Hello, and welcome to Weird House Cinema. Rewind. My name is Joe McCormick. Today we're bringing you an older episode of Weird House Cinema, the movie show that Rob and I do on Stuff to Blow Your Mind. Normally, Weird House Cinema airs every Friday. Today we're bringing you an episode of Weird House from the fault. This episode originally published February fourth, twenty twenty two, and it's on the nineteen forty six horror films starring Peter Lorie The Beast
with Five Fingers. Let's jump right in.
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema. This is Rob Lamb and this is Joe McCormick, and we're going back to the nineteen forties on this one. This is going to be only the second time we have ventured into the forties. The last time was for the film Doctor Cyclops, and this time we're going in for the Beast with Five Fingers from nineteen forty six.
Both of these films that we've done from the forties have unusually good special effects for their time. So Doctor Cyclops the premise was there's a mad scientist who gets a bunch of people into his house and then he shrinks them down to about the size of mice, and they have to find a way to defeat the giant. But this movie is a killer Severed Hand movie, so you might wonder, well, I don't know how good could the killer Severed Hand effects be in nineteen forty six, but I gotta say really good.
Yeah, the special effects in this film are pretty great, especially for the time period. They're very effective. You know, if you're looking for the flaws, I'm sure you you can find them. You know, that's not an actual disembodied hand crawling across the floor. You know, if you're looking for a whole lot of blood, you're not going to find it in a nineteen forty six picture for the
most part. But it's there's still some wonderfully creepy scenes, especially when you have the wonderfully weird actor Peter Lourie interacting with it. Because if anybody can act opposite a rubber hand and make you believe it, it's going to be somebody of Laurie's caliber.
That's right. This movie has two meat spiders in it. One is the hand and the other is Peter Lourie.
That's right. Now. One of the fun things about this is that I believe we actually mentioned this title though neither of us had seen it yet, when we covered the nineteen thirty five film Mad Love, which that one was just wonderful film starring Peter Laurie Francis Dre Colin Clive, and that film featured hand transplants and supernatural paranoid ideas of what that might mean. As we discussed at that point,
hand transplants were science fiction. It had not been pulled off yet, and this was a film that you know, went wild with the idea, well, if if I received the hands of a knife thrower, then am I now a knife thrower? You know where?
Yes you are?
Yeah, undoubtedly, And it was well utilized in the plot. Now that tradition storytelling tradition goes back at least as far as the nineteen twenty four film The Hands of Orloc which is based on the same source material as Mad Love. But The Beast with Five Fingers takes things in a related but different direction entirely, and that is, if you if you cut a hand off of somebody, if you remove the hand, does something of the original humans will survive in that hand. Could that hand have
a life of its own? Could it crawl around and manipulate things? Could it strangle people? And so forth, which I guess is related to some of the anxieties and sci fi ponderings that you find and works like Mad Love, but this takes it into an even more ridiculous and special effects powered level of monster movie.
Well, there are actually even more similarities than we've already mentioned, because if you'll recall in Mad Love and the story was based on which I guess is the hands of Orlock. Orlock is not the name of Peter Lourie's character. Peter Lourie is the is the sort of is the mad surgeon who does the hand transplant. And Orlock is the name of Colin Clive's character, who is a concert pianist. He's like, these hands have great talent, and his hands
are badly damaged in a train accident. Colin Clive is riding in a train car with a man who has a large sausage with him and I think also like a dog in a picanic basket. Yeah, but I think that the train crashes, his hands are harmed and his beloved comes to Peter Laurie and is like, save my you know, She's like, save my. My fiance is brilliant hands. And the way that Peter where he saves his brilliant hands is by transplanting the hands of a murderer onto
this concert pianist. And he finds, you know, okay, it works his hands, he can use them, but now he's not really good at the piano anymore. And instead what he's really good at is wielding a knife.
Yeah, he's an expert knife thrower.
Now, now this movie is also got some weird hand magic going on, also involving somebody who's a concert pianist.
It does. Yeah, And this one is also notable for being, I believe, unless I'm missing something like, this is the film that starts at all with crawling hand movies. It's easy to take crawling hands for granted now because you know, it's a well established trope crawling hands or in the Dungeons and Dragons Monster Manual, you know that sort of thing. Bottom's family, Yeah, Adam's family is a big one. The thing now, in that I was looking it up, the
thing dates back I think to nineteen fifty four. I think that's when it first popped up in the Charles Adams comic of the Adams Family, but of course it famously appeared in the TV series. It of course factored into the two major nineteen nineties films of the Adams Family, as well as the third I want to say made for TV or direct to video sequel. But one thing I was surprised at in that is that the thing in those films, all three of those, was played by
Canadian actor and magician Christopher Hart. Which it makes sense if you want to you want somebody to play a disembodied hand, you get a slighter hand, guy, you get a magician in.
There, right, Yeah, the graceful movements and the well, I mean the magicians are practiced at doing a twirl of the fingers right to kind of yeah, dazzle you while they misdirect your attention. Now, now, Rob, I noticed, though you keep calling it the thing. I think it's just thing. I think thing is its name.
I think you're correct on that thing, not the thing. Now, in terms of other crawling hand features that came out after the Beast with five fingers, you have the nineteen sixty three's the crawling hand you have a segment of the Amicus film Doctor Terror's House of Horrors from sixty five, starring Christopher Lee. There's another film from Amicus titled and Now the Screaming Starts, and that has Peter Cushing and
Herbert Lawm in it. There's also a Mexican horror film that I believe I've watched part of called Demonoid Messenger of Death Crawling Hand movie. There's also famously The Hand from nineteen eighty one as well, directed by Oliver Stone and starring Michael Caine. Have you seen this one, Joe.
I haven't, but I've seen it described as a remake of the movie we're talking about today, The Beast with Five Fingers. I don't know if that's accurate.
I don't remember being angry. This is a film that I think I watched it on A and E, like on a Sunday afternoon back in the day. It was one that was in rotation there and I remember it being it seemed to be like more of a serious psychological treatment. But no, no, I take that back. I think there was really a crawling hand in it. But yeah, Michael can good in it, and he's like a comic
book artist. It's weirdly named Joe Lansdale. I think John Lansdale, John Lansdale, Okay, yeah, But every time I look it up, I'm like, is that supposed to be a reference to Joe Lansdale. I don't know.
Okay, so that, but in that one, is it also like his hand has such talent in it, and then it becomes severed from his body and goes and does its own business.
Yeah, yeah, but then it comes back. But yeah, there's also a lot of, like you know, Michael Caine, dark psychological stuff going on in that one. Now, if you're an Evil Dead fan, The Evil Dead two from eighty seven famously features some crawling hand shenanigans.
Right, Ash's hand becomes possessed by a demon and he has to chop it off and then put it under a bucket which he weighs down with a stack of books, the top of which is a farewell to arms yuck.
Yuh oh. Yeah, And that's the thing, right It kind of I guess increases. It's so well known at this point that it's increasingly about gags, So I think there's a crawling hand gage at least in nineteen ninety three's Leprechaun. And then there is the comedy horror film from nineteen ninety nine titled Idle Hands. I vaguely remember seeing this one. I want to say it has either either Gary Busey's son or that other guy. Is it Matthew Lillard or Jake Busey.
I don't think either one. I've really seen it. I think I saw this.
I with that money that one of those two guys is in this movie.
It's got Devin Salwa. He's the main guy. He plays a stoner kid. It has Jessica Alba, who was all the rage at the time. It has Seth Green and another guy who plays you know, they play a couple of stoner buddies. I definitely don't recall Jake Busey or who's the other one.
You said, what Matthew Lillard?
No, No, there are no lil Ardians in the film at all.
Huh. Well, there you go, and in my mind I see them clearly running around with a disembodied hand.
Well, I can see why you'd think that, because it has some of the same sheen or grime to it as say hackers, like it's going for a alternative stoner cool kid in the late nineties sort of thing. I guess Hackers was probably earlier, maybe early nineties, I'm not sure, but anyway, it's not quite at that level. It's more of a low brow, stoner horror comedy. A lot of the jokes are about marijuana.
