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Reviews:
Fun stuff.
The Beast with Five Fingers (Robert Florey, 1946)
1946 was the last year Peter Lorre worked for Warner Brothers, and his parting from the company was career suicide; while he remains one of the world's most famous actors, endlessly imitated and paid tribute, from his parting with Warner Brothers until his death in 1964, Lorre picked up only the odd film here and there (though some of them are truly excellent) and some TV guest appearances. Thus it is that The Beast with Five Fingers is something of a bittersweet film for the nostalgia buff; it is a great Lorre performance, but it marked the beginning of the end.
Set in the late nineteenth century in northern Italy, The Beast with Five Fingers is the tale of Frances Ingram (Victor Francen), a pianist with a rather motley crew of eccentrics living with him. There's Bruce Conrad (Robert Alda), a smooth con man who's in love with the old pianist's companion/nurse Julie Holden (Andrea King). This wouldn't necessarily be so bad, but read "companion/nurse"as a rough equivalent to "trophy wife" here. Then there's Hilary Cummins (Lorre), a crackpot who's collected a great number of very old books on all sorts of topics while looking for... something, we're never quite sure what. Conrad, con man that he is, is in a state of detente with the local police commissioner, Castano (J. Carrol Naish); they seem to cordially despise one another. Until, that is, the old man finally kicks the bucket, setting off a nasty inheritance battle between Julie and the pianist's blood relations, Raymond (Charles Dingle) and Donald (John Alvin) Arlington. But all of that is beside the point; the real plot here is that the dead pianist's hand was removed, and is now the leading suspect in the murders of some of the inhabitants of the house.
It's your basic potboiler horror flick, really, with the expected silly ending, snatches of overacting, and all the other things that make so many genre horror films cheesy. But the reason to watch the film is Hilary's descent into madness, played to pitch-perfection by Lorre. (Contrasting this with his role in Mad Love is a great way to examine how much effect a good script can have on a movie.) It's otherwise watchable, if a bit dumb, but Lorre's performance raises it above the level it would normally be. *** ½
Peter Lorre is indeed one of a kind!!
A superb and atmospheric early horror film with fine acting, super effects, tight script and haunting soundtrack. I'm surprised nobody has mentioned the fantastic horror score by the great Max Steiner. Lorre is in top form and the severed hand effects(in most cases)easily stand up against 1991's Addams Family 'Thing' effects.
Worth a watch just for the magnificent Mr. Peter Lorre's delivery of the single line "It was the hand I tell you!!!"
Kind of silly, but entertaining
If not for Peter Lorre, this movie might be too silly to sit through. But Lorre turns in a grand performance, along with G. Carroll Nash as the detective. If you can not laugh when 'THE HAND' starts crawling around, then you are indeed a serious horror movie fan!Recommended for Lorre's performance.
Give Peter Lorre A Hand!!
This is a well-titled, but bizarre horror film from Warner Bros, a studio not known for producing horror films. Victor Francen stars as a renowned pianist living in one of those dark creepy movie mansions/castles. One hand is useless, so he uses his other hand to play. He relies heavily on his nurse, Andrea King, shuns his secretary, Peter Lorre, and sometimes seeks the company of Robert Alda who helped adapt the music for one-handed playing. When Francen dies (violently) and leaves his estate to his nurse, this sets off a series of strange events as everyone is terrorized by his disembodied hand!! Sound bizarre? Well the film certainly is strange, establishing a foreboding mood early on and then taking the story in "unusual" directions. The characters are not well defined, especially the nominal leads Alda and King. It's one of those films where the characters need a slap to the head since they act so stupidly at times (or maybe it's the writers who should have been slapped around a bit). Only Peter Lorre really establishes a presence and performance here, going all the way in his characterization of the decidely strange secretary. It's perfect casting for the role and he capitalizes on it.Director Robert Florey does establish some mood and atmosphere, but the outright silliness and illogic of the whole story hurts the film. It's fun to watch at a certain level, but with a better script and director it could have been a much more effective chiller.
his Bach is worse than his bite
In their Hollywood in the Forties book, writers Charles Higham and Joel Greenberg attest that director Robert Florey disowned the studio cut of his film. Florey shot the story as seen through the eyes of Peter Lorre as an assistant to a disabled pianist whose hand it is believed is responsible for murder. Florey was confident the audience would be smart enough to realise that what we were seeing is not objective reality but rather Lorre's tormented vision. What survives is only redeemed by Lorre's hallucinations with the disembodied hand, his own manic intensity, handprints in the dirt, and the professional mourners hired to chant for the dead pianist. Otherwise we get stuck with a sappy romance between Robert Alda as a local fake antique sealer and big-haired Andrea King as the pianist's nurse, and static scenes of talk. The screenplay by Curt Siodmak gives Lorre an interest in "the secrets of the ancient astrologists, lost since the burning of the Alexandrian library", and the logic that someone could have been playing the piano other than the hand in "because nobody's ever heard you play, that doesn't mean you can't". The special effects of the hand require some getting used to since one naturally expects it to be a fake and therefore is looking at the mechanics, as in darkened sleave or blocking that can cheat the shot as when the hand is supposed to grab someone's throat behind a door or we get a hand POV shot. However there are moments where disbelief is suspended. The film's most bizarre... image is the disembodied hand, extending it's ring finger for Peter Lorre to replace the ring the pianist used to wear.
