EDITOR’S NOTE: Weird Woman was on Chiller Theater on Saturday, December 22, 1973 at 11:30 p.m.

The second of The Inner Sanctum Mysteries series of movies, these Universal B movies took two weeks and $150,000 to make. Director Reginald LeBorg was given the script on a Friday and had until the following Monday to start making this. It was only his third film but I think he did quite well, despite having to use the prefab sets and day players.

While he’s on vacation in the South Seas, Professor of Ethnology Norman Reed (Lon Chaney Jr.)  meets a jungle white goddess named Paula (Anne Gwynne, one of the first scream queens and the grandmother of Chris Pine) who he first encountered when she was just a child and her father was a professor of archaeology who worked with Reed. Going by the actual ages, she’s 26 and Chaney is 38, so it doesn’t seem all that far apart (I mean, the same age difference between my wife and me) but physically, she seems like a child compared to Chaney. It’s also strange that he knew her when he was just a little girl and now he’s in love with her, taking her out of the jungle and back to Monroe College as his wife.

This upsets Ilona Carr (Evelyn Ankers, who was often cast opposite of Chaney), who always saw Reed as hers. Professor Reed is one of those absent minded men who surrounds himself with younger women, like his new secretary Margaret (lovely Lois Collier), who fall in love with him and are decimated when he actually does show attention to another woman. It’s not like he’s using his status and authority to take advantage of them, but in today’s world, it still seems weird.

When Prof. Millard Sawtelle (Ralph Morgan) is discovered using a student’s essay as the major part of his most famous work, he shoots himself. This angers his wife Evelyn (Elizabeth Russell), who thinks that Paula is pushing her husband to take over the department. As for the couple, he’s forced her to give up all of her voodoo, so she feels like she can no longer protect the man she loves.

This is quite important as Melissa’s jealous boyfriend David (Phil Brown, who would many years later be Uncle Owen Lars) comes to kill him and ends up shooting himself, which makes it look like Reed has killed the boy who has come to punish him for touching his pure lady.

Ankers and Gwynne were best friends, so when the normally kind Ankers had to act mean, the entire cast and crew would start to laugh.

Written by Brenda Weisberg and Scott Daring, this is based on the Fritz Leiber story Conjure Witch, which was remade as Burn, Witch, Burn!

This is also part of the Universal Shock Theater package of 52 films. These movies made up much of the library of channels that had horror host programs, much like Pittsburgh’s Chiller Theater.