Okay, Interestingly enough, Christopher Hart, who played Thing in those three Adams Family movies, also plays the hand in Idle Hands.
It's the best performance in the film.
Oh and then also this guy goes on to play a hand in an episode of TV's Angel as well.
I never watched Angel. That's the Buffy spin off.
This the Buffy spinoff. Yeah, but yeah, I wasn't familiar with Christopher Hart beforehand, but this was beforehand. This was the guy for Disembodied Hands for pretty much an entire decade. So I guess my main point here is that, yeah, this is this film sets a trend. This film introduces what would become a trope, and so it's interesting to go back and watch it and think, well, audience had
audiences had never seen this before. It's old hat to anybody who lived during the age of the Adams Family, you know, but at the time, like these scenes where you finally see the beast with five fingers, which is a hand, is a disembodied hand. It's pretty shocking, especially since the effects are so good.
Yeah, I agree. Now, I know we set this up at the beginning sort of in contrast with Mad Love, and I would not say that this movie is anywhere near as great as Mad Love, But on its own terms, it is a fun and silly and pretty inventive little horror thriller with good special effects for the time.
Yeah. Absolutely.
Now at this point, do we even need to give an elevator pitch. We've sort of already done it. It's like, what if there were a murder mystery in which the hand of the killer wasn't attached to a wrist. Yes, let's hear some trailer audio.
A piano, long, silent mysteriously plays again its weird an ominous chords, filling up a deviled house with stark terror. A concerto of death, a cobra music of a dead man played by a hand that returned from the grave to wreak vengeance on his betrayals, marking each for a murder as it strikes within human power. A horrifying monster that takes its evil commands from beyond they cannot return to the tomb till it completes its mission of destruction.
Now, one thing that's worth noting about this film too, and I'm not sure. I'm not sure if this was ever even possible, but it seems like if you were watching this with absolutely no spoilers and having never seen the trailer or a poster or anything, the big reveal that the hand is crawling around on its own might have been more impactful because they kind of set it
up like, what's happening, what's you know? And the first time you see the hand, you can't tell that it has that it's not attached to a body.
Right, somebody will appear in the crack of a door and then a hand reaches around from behind them and grabs their throat and starts choking them. But for all you know, the hand could in fact be attached to a wrist. It could just be somebody killing this guy. And then there's actually some question later on in the
movie about whether it is. In fact, it probably is, the movie implies, but it doesn't make it clear even when you see the hand, that the hand is not just a regular hand that's running around on its own. You don't get to that until probably two thirds of the way through the movie.
Yeah, all right, Well, let's talk about some of the people involved in this one. The director is Robert Floret, who lived nineteen hundred through nineteen seventy nine. Industrial strength French American director who worked from the twenties through the sixties. One of these guys where you check out his filmography and it's just this long list of one hundred and eighteen credits. He's just absolutely cranking out pictures during the
nineteen thirties especially, he's hustling. Yeah. Now, his early career was apparently more about avant garde expressionist, but he increasingly became just like a cinematic workhouse and also apparently the very dependable filmmaker someone of the studios could turn to to really put the picture together, you know, put it out, you know, under budget and on time.
That kind of great. Yeah.
Now, from a purely horror standpoint, he's perhaps best known for Murders in the Room Morgue from nineteen thirty two, based on the Edgar Allen post story and starring Hungarian American film legend Bella Lagosi, oh as well as ape Suit legend Charles Gemora, who we've mentioned on the show before. Another Float film of note is The Face Behind the Mask, which was one I was also looking at potentially to cover in this episode, but went with The Beast instead.
This was a film that starred Peter Laurie as an immigrant watchmaker who's who you know. It comes in with a lot of optimism about what he can make of himself in America, but then he's kind of chewed up by dark American realities and he becomes a disfigured crime
boss instead. And then also of interesting note, I was not familiar with this film, but Florat directed a noir film titled Daughter of Shanghai from thirty seven, which featured a female Chinese American lead in the form of Anime Wong, as well as Korean American actor Philip On, and this was in some ways progressive for the time, as Asian leads were often played by white actors, and in fact, in the same year, Wong lost out the lead role
of a Chinese character in The Good Earth. So again I haven't seen Daughter of Shanghai, but it seems to be noteworthy in film history now. I think Wong typically played sort of dragon lady stereotypes, but still it was apparently something of the time to see her at the top in the lead, even in a noir sort of crime thriller type of a film. Daughter of Shanghai, by the way, also features a young Anthony Quinn popping up
in a lesser role. So, like I said, Flore busted out a bunch of films, directed a lot of TV later on during his career, and his last credit is actually an episode of the original Outer Limits series, so one titled Moonstone, and he also did three different Twilight Zone episodes.
Oh, you're the Outer Limits connoisseur, ho's Moonstone.
Well, I'm not a connoisseur as much of the original series. I'm more of a connoisseur or growing connoisseur of the nineteen nineties Outer Limits revival. So I don't think i've seen Moonstone. I've seen some of the original Outer Limits episodes, and of course they're great, but I haven't seen that one. Likewise, I looked up the three Twilight Zone episodes he did, and I faintly remember one of them, but I don't think any of them are like the really famous Twilight Zone episodes.
You like the era of the Outer Limits that sometimes has CGI that looks like it's from one of the Wing Commander games.
It really does. I mean sometimes there's also, to be fair, there's a lot of great practical alien makeup and some cool set design as they figure out like how can we on a budget create a different alien or futuristic hallway for every episode of this series. But yeah, there's some truly awful CGI at times as well.
I love it now.
The screenplay for this film was written by a pretty famous name, Kurtzodmack, who lived nineteen oh two through the year two thousand. It's a German born novelist and screenwriter who left Germany first for Britain and then for the US due to concerns overrising anti Semitism under the Nazis.
His family was Jewish. His German output was already pretty successful prior to this, however, including the sci fi film I was looking at this one FP one doesn't answer, which seems to be about sort of a sort of an air aircraft carrier base, like a not a ship, but like some sort of like a large like at the time sci fi aircraft platform in the middle of the ocean. Once he left for the UK. He did British war thrillers, and he did some comedies, but then
he started striking it big with some horror screenplays. He did the screenplay for the nineteen forty one film The Invisible Man Returns that has Vincent Price in it ooh, and then he wrote an original screenplay for nineteen forty one's The wolf Man, starring Claude Rains, Bell Lagosi and
lom Cheney Junior. He went on from there to write a ton of screenplays, including Frankenstein Meets Wolfman from forty three, I Walked with a Zombie from forty three, Son of Dracula from You Guessed At nineteen forty three, and then House of Frankenstein from nineteen forty four, along with just a lot of other stuff. But those are some of the titles that jumped out of me. He also wrote the nineteen forty two sci fi novel Donovan's Brain, which
has been adapted three times. I don't think he was personally involved in any of the adaptations, but it was adapted in nineteen forty four as the Lady in the Monster in nineteen fifty three Is Donovan's Brain, and in nineteen sixty two as the Brain.
Donovan's Brain is a great poster. Have you seen it?
Yeah? Yeah, with a In fact, I think the Brain from sixty two also has a pretty snazzy poster. But yeah, I'm all about a good brain film.
I love the colors. It's got these big bars of yellow and then these creepy eyes and a green background. And it says a dead man's brain in a hidden laboratory told him to kill, kill, kill.
So you can see why this was the perfect guy to adapt The Beast with Five Fingers. And I say adapt because it's based on a short story by William Fryar Harvey, who lived eighteen eighty five through nineteen thirty seven, I think, professionally known as W. F. Harvey, a British writer who wrote horror and ghost stories. All right, let's get into the cast of this film. The credited lead is not Peter Loriie. It is Robert Alda playing Oh let's see in the In the credits is listed as
Conrad Ryler. But that's not what people call him, right, No.
