Weird Woman was a notable entry in a suspense genre starring Lon "Creighton" Chaney and Evelyn Ankers. In this 63 minute film, Professor Reed (Lon Chaney Jr.) returns from a visit to a South Seas island with his native wife (Anne Gwynne) and his ex-girlfriend (Evelyn Ankers) is not pleased. Chaney makes his new wife burn all her superstitous, good luck charms and fetishes. Then, everything in his life goes horribly wrong starting with Evelyn Ankers becoming progressively more and more weird.
The movie was originally part of a popular radio program in the 1940's and 1950's called the Inner Sanctum that developed into a film and television series.
The Inner Sanctum Radio Program was a popular suspense show that ran in the 1940's and 1950's before spreading into television and film. The shows were based loosely on the work of suspense and horror writers and hosted by Raymond Johnson.
The program was immensely popular due to the narration skills of guest actors such as Burgess Meredith, Orson Welles, Peter Lorre and Boris Karloff. Karloff was featured in an adaptation of Poe's The Telltale Heart in August of 1941. At the end of the shows run a total of 526 episodes ran from January of 1941 until October of 1952.
The popularity of the radio series of resulted in a series of six low-budget Universal Horror movies starring Lon Chaney, Jr. produced in the 1940's: Calling Dr. Death (1943), Weird Woman (1944), Dead Man's Eyes (1944), The Frozen Ghost (1945), Strange Confession (1945) and Pillow of Death (1945).
References:
Wikipedia, Inner Sanctum
Wikipedia, Weird Woman
Wikipedia, Inner Sanctum Mysteries
IMDB, Weird Woman (1944)
Himan Brown, Audio Theater
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