where it looks like Julian is the murderer, and as such Amelia starts believing he's going to get the death penalty. Reasoning that he'll die in the gas chamber, she lures Wayne and Donna into a broom closet, locks them in, and gets ready to fucking gas them to death. Only Julian's timely arrival stops her from doing so, and the incident is laughed off. Seriously, Julian's response is to chuckle out, "Misguided loyalty is a dangerous thing." This is probably meant to be a red herring and we're still supposed to believe that Julian is the killer, but that I'm only realizing this now is a sign of how clumsily assembled this movie is. But that's not the most ludicrous thing.
I mentioned Bruce, Donna's stalker. Well, he found out as a kid that a cave near his house has a secret passage in it that leads into her house. When she tells him she's going to wall it off (because fucking duh) he begs her not to in the whiniest white boy way imaginable. Aside from her plans to seal the passage, though, she takes the whole his being able to break into her home at any time thing pretty well. This secret passage comes up again when we find out why Wayne discovered Vivian's body missing from her tomb earlier: Bruce dug up her corpse and planted it in Donna's house to scare Wayne into confessing. Bruce gets Donna in the end. Bruce gets Donna in the end. He desecrates a goddamn corpse and he gets the girl. And no one goes back for the body!!!!!
But that's not the most ludicrous thing.
One slightly less ludicrous thing, just a bit I liked. When Wayne is looking into Vivian's tomb, he is confronted by the graveyard watchman. "Hey! Do you want me to call the police?" the watchman barks. Chaney looks him in the eye and murmurs blandly, with no effort supplied whatsoever: "Oh no. Don't call the police." He leaves. The guard shouts, "Hey!" And...scene. Perfect. That's how you make movies.
The most ludicrous thing is that Wayne is the killer. Shoulda seen it coming, but literally the only reason why anyone trusts Wayne is because he's the protagonist. There's no motive for his killings either, he's just a lunatic. For no reason at all, in the last five minutes, he becomes a stereotypical child-like crazy person, and tries to kill Donna with a pillow...supplying the movie's title. Imagine if The Texas Chain Saw Massacre came out and was called Girl Laughs in Truck. Not quite the same, is it? (I mean, Texas Chain Saw is such a good movie that that title would actually have some resonance to it, so bad example.) It would be like if a slasher movie with only one axe murder was called Ax 'Em...oh, wait.
Pillow of Death ends up being a more advanced version of the "one-joke" movies archetyped by Ghost of Rashmon Hall, where you watch the whole setup for the enjoyment of being screwed at the end. Fuck You Endings often seem less insulting in older films, because budgetary and conventional restrictions made the Fuck You of the Ending especially loopy. I'm reminded of the ending of Abbott and Costello Meet the Invisible Man where Costello regains visibility but his legs are on backwards, and he runs away from the camera in sped-up footage. That has absolutely nothing to do with what we just saw and it's confusing in and of itself. But somehow--because of rather than despite the loopiness--it ends up really entertaining, and that's exactly what Pillow of Death is.
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