It's all over the place. The promotional materials for this movie call him Conrad Riyler. But then characters on screen call him Bruce Conrad. So it sounds like his name was changed in like the shooting script, but then something else ended up using a name from an earlier draft or something.
That's that's crazy, because yeah, it's still listed on IMDb as Conrad Ryler. So it's a sort of disservice to I mean, they couldn't have possibly realized this that one day people would be watching your film going to the you know, this official listing of character names to keep track of what's going on, and if you don't have the right names there, we're just going to be lost.
Well, whether it's his first name or his last name, he is Conrad, so we can at least stick with that.
Yes.
So.
Alda was born nineteen fourteen died nineteen eighty six. Originally a vaudeville singing dance guy who made his way up through the worlds of radio and burless theater before landing a role in nineteen forty five's Rhapsody in Blue playing George Gershwin. Huh yeah, so by the time Beast with Five Fingers comes out, this Beast is only his fourth film role.
Okay, well, got he's got a very optimistic youthful energy in this Yeah, yeah, calm confidence.
Yeah, he's got a good I'm not sure what you call the style of mustache that he has.
It's it's kind of like Clark Gable.
Yeah, it's like a Clark Gable, which which gives him a unique look. He has kind of a I think he pointed out, he has kind of his character has kind of a loopine quality to it. Yes, Alda continued, We'll talk more about his character Conrad as we move forward. But all To continued to act in film and increasingly in TV. But he did very well on Broadway, popping up and made fifties and sixties runs of stuff like
Guys and Dolls. And I'm delighted to report that he was also a cast member on Super Train from nineteen seventy nine, a show about an atomic powered train full of like extravagant cars that had things like swimming pools in them, so kind of a predecessor to snow Piercer.
Like the whole show takes place on the train, right.
And I think they have murder mysteries and stuff. Everything is terrible. That a video with clips from the mini from the TV movie that kickstarted the one season series.
Oh, I got to look this up after we're done. But oh, one thing that I wondered about, and you can rest assured, yes, indeed, Robert Alda is Alan Alda's dad. Another thing I was reading about, though there's some lack of clarity here, I've read that the lead in the Beast with Five Fingers was originally supposed to go to Paul Henried, the actor who plays Victor Laslow in Casablanca.
Though I can't hell if this means he was supposed to play the Robert Alder role or the Peter LORII role, but either way it would have been a very different movie. Robert Olda is giving a strangely variable performance in this movie, and I guess the role itself is strangely variable. Sometimes he's like I said, he's Clark Gable, He's sometimes he's a smooth, rascally con man with this lustful twinkle in his eye. And then other times he's just like a
straight down the middle galahad. He's just this perfectly steady and virtuous hero.
Yeah. And one of the weird unexpected things about this, you know, we'll get into the plot in a bit, but.
He, you know, he starts.
He's the he's the top build actor in the film. He's he's the pretty much the first it's introduced, I believe, and you expect him to play a more pivotal role in like the final quarter of the film, but he's not really. He really kind of fa He's inconsequential for the most part. When you get into the final act.
It seems like in the second half of the movie, really he's just there to be the handsome man that Andrea King is in love with, and that's pretty and he stands around and watches things happen.
Yeah, Yeah, he has increasingly little agency, which ultimately I'm fine with, you know, it's it's kind of nice to see the you know, the attractive male lead in a film from this era ultimately mean nothing.
Well, right, you got to make more room for Peter Lourie, which I'm all for.
Yeah, now, before we we already mentioned Andrea King as she plays Julie Holden. Impossible to forget her name because there's a lot of screaming for Julie, a lot of characters wandering around this big castle mansion and screaming her first name.
Yeah, and like the commissario with the Italian accent, just saying Julie many many times.
Yeah, so so yeah. You easily remember her name. If you remember no other characters name in this you remember her so. Andrea King was a French born American actor who was especially active in the forties and fifties, but had a pretty long career on screen and on TV, known for God Is My co Pilot and The Very Thought of You. But she also pops back up in the nineteen seventies in House of the Black Death and Blackenstein.
Now. I was looking at her other stuff to see if I'd seen her in anything else, and there was nothing that really stood out to me, So I don't know what she's like. Usually, I got to say, her performance in this movie feels phoned in. She does not seem to be super interested in being in the Beast
with five fingers. However, her relatively flat acting performance sometimes makes scenes more amusing than they would have been if she was more into it, Because I don't know, it's just like a funny compliment to the weird stuff going on around her and to her awe inspiring hairds. This movie is an event of profoundly big hair, which makes me want to see another movie I saw that she
was in. It's a nineteen fifty topic film called I Was a Shoplifter, which, with an exclamation, hide things in her hair to get him out of the store.
I think. But before I watched it, when you were telling me a little bit about that about it, you said you compared her hair to Dracula's hair, like the Old Man.
Gary Oldman, Yeah, with the butt cut in the Francis Ford Coppola Dracula, Yeah, a couple of times she has an enormous, like curly butt cut.
Well, there are some pretty hilarious scenes where her very flat performance is in stark contrast to say, Peter Lourie's performance.
But I hesitate to heap the blame on her for this, or to really cast any blame on her at all, because there are some questions that arise concerning the script, Like there are scenes where it's like one character can see things that are not there, and she is perhaps legitimate Her character is legitimately supposed to be looking at nothing, and therefore maybe it makes sense that she is not reacting the same way other characters are.
Well, yeah, and I also want to say it makes perfect sense in the earlier parts of the movie where there's like another character who is obsessed with her and she is not into him at all, and so her flat performance is great in those scenes because you can tell she's just conveying like an you get me out of here kind of feeling yeah.
And kind of going for like a steely calm because there is some crazy dude ranting at you and you're trying to not escalate the situation in trying to like maybe play into their delusions a little bit so that you can make a b line for these gay.
Okay, So I'd say with both of our lead actors so far, there's a little bit of weirdness in how the character is realized on screen. But then we get to Peter Lourie. He gets like third billing, right, and he plays a character named Hillary Cummins, and this is the main event.
That's right. So we're not going to go super into Laurie's biography and filmography here because we spend a lot of time with it in the Mad Love episodes, So definitely go back to that. But he lived nineteen oh four through nineteen sixty four. He was an Austro Hungarian actor of Jewish descent who made it big in Fritz Ling's em Before like siomc fleeing the rise of anti
Semitism under the Nazi regime. A great actor, plagued at times by substance abuse and health problems, but completely unequaled in his ability to play these kind of artful mixes of sympathetic weirdos and absolute mad men. Like it's a careful you know, it's a careful mixology going on at times with a Peter Lourie roll, because it's not like he's just great at playing like a scary weirdo. It's
like he does to have this sympathetic nature. And then also, you know, just is really able to emote through his performance in ways that it seems like many actors around him in any just any given film he's in, either didn't have the ability to or did not have like you know, free free reign to do.
So I like what you say about him being more sympathetic than you would expect a character in this role to be, because there's several scenes in this movie of him making these desperate begging pleas for something that is actually a totally unreasonable request. But he's such a good performer that you feel sad for him, you kind of get on his side. You're like, yeah, why won't why won't you just stay with this old man forever so that Peter Lourie can continue as occult research.
Yeah, yeah, there's just something about him. I mean, also, I just I just really like a good Peter Laurie performance. That's probably I mean, that's that's one of the reasons I was looking at this film anyway. And while I was watching this, my wife asked me. She's like, how can you enjoy a film like this compared so, Yeah, she's just not as into like the older pictures, you know, She's like, how can you you know, you enjoy film like this the same way you enjoy a film from
like the eighties or the seventies. And you know, I mean part of it is like, yeah, it is a different era, it's a different there are different sensibilities in play. But I think a big part of it too, is like there's something about Peter Laurie's voice. It just it calms me to hear it. Like, yeah, there's something about a Peter Laurie performance that I'm I'm just captivated by the whole thing.
Long stretches of the first half of this movie, though I would say suffer from Peter Loriie deficiency. But he has more of a role as the movie goes on, and whenever he returns to screen, our grail of delight overfloweth because he plays this this queasy, bookish little man who is obsessed with discovering forbidden secrets of astrology, and his obsession just builds to these points of absurdity with these excellent freak out scenes. I love him in this.
Yeah, I have to say one of the main reasons I hesitated with this film was that I expected him to be a minor character that gets killed off half through the picture, so I was delighted when that was not the case. Though Peter Laurie is not the only actor playing a crazy person, which is great because we also have Victor Fransen playing Francis Ingram. This is a
fun performance. This is the actor here. Fransen was born in eighteen eighty eight died in nineteen seventy seven, Belgian born actor known for Hold Back the Dawn, Helen high Water, and I accuse he's pretty great in this as the while he's still alive before he becomes just a hand as the overly dramatic composer and concert pianist.
This movie proposes that if you are paralyzed on one side of your body, as Victor Franson's character is, so that you cannot use one of your hands, the other hand somehow becomes incredibly good at both piano playing and choking. And Victor Franson embraces this premise with cranky alacrity, really really powerful.
Yeah, this was like a sort of a weird, weird movie logic for the beast with five fingers to dwell on. But yeah, it's like he only has the one hand, so it has the strength of two hands. But then on top of that, he's also this this brilliant pianist, and so he's you know, his fingers danced across the uh, you know, the ivories with just amazing dexterity. And I guess the idea is that all that intense piano playing just makes your the hands of a professional piano player
like a couple of coconut crabs. Yes, so like somebody, like a like a Tory Amos could just rip a phone book in half with those dexterous digits averse.
But if she could only use one hand. Then she could rip a phone book in half with one hand, right.
Yeah, there there. Yeah. There are times where characters are grabbed by Ingram and they're like his his hand was so so powerful. It's it's it's wonderful and ultimately like that's part of it. It's like the hand becomes so powerful that it cannot die. Like the man dies, but the hand lives on. The only other actor of note here for our purposes is Jay Carrol nsh who plays
Detective Video Castanio. This is the Italian law enforcement guy who commissario the Commissario, Yeah, who becomes involved with the various murders going on.
Now.
The actor in question here is actually of Irish descent. He's playing an Italian. This is a role that I would say feels really fun and balance for most of the picture, but by the apps, by the time the credits roll, you're sick of him.
He still sick of him, Yeah, because at the very end of the movie they have him look directly into the camera and then do a vaudeville comedy act. Yeah what.
Yeah, this is something we've run into before with films where it's like you just could not send the audience home with any ounce of dread in their body. You had to take whatever was funny or heartfelt about the f and not only double down on it, but triple down on it in the closing moments. And that's exactly what they do with this guy's character.
You remember, Actually there is an ending to Bava's Black Sabbath much like this that suddenly at the end, Boris Karloff shows up and he's doing a comedy routine and he's like, actually there are no ghosts, so ho.
And the.
Yeah, and you see the crew and they're all like, don't be afraid. Now, it's safe to go to bed. There's nothing in your closet.
Yeah. I mean, it's just I guess it's just an artifact of the time. You just couldn't send the audience home with the sense of dread. You had to send them out with a smile on their face. I mean, this is theater, right. One of the interesting things about J. Carrol Nish, however, is that he's an Oscar nominated actor for Sahara from nineteen forty three and for a Medal for Benny from nineteen forty five. His final film role was the role of doctor Frankenstein in nineteen seventy one's
Dracula Versus Frankenstein alongside long Cheney Junior. All right onto just a few of the I guess artistic mentions here Max Steiner did the music. Steiner lived eighteen eighty eight through nineteen seventy one. Austrian born American music composer, nominated for twenty four Academy Awards, winning three for The Informer in thirty five, Now Voyager in forty two, and Since You Went Away in forty four. He also composed the score for Casa Blanca. I don't know if this jumped
out at Jiujoe. I wasn't familiar with this individual, but the costume designer on this was Travilla. Just Travilla, just Travilla, Yes, Madonna, Yeah, yeah, this was born William Travilla. He was famed for his work with Marilyn Monroe on various films, including The Seven Year Itch. So that costume that she's wearing in The Seven Year Itch over the subway grate that is the work of Travilla. He was also the costume designer on the Day the Earth's Stood Still.
Oh okay, So he came up with the gort.
Suit maybe so, but anyway, Yeah, it was apparently a big name, if not at the time. I guess at the time, you can't just call yourself Travilla and not be a big deal. I mean, I'm convinced, but he lived nineteen twenty through nineteen ninety.
Yeah, Travilla's great. So I figure we should call it the special effects because they were so good for the time they I didn't find much written about them, but the special effects are credited to William McGann as the special effects director and then also h kind of camp asc.
Yeah. I was looking into either of these guys to see of Sometimes with films like this, you can see where the special effects people went from there and you can recognize, oh, well this guy was this guy was a synthetic flesh master, because we see it reflected in various pictures they were involved in. But I couldn't find any direct signs of that here. But I guess these are the guys to thank for these wonderful crawling hand effects, because again, they hold up really well.
Should we discuss the plot?
Oh, let's do all right.
Well, we begin somewhere in an outdoor market place, it seems in a kind of Mediterranean region, though there are mountains in the background. And then we get a text that pops up that says, this is the story of what happened or seemed to happen in the small Italian village of San Stefano nearly fifty years ago. So if it was nearly fifty years ago at the time of the movie, this would put this in like the eighteen nineties.
Yeah, I believe so.
By the way, I could not find evidence of a real San Stefano in Italy, though there is one in Bulgaria. But it looks like, you know, business is booming in the marketplace. We see children running all around fruit carts with big dangling strings of garlic, and we see a horse drawn cart carrying a bunch of tourists around and it stops so they can have lunch. And then, looking on from the shadows nearby like a wolf staring at a herd of cattle. Is Robert Alda playing this character again,
who has multiple names depending on where you look. But in the movie they call him Bruce Conrad, though if you look him up it might say he's Conrad Ryler. Either way, he's Conrad. He's our guy. And just just look at him.
I mean, yeah, I mean he's just an obvious con man from the get go. Here.
Yes, he's got the pencil mustache, he's got that Clark Gable smirk. He's got a brimmed hat kind of pulled down low over his eyebrows, cigarette dangling loosely out of his mouth, and a kind of smooth looking suit jacket with wide lapels. Obvious obvious cigarette smoking wolf. And he slithers up to a couple of American rubes who sit
down at a cafe table. He insinuates himself into their lunch state and eventually cons them into buying some fake artifacts he's got, like, he's got this whole story about how he buys things that are actually priceless antiques, but he gets them for a song by going through people's estates and then he ends up selling something. I did not know what these were, by the way. They're called cameos, but Rachel and I watched this together and she explained
it to me. They're like these little oval things that have people's heads in profile on them.
Oh okay, so sort of a combination between like a person's likeness and jewelry that you might remember them by.
Yeah, kind of. But he gets these people, you know, these ignorant farmers to believe that they are buying priceless fifteenth century antiques they are not. The lady is like, I love cameos, and the dude ends up buying a bunch of them.
Yeah, I mean, he completely hustles them. It's it's it's completely apparent before anything else happens with the plot to confirm the matter.
Right, So Conrad pulls off the con he gets some sweet US dollars, and he ends up strolling on down the avenue, where he strikes up a conversation with the local commissario commisario a video Castanio, who is a smooth Italian version of Ircule Poirot.
Yes, yeah, I think that's a fair comparison.
And it's funny when you see them walking next to each other because they're like both guys in hats with thin mustaches, smoking rolled tobacco products.
Yeah, and this scene that they have together is actually pretty fun. I like the dialogue in this.
Oh yeah, because the commissario he's a fun character, at least for most of the movie, because he clearly knows that Conrad is crooked, but it also implies their kind of buddies and he's not interested in actually arresting him. He's like, oh, you are aware it is illegal to sell sell antiques without a license, and Conrad's like, I am aware of every law.
Yeah. They're basically like, I would just like to remind you what the law is. And he's like, oh, I know what the law is. I would not dream of passing that line. And he's like, well, I'm just here to remind you where that line is, and so forth. Like they have a fun back and forth.
Yeah, And it.
Also kind of drives home that our character Conrad here is maybe not too bad. He's not so bad that the local law enforcement is telling him, hey, cut it out. It's more like, all right, just make sure make sure you know what you're doing a small time con man, and don't get too big time on me.
Right. They don't mind, they don't mind him out here mildly hustling the tourists. Yeah, but Conrad also gets some news from the commissario. It is gossip about the Villa Francesco, the estate of somebody named Francis Ingram, who we understand as a very rich old man who has been unwell, and apparently somebody named Julie is planning to leave the Ingram place. The Commissario reveals that he has just authorized
her exit visa earlier this morning. Presumably I guess to leave the country, and it's also implied that Conrad has some kind of relationship with Jew. Mister Kommisario's like, aren't you going to go see her before she leaves? So we follow Conrad to the Villa Francesco as he approaches through the elegant courtyard that has a lot of lush greenery and fancy looking statues, And meanwhile, a sullen looking Peter Lorie watches from a second story window as Conrad approaches.
He's just shooting laser beams of gray sadness out of his eyeballs. And the whole time we hear piano music.
Somebody is playing with great skill and intensity, and it turns out it is mister Francis Ingram himself, again played by Victor Fransen, the old man who owns the Villa Francesco is a skilled pianist, though with a twist because he is paralyzed on one side of his body, so he only plays the piano with one hand, the left hand, though his left hand alone is implied to be of the most incredible skill, the incredible virtuosity of his one handed piano playing, and Conrad stops at the door to
listen while he does this performance. And also, meanwhile, Julie played by Andrea King, she is sitting beside the piano in a nurse's uniform, supposedly listening to him play, but honestly looking excruciatingly bored. I was trying to think of how to describe it. She looks like an adult at a party who gets cornered by a friend's seven year old kid who is explaining the plot of dragon Ball Z for thirty minutes.
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, or walking you through the evolution of various pokemons.
Yes, and you're just like, oh wow, yeah.
I have learned, by the way to ask very good questions about Pokemon. I am a good receiver of Pokemon conversation at this point.
So you can do this without looking as bored as she.
Does, right, I hope, So, I hope. So.
Anyway, after he finishes playing, Julie picks up this very conspicuous gigantic ring and puts it on mister Ingram's finger and Buddy, this ring is bananas. It is probably it's like the biggest ring I've ever seen.
Yeah, one gets the impression that it is this is a black and white movie, but I get the impression that it's deeply red, you know, and so on the film it's it's deeply dark and black, and it just kind of like sucks you in.
Right, So it sticks in your mind, and it's supposed to because you will see it later to I think, help you identify whose hand you're looking at. When you just see a hand, it's this giant, conspicuous ring. And he always takes it off and sits it on top of the piano when he plays.
Yeah, and there's this this scene with Julie here where he holds out his hand for her to put the ring back on, which seems kind of weird. I mean, it is weird, like they're getting married. Yeah, Like there's a ritualistic quality to it, but they're cinematic payoff later.
Right, So Julie lets Conrad inside and we learn more about all of their relationships. So we find out that Conrad is well known Villa Francesco. He and Ingram are good friends, such good friends that Ingram seems to know about Conrad's tourist scamming racket, because Conrad's like, you look very well, and Ingram's like, ah, save it for the tourists. Don't do that on me. And we find out that they play chess together a lot, often for money, and Conrad always wins and takes Ingram's money.
There are a lot of freeloaders in this household. Yeah, I mean, I mean not, I mean, Julie's not a freeloader, but Conrad and and Peter Lourie's character Hillary, Yeah, I mean, I gat I mean, I guess there's there's camaraderie here. I guess Ingram's getting some he's getting companionship out of it. But they're they're very much there, you know, enjoying the facilities and sharing in his money.
Julie is the only one working right, everybody else has a different kind of hustle going. But so Conrad also complements Ingram's piano playing. I think the situation is that he he was once a famed pianist who played with both hands, and then he had a stroke or some other kind of medical event, and his right hand became paralyzed, so he learned to play concert piano all over again
with only one hand. And Conrad helped him in this because he's also a musician, and he rescored famous pieces of music for Ingram in such a way that they could be played one handed on the piano. Yeah.
Yeah, the film reminds you a couple of times, yeah, that Conrad is himself a musician, that we never actually see him doing anything musical.
I don't think, no, I don't think once. And there's a moment of that bilateral hand awe because like Ingram starts looking at his left hand and he says, now that all my strength, all my will is concentrated in these fingers, and Conrad says exactly the power, the tonal quality, the prodigious technique. So it's not explicit, but they seem to be implying that it's only logical that if a man has use of only one hand, it will double in strength and skill, absorbing the latent power of the other.
Yeah. Perhaps, even like over, it's kind of implied, especially with some of the occurrences that happen later on, that the hand becomes more powerful than Ingram himself, like yeah, it is. You know, it no longer needs Ingram.
Ingram is holding it back, right, Yeah, and maybe it should be freed of Ingram so that it can achieve its own dreams. Oh. But also at the same time, Ingram has this obviously unhealthy fixation on Julie, who is his nurse. You know, she's supposed to be there helping take care of him during his illness, but he's he's obviously got different plans. He's like, he's like, Julie, since you came, I've found new life, a new source of energy, a stronger ambition to live. And he keeps talking about
her beauty and stuff. And then when she leaves the room, he's confessing to Conrad, He's like, I need her. She's the only one I care about, and she is quite rightly just kind of like, eh, like looking for ways to leave the room. Well, anyway, Ingram invites both Julie and Conrad to a dinner that he's hosting, where he will be having his lawyer from Rome, a man named Duprex, and also Hillary, his secretary, who is Peter Loriie. And the next scene is the one where we actually meet Hillary.
Peter Lourie is tucked away up in his study, reading from occult tomes. It's supposed to be implied that he's doing serious, deep arcane research. That we get to see the title page of the book that he's got in his hands, and I don't know, it just doesn't seem that wild to me. It's called Lombardo's History of Astrology, a Complete Textbook for Astrologers by Federico Lombardo, And I don't know. I thought it was funny because in a minute he starts talking about how he's unlocking the ancient
secrets of the stars. But he's doing that by reading what looks like a mass printed introductory textbook for astrology.
Yeah, the way they set it up, you'd expect it would be more of some sort of ancient tome that he's consulting.
But yeah, this original scroll from ancient Babylon. But no, it's like a it's a printed book.
Well, we don't know how he seems obsessed with this research, but we don't know how far along he is. He's maybe he just started it the other day and he's just super into it, but he got to start somewhere. I might as well start with the with this before you move on to the an economicon and so forth.
I guess so. But in this scene we learn of a conflict between Hillary and Julie because Julie is exhausted by constantly attending to the old man and she's creeped out by his obsession with her, so she wants to quit and travel back to the United States. You can totally understand that. But then meanwhile Hillary is like, you
cannot do that, you will regret it. Why is this, Well, it's because he is in the middle of achieving a world historical breakthrough in unlocking the secrets of ancient astrology with this introductory textbook, and if he unlocks these secrets, they would allow him to predict the future with absolute certainty. He tells us that this knowledge has been lost since the burning of the Alexandrian Library, but he is now
just on the cusp of rediscovering it. And anyway, so he explains to Julie, look, you have to stay here and let Ingram be obsessed with you, because if you don't, I'm going to have to do work for him, and I don't have time for that. I'm learning elite zodiac sorcery.
Yes, it's like the boss is obsessed with you. If you'll leave, he will make me work, yeah, to take away all of my free time for my astrology Wikipedia scrolling right.
So, and he begs her quite desperately to stay with Peter Lourie's trademark pitiful puppy dog, eyes welling with tears at the thought of not succeeding at becoming a wizard. And she she's like, I don't know. I mean, i'd like to help you, but I really do need to get out of here. And he's like, no, please. And she also has no comment at all about the astrology or wizardry or anything. She's just like, yeah, I get it, but I need to go.
Yeah.
There's very little follow up really on the on the astrology thing. I kept expecting it to become more of a of a plot focus, but I and then ultimately I guess it's not as important, Like just we know that it's his area of obsession and if his if his if his obsession were threatened, then who knows what might happen.
Anyway, later we see this dinner where Ingram and Julie and Conrad and Hillary and the lawyer Duprex are all gathered around the table, and then I love the scene that follows where the old man is like, let's all go around the table now, and everyone talk about how sane I am, and they're, oh, you you're extremely saying you're the sanest person I've ever met. Well, I think you're even saner than he does.
I think one of the things I was thinking watching this though, is like, I don't really remember what dinner parties were like exactly. Yeah, so you know, since they were pre pandemic. So it's like I'm thinking, maybe this is what they will be like when they're finally back. No one will actually know how to entertain multiple people at a dinner table, and we'll just like go around, am I not saying?
Right? Yeah, everybody will just go on at length about how your mental balance is awesome and and make sure that your lawyer can can hear them saying that. Now, why this whole performance, Well, it's because Duprex, the lawyer, has brought a new copy of Ingram's will, and everybody there asked to sign it to testify that Ingram is of sound mind when he authorizes this this version of
the will. And then Ingram plays the piano for everybody, and I was wondering, Okay, so is Duprex the lawyer getting paid to have dinner and listen to him play the piano.
I mean probably, so you know, he's he's you know, he's charging by the hour.
Anyway, later in the garden, Conrad and Julie meet up, and I think this is the first time we really see them having some alone time, and they discussed what they each want. Conrad confronts her about whether she's leaving, and she says, how did you know? And then Conrad says, there are three forms of communication, the telephone, the telegram, and the commisario. Commisario is the fastest. So it's like
gossip cop strikes again. I don't know if that is unique to the character in this movie, or was there a general idea at the time that, like late nineteenth century Italian police were huge gossips.
I guess I just I figured he's he's kind of the you know, a central part of the community. He kind of knows what's going on with everybody, and he's also he's also very a nosy about everything.
Right he is. And they talk about what they want, and it's a very tender scene and She discusses how she feels guilty but also that she has to escape, and Conrad confesses that he's in love with her, and it seems like she likes him too, so they decide to run away together and they kiss. Meanwhile, Peter Laurie is creeping on them from behind the hedges where he overhears everything and you can just see the anguish in
his face. He's like, no, my astrology research, I will never achieve awesome power unless I sabotage this right now. So he goes to Ingram and just immediately tattles.
Yes. Yeah, He's like, like, Conrad's out there, he's talking to Julie. They were smoochin. He's going to take her away from you, and we can't let that happen, Ingram.
But of course Ingram, he doesn't want to hear this, you know, is this is rocking his world and he's not happy with it. So he becomes enraged and brutally chokes Hillary with his left hand, and Julie runs in just in time, just in time to save Hillary's life, and dude has horrible scars on his throat. Ingram orders Hillary out of the house. He says, I never want to see you again. And oh, we also see that Duprex, the lawyer is nearby.
Spy.
Did you notice how many scenes of a character hiding in the shadows spying on other characters there were in this movie. It's constant, it is.
Yeah, there's a lot of conniving and eavesdropping in this picture.
But later that night, the spookiness sets in because the atmosphere changes. Wind tears through the gardens and the window shutters are banging and clattering in the dark, and then ominous music swells as Ingram senses something and he wakes up. He gets out of bed, he gets into his wheelchair, and he goes out to the main hall where he believes he hears a ghostly figure playing his piano like
he hears his own piano performances. But there's nobody there, nobody at the piano, and this appears to drive him mad and he ends up falling down the stairs and he dies.
Yeah, this is a weird scene. It was a weird scene at the time, not knowing what was going to happen, and by the end of the film, looking back on it, I have a lot of questions about what was actually occurring here. But they do that kind of like wayvy optical effect that makes it feel like there is some sort of delusion going on here, that he is hallucinating and is unwell.
Now, given what we find out at the end of the movie, though, do you think there was a hidden record player involved in this scene?
I mean, I want to make an argument for it, but then I feel like if that were the case, it would break a lot of things about the plot as we understand it, because it means there's some other villain at play here. Well, I don't know, could.
Be Hillary a hidden record player to drive them in mad by thinking that he's hearing somebody playing his own music.
Maybe I don't know it. It doesn't feel like a perfect fit for some reason. I'm not sure though.
Okay, well, I guess that's jumping ahead to the Scooby Doo ending, which we'll have to come back to in a bit. But I thought also, I know they weren't doing this on purpose, but there was a bit of slightly awkward editing where for some reason it cuts from Ingram's death scene to church bells and mourners in procession, and for some reason, the feeling the edit suggests is that this is Ingram's funeral, and it's like fifteen minutes later.
Yeah, like Ingram died and they just called the whole town over. They're like, all right, everybody, come, it's happened. We got to do this now.
I think it's because they're both at night, and I don't know something visual about the cut. It just makes it seem like and then a few minutes later, here's where we are, and Ingram's laid out on a big black cushion and people are observing him, and the Commissario even comes to the funeral where he and Conrad have some Marsala together and talk things over, and they discuss how Ingram's money grubbing. Distant relatives have already showed up.
They are here to claim their inheritance. They want the money. And these are a couple of American guys from London named Raymond and Donald Arlington. Raymond is the father played by Charles Dingle, and I think he is supposed to be the Ingram's brother in law. He was married to Ingram's sister. I think correct, yes, and then Donald is his son, and they say, yeah, we're his only living relatives, so they think that they are here for some money.
And oh oh, and there are people, of course mourning outside, and the commissario explains, oh, these are the professional mourners. They will be mourning through the night. It is customary in these parts. And Raymond and Donald are obviously they're very stuffy types and they're bothered by all of the audible mourning. So Donald is like, ask those witches to stop howling. And they're not very sympathetic to local customs.
Well, they're not looking to put down roots here, they're looking to collect and cut out right.
In fact, they're even they focus on the occult books, the astrology books. Raymond Donald start just grabbing books off the shelf and they're like, oh, Lombardo's Astrology a you know, the British Library will give me ten pounds for this book. And meanwhile, Peter Lourie is in the background going like no.
It's it's a kind of an alarming scene where he actually gets in in Donald's face. Yeah, and it's like tells him to leave the books alone, and it's it's one of those moments where like Laurie is intimidating in this moment, like maybe he's even a little too intimidating, like they actually maybe should have done another take and backed it up a little bit, you.
Know, yeah, yeah, yeah, Well he's furious and you understand why, like they're undercutting his his wizard quest and just to get a few pounds from the British Library. So so immediately there is conflict over who will be inheriting the goods. It's a classic murder mystery setup, right, it's you know, there are a ton of movies like this. Oh you know, it's actually the same premise as Knives Out.
Yeah, I thought, really, you know, thinking back on Knives Out, you know, fine film would have benefited from a disembodied hand. Yes, maybe they're going to do that in the sequel.
Right, So everybody's got to fight over the dead man's possessions, and we get a reading of the will scene where we learn, gasp that in the most recent revision of his will, the one that everybody had to come to dinner and talk about how sane he was in order to make possible, Ingram radically changed the distribution of his assets.
So in the previous draft, everything had been going to Donald Arlington, the mean youth, who was like, make those witches be quiet, and now Ingram has changed it so that all of his possessions are instead going to Julie. And obviously the Arlingtons do not like this. They're here for the money, and when they find out they're not getting the money, they're instantly threatening to sue. They say they're going to go to court and get this will thrown out so that they can get possession of the
Villa Francesco and all of Hillary's press astrology books. And there's some scheming that goes on. Oh, Duprex, the lawyer, he's doing some triple dealing. He's like telling the Arlington's in private that if they will promise him a third of the inheritance, that he will come work for them and definitely get the new copy of the will thrown out in court. Yeah, and it seems like a done deal. They're like okay, and Duprex is like okay, tomorrow the
will will be broken. But later that night, strange things start happening. For example, the servants in the kitchen notice there is a light out in the mausoleum where Ingram's body was laid to rest. And this is apparently so frightening that when the maid in the kitchen sees it. She screams and drops something breakable on the floor, which that seems to me a little bit excessive. Just seeing a light in the crypt that is that scream worthy? I'm not sure.
Yeah, I mean, might be something to be alarmed about, but it doesn't necessarily mean that Dad or coming back to life.
Well, the Arlingtons go to investigate, but they find nobody out there, nothing out of the ordinary. But later that night Duprex, oh, he has a date with He's gonna have a whole handful of trouble, and we get some wonderful close ups on his face. I'm sorry you listeners out there cannot see the screen grabs I got and I'm having rob look at right now, but wide eyes.
There's a really great part. Is like you see a hand wearing Ingram's ring reach around a door as it creeps open, and then Duprex is like pinned up against the wall doing the like face back, nostrils flaring kind of thing that it's coming to get me. The Mummy is going to break my neck. And honestly, I miss Duprex when he's gone from the movie.
Yeah, yeah, he was a fun presence.
I think he's just got one of those kind of curious looking faces that is nice to round out a movie. Oh but also, somebody starts playing piano in the middle of the night, sounding just like Ingram, and people are woken up by the sound. But when they go to investigate, there's no one at the piano, though Ingram's giant ring is there. It's sitting on top of the piano. And they find a dead lawyer in the corner of the room.
It's dup Rex. He has been choked. So oh, and then it looks like the Arlingtons aren't going to get their special astrology books after all. But the police are called in to investigate, and what do you know, it's our old friend, the Commissario gossip cop once again, and he's there to do all the forensics. So they look for fingerprints. They take fingerprint dustings from the piano and they compare those to everybody alive in the house, and it turns out that they match no one alive in
the house. Huh. So there's a lot of talking about, you know, motive, who could it have been? And they do discuss that a former will existed that would have left everything to Donald, which would seem to implicate Julie or implicate Conrad as Julie's ally, and so people go all around pointing fingers. But I love how Conrad just comes straight out and he's like, well, obviously Ingram's ghost
killed Duprex because he didn't want his will contested. And then the Kammisario is like, but there are no such things as ghosts. But then there's a there's just absolutely exquisite logic scene that follows. So the Kammasario is like, how can we know it was a ghost? I've never seen a ghost, and Conrad says, neither have I, but one can never be absolutely sure they don't exist. So oh well, then it must have been a ghost. You know,
you can't prove they don't exist. Then therefore this murder was done by one.
I mean, it's it's believe. It was what the Sherlock Home quote, you know, when when all natural.
Excluded the impossible, the improbable room whatever it is.
Yeah, yeah, so in this it's it's similar. It's just if you've thought of the impossible, just stick with that. That sounds good.
Yeah. Well, anyway, the next day, everybody goes to the mausoleum to investigate a lead about the light in the crypt of the night before, and they find a number of very odd things. There is a tiny window broken from the inside to the outside, with a little jagged opening that a person could clearly not fit through.
And they also's point, I'm getting excited like that. That was like, oh, well, we're getting there, we're getting to the hand.
It's going to be a hand, and the coffin has been tampered with. They open it up and uh oh, the corpse of Ingram is missing its left hand.
Yeah, this was really excellent, I thought, because yeah, everybody shocked, and I was afraid they weren't going to show it. But then they do show it. There's a knife in like the paralyzed hand. Yeah, and then there's the bloody stump where the superpowered hand was previously.
Attached, right. And then they also find outside the broken window no footprints, but hand prints, yeah, single a line of single hand prints, as if a hand by itself was crawling along the ground.
Or if not crawling, then at least like flip flopping, like doing yea some sort of a fish out of a water thing.
And then there's a kind of fun sequence where they go out in public. Conrad and Julie like go to the cafe to get some brandy, and the whole town just shuns them because apparently they believe somebody at the Villa Francesco has the evil eye and they just can't can't do business with them anymore. Even like the guy at the cafe who had served them before is like, I reserve the right to refuse service. You can't come in here.
Yeah, I mean I think Conrad's realize. He's like, we're going to have to leave because otherwise we will starve. Nobody will feed us.
Right, They're going to be starved out of the town. And then also they meet up with the Commissario and there is new evidence. I think he says, am I right about this. He's like, Okay, so the fingerprints on the piano who we assume belonged to the killer, they were Ingram's and they were not older than a day, so this would have been after Ingram was dead. But also, can you date fingerprints?
I mean, you can do anything with forensics in a motion picture.
Yeah. Oh. But at some point the Kammissario seems to be won over because he says, in my mind, there is no doubt the hand is walking around, but I'd say it's right about here that the movie transitions into high gear hand mode, would you agree, Yeah.
Oh yeah, absolutely. And I was totally on board with all of this because it's clear that this is a disembodied hand crawling around attacking people in the night. And they have some just some fabulous scenes follow.
Right, there's a great confrontation between Hillary and Donald Arlington the shut those witches up, kid, and so Donald Arlington comes into Hillary's office and he's like, hey, what are you expecting to find in all these old astrology books? And Peter Laurie says that you know the law that
changes unknown fate into scientific fact. Oh great, And as an example or a demonstration of what he can predict with his astrology knowledge, he's like, hey, Donald, did you know that there were two other people who lived hundreds of years ago who have the same birthday as you and they both died by being choked to death. And Donald's like wow, okay.
Yeah, He's like, well, good, I hate surprises, like a kind of a fun comeback.
There, and they oh oh oh. And then there it turns out Donald remembers where there was a safe hidden behind the bookcase in the study here because he saw Ingram open it when he was a young child. He remembers there is a jingle to summon the combination to mind, and Donald comes back later in the night to try to return to the safe. But then meanwhile the commissario is in the house. He's like hiding out behind the fireplace, watching from the shadows, and it's those bad fingers striking
once again. Donald's creeping around and he opens up the door to the study a crack while the commissario is looking, and a hand reaches around as if from behind, and grabs him by the throat, wearing the Ingram ring. But this time it's like, man, this is a lock, because the police detective is right there and he witnesses the attack by the killer hand.
Yeah, so at this point I'm completely convinced and excited to see more of the hand.
Though technically still the hand, you can't see if it belongs to an arm or not, because it's like the door is only open a crack.
I would say one of the advantages to the plotting here is that at this point in the film you might not know exactly how good the special effects will be and so you don't know if the limitations here are based on what was possible with the effects, Like maybe the hand is always going to attack people close to a door, because that's all that's possible with the filmmaking.
Right. So Donald is not killed, he is injured, and Julie says that there is a possibility of brain fever, but he's there recovering in the night. Meanwhile, the servants all flee the villa because they believe that the hand is loose and it's the devil. And then later that night there is one of the best scenes in the movie, this great long one on one scene between Peter, Lorie and the hand and we finally see the hand revealed in all its glory.
Yeah, I mean it's pretty great. I mean, you know exactly what it's going to be nowadays, it's going to be that effect of the disembodied hand, like they've somehow, you know, cut out the rest of the body. Today today you would accomplish it with a like a green suit with everything covered except for the hand. But it looks really good.
So what happens in the scene, Oh.
Well, it's I mean, it's cool. I mean, it's a pretty complex scene, I guess because it's it's crawling across the table. It's crawling towards Hillary and the ring that he was looking at that he puts out on the table crawls out of this box like a crab, like a spider, and he's like overcome with this, this complex array of Peter Laurie emotions a lot of dread in there,
but also this sense of maybe wonder. The hand crawls across the table to him, and then it kind of it sort of does a dinosaur, you know, like how you do with your your hand where you put the middle finger becomes the like a brachiosaurus neck. It kind of does that. But it's clear what it is doing. It is doing what Ingram did in life. It is reaching out and asking if the ring be put on
the finger. Oh so good, and Laurie's character Hillary does it, and yeah, it's a pretty a pretty crazy scene, a pretty horrifically satisfying scene, especially for a picture from the nineteen forties.
But then Laurie he gets the better of the hand and he ends up trapping it in a drawer and he runs and get gets Conrad's help. He's like, hey, come look, the hands alive. I caught it in a drawer. But when then when they go check, it's not there, and Hillary has this epic fit of screaming, searching around for the hand. He's all over the place. He eventually finds the hand hiding behind a bunch of books and the book.
This is a great sequence too, because it shot. It's shot from the point, you know, the impossible point of view of behind the bookshelf, and we see Laurie's mad face the whole time as he's pulling these books off the shelf. And then the hand's cowering like a like a cornered spider, like a corner tarantula behind the last two books, and he pulls those off as well, and he grabs it.
Yeah, and he wrestles with the hand and then ends up nailing it to a base.
Oh God, such a good scene.
Yeah. Yeah. Oh. And then later Donald and Raymond they're going to I think Donald remembers how to open the safe to get the whatever it is out of it. He's looking for. Maybe it's the will or something I don't recall, but he's trying to get in there. And they managed to open up the safe and then when they do what's inside the safe? It's the severed hand. Yeah, so Donald sees it and then runs away screaming. But then we get the final sort of confrontation and real sequence.
So how do we describe that.
Well, so at this point in the film that we've come up to it, like, it really feels like this hand is a reality, right, Yeah, there, we've seen it crawling around, I guess. But then you quickly are made to realize who has actually seen the hand in its full glory. Only one character, Peter, and that's Peter Laurie's Hillary character. No one else has seen it crawling around on the table, and no one else has nailed it down.
And his attempts to show it to other people, come, look, it's in the drawer haven't actually panned out.
Now, Donald and Raymond did see it in the safe, but it wasn't moving. It's laying there in the safe.
So yeah, we're coming to the realization that, yes, that corpse's hand is missing, that corpse's hand is in the safe, nailed to a board, but perhaps it isn't actually alive. Perhaps only Peter Laurie's character Hillary thinks that the hand is alive and if that that is the case, well who's doing all the strangling, Well it would have to be Peter Lourie's character.
Hillary, right, And that's the conclusion that Julie seems to come to. There's kind of a confrontation between Julie and Hillary, and then Hillary tries to choke her but fails, and then he further descends into madness. He loses his mind, and he thinks he sees the hand everywhere.
Right, And there's a scene where he's he's coming and increasingly unhinged, and he's approaching her with a knife and she kind of turns the tables on him. She plays into his madness and she's like, no, you're right, it is the hand. We've got to get that hand. We've got to stop that hand. And that buys her a little time.
She's on team anti hand. Yeah, but I think what we're supposed to understand is that so Hillary did indeed sever the hand, Yes, And so he went to the grave cut off the hand and then used the severed hand to attack the lawyer Duprex and like put the fingerprint all over the piano and stuff to fool everybody and make make them think the hand had come back to life, but then he started to believe his own story, and as he's losing his mind, he thinks the hand is actually pursuing him.
Yeah, there's kind of a healthy dose of the telltale heart and all of the swear. Yeah, he's driven mad by his own crimes and begins to believe that the hand is actually alive, begins to see the hand, and then ultimately, you know, ends up battling the hand.
Yeah, there's a great SmackDown scene where he fights the hand and in the end he has to purge it by fire.
Yes, yes, throws the hand into the fireplace. And this is all just a great showcase for Laurie. You know, he gets to act mad and physical and you know, just enraged and also full of horror. Really fun performance that he didn't think we were going to get, because again, the first half of the film, you can easily imagine it's going to be all this character Conrad battling the hand and saving the female lead at the end. But Conrad's never really not seen much.
What's he doing. He's somewhere, you know, having.
A smoke or something. I guess, selling some crap to some tourists.
Right, Yeah, he's trying to sell Julie some cameos. But in the end, after this big confrontation, wait, I'm suddenly forgetting Hillary dies. But how does he die?
The hand it chokes him. He falls down, and then we do a fade where the hand disappears to make it clear to the audience. I guess that the hand was a figment of his imagination.
So did he choke himself?
Well? I thought that when the hand disappeared it was or the hand was going to be shown to be his own hand, But then there's no hand there at all, So I don't know if it's just like he died via psychic damage from the madness, or if he it's implied that he choked his self and it's just maybe not. They didn't really show it on screen in a way that was convincing.
But it's a full on Scooby Do ending because they like uncover all of the like here's what they were do it because there is a gramophone. There's like a record player inside a suit of armor that was hidden there to apparently simulate Ingram's ghost playing the piano, because it was a recording of Ingram playing and they would and that they said that Hillary would play that in order to fool people into thinking that Ingram was running around.
Yeah, which is great. We love an ending. When they describe something, they give you all the details in a way that it makes no sense whatsoever. Like, yeah, this means that it's such a good vinyl recording where it's such a good late nineteenth century sound system that it's indistinguishable from live piano performance. People in the house are just like, the piano is clearly playing the dead have come back to life, right, And it just feels like,
you know, it's one of these ending. It's like, don't worry, there's nothing supernatural exists. There are no monsters, there are no hands. This was all just a clever scheme and it wasn't clever and for the good guys, don't you forget it?
Yeah, and then the commisario does the whole comedy routine. Oh there's the glove. There's like the glove that's dropped on the stairs and you think it's a hand, but then it's just a glove.
Yeah, Like I thought they were, Oh, maybe they're going to go for it and they're going to have the twist ending. Nope, the hand is real. The hand was real the whole time, and it's going to kill you. I would have loved that, and I thought that's what we were getting. But then they're like, no, he just dropped a glove and it made a made faint.
Well, there's like four twist endings that they take back. Then later you think that they're doing it again because the hand with the ring is creeping up at the Kamasario's neck while he's doing comedy into the camera. Yeah, and then he's like, oh, it is my own hand.
Yeah, it's absolutely terrible. It says like, come on, I feel like you're making fun of the film that we just watched and enjoyed. But like we said, it seems to have been more or less the style of the time. I mean, didn't Edgar Allan Poe do this, you know where at the end of the Telltale Heart he's like, you know, he's talking about the Maddening Beach, just kidding, is not a real heart at all. I'm just it was all in my mind, isn't that kookie? Isn't it crazy?
There are no undead hearts people don't worry about.
Oh man, all right, Well, I feel like we got to wrap it up for the beast with five fingers.
All right, yeah, let's do it. But hey, if you want to see this film yourself, I guess for the most part, you're in luck because it is widely available to purchase or rent digitally. You can also pick it up on DVD. But on the other hand, we were talking about this before we recorded. This doesn't seem to be a film that's received any like remastering love or certainly doesn't seem to have been released on Blu Ray or anything. So maybe we'll get that in the future.
And that being said, it's still a beautiful looking film. It's not like the film quality is degraded or anything to any degree that makes it unwatchable. But I feel like it deserves more love than it's seen. Agreed, all right, Well, write in if you have thoughts on this particular film or other crawling hand movies related crawling hand movies that we didn't cover. I'd also love to hear from anyone out there who plays the piano. What's the deal with with one headed piano? Is that?
Is?
I mean, I guess is that a thing? Let us know. We would love to hear from you in the meantime, if you'd like to check out other episodes of Weird House Cinema, it publishes every Friday in the Stuff to Blow Your Mind podcast feed You know, we're primarily a science podcast, with core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays, listener mail on Mondays, and an artifact short form episode on Wednesdays. But on Friday, that's when we set aside most serious matters and just talk about a strange film.
Huge thanks, as always to our excellent audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson. If you would like to get in touch with us with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest a topic for the future, or just to say hello, you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.
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