I have to admit I have mixed feeling about calling this a classic movie review.\u00a0 Even though it falls within the \u201cGolden Age\u201d of Hollywood time period \u201cThe Beast with Five Fingers\u201d is hardly a masterpiece.\u00a0 But a rose by any other name would smell as sweet and vice versa.\u00a0 Warner Bros. still had Peter Lorre on the payroll from his days in Casablanca and other more mainstream titles so it made sense to have him as the bug-eyed maniac in this little gem.<\/p>\n
The story takes place in a small town in Italy circa the year 1900.\u00a0 Francis Ingram is a rich man who until recently was an acclaimed concert pianist.\u00a0 He had suffered a stroke that left all but his right arm extremely weakened so that he needed a wheelchair to get around his house.\u00a0 With him at the time of the story are a circle of people that assist him in various ways.\u00a0 Conrad Ryler is a friend who has agreed to transcribe music into notes that can be played on the piano with one hand.\u00a0 Hillary Cummins (played by Peter Lorre) is Ingram\u2019s manservant.\u00a0 He has attended to Ingram\u2019s household chores for years in exchange for access to Ingram\u2019s library of books on occult studies.\u00a0 He is more than a little nuts.\u00a0 Julie Holden is a recent addition to the household.\u00a0 Since his stroke, she has been Ingram\u2019s nurse.\u00a0 She has been extremely kind to him in his illness for which he is extremely grateful.\u00a0 But she has become terribly worn by the job and wishes to leave.\u00a0 She and Conrad are also in love and planning to leave the town to get married.\u00a0 Ingram\u2019s lawyer is also in house, a man named Duprex who has just finished drafting Ingram\u2019s new will.\u00a0 All the above residents of Ingram\u2019s home are there to witness his new will.\u00a0 But this crystalizes in Julie\u2019s mind the need for her to leave Ingram\u2019s employ and she and Conrad go out into the garden to plan their departure.\u00a0 Hilary overhears their plans and communicates them to Ingram.\u00a0 But Ingram flies into a rage believing it to be jealousy at Julie\u2019s preferred status with the master.\u00a0 He grabs Hilary by the throat with his good hand and practically strangles him to death before Hilary escapes his grip.\u00a0 Ingram fires Hilary and tells him to leave the next morning.<\/p>\n
But that night there is a wild storm outside and the sound of the wind and banging shutters wakes Ingram and he manages to get into his wheelchair by himself and heads into the second-floor hall looking for Julie to help him.\u00a0 Somehow, he becomes disoriented and ends up falling down the long staircase in his wheelchair and breaks his neck and dies.<\/p>\n
The local police chief or as he is titled \u201cCommissario\u201d Ovidio Castanio (played comically with a Chico Marx Italian accent by J. Carrol Naish) investigates the death and declares it an accident.\u00a0 The will is read and it turns out that Julie is the heir to all of Ingram\u2019s property.\u00a0 At this point Ingram\u2019s relatives, his brother-in-law and nephew, Raymond and Donald Arlington show up and are unhappy about the new will.\u00a0 They feel that the will is debatable.\u00a0 They make it clear that they want to get possession of the estate and liquidate it for cash.\u00a0 When they mention selling the library Hilary becomes unhinged and says that the books were bought for him and no one will take them away.\u00a0 We find that he believes that esoteric knowledge found in these books will allow him to possess untold powers over the mysteries of the universe, or something.\u00a0 Anyway, he\u2019s really incensed at the Arlingtons.\u00a0 They on the other hand take practical steps to gain possession of Ingram\u2019s estate.\u00a0 They cut a deal with the lawyer Duprex to have him use his legal acumen and his knowledge of Ingram\u2019s mental state to have the will overturned in return for a third of the value of the estate.<\/p>\n
But a funny thing happens that night.\u00a0 A light is seen shining in the mausoleum where Ingram is interred and later on Duprex is murdered, strangled by a powerful hand that leaves the same kind of marks that Hilary got from Ingram.\u00a0 Upon examination it is discovered that Ingram\u2019s corpse in its tomb is holding a knife in his paralyzed hand and his good hand has been cut off and is missing.\u00a0 A small broken window and hand prints on the ground out side the mausoleum makes it scientifically certain that the dead man cut off his own hand and that the dead hand is navigating about and strangling people and also by the way playing the piano in the Ingram house.\u00a0 Well sure.<\/p>\n
Commissario Castanio investigates the murder and confirms that fingerprints on the throat of the dead man and several other places are of Ingram.\u00a0 Later on, Donald Arlington is unsuccessfully strangled, allegedly by the hand and the whole household is starting to get spooked enough to want to bail on the house for safer lodgings.\u00a0 At about this time Hilary witnesses the hand playing the piano and after capturing it he nails it to a piece of wood to slow it down somewhat.\u00a0 Not everyone believes him.\u00a0 But when Donald Arlington recovers and opens up his uncle\u2019s safe, he finds the hand nailed to the board.\u00a0 He panics and runs out of the house with Conrad in hot pursuit.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile Julie confronts Hilary with proof that she has that he was the one who strangled Duprex and Donald in order to keep them from getting possession of his precious books.\u00a0 Now we learn that Hilary is guilty of the crimes but he really does believe that the hand he cut off of Ingram is animate and committing the murders.\u00a0 But Julie\u2019s clear portrayal of his actions convinces him he must kill her too.\u00a0 He attempts it but she fends him off and locks herself into her bedroom.\u00a0 But of course, there is another door and for whatever reason she was too stupid to lock it.\u00a0 As he gets ready to stab her this time, she convinces Hilary that she can hear the hand playing the piano downstairs.\u00a0 Hilary snaps back into his crazier persona and promises to save her from the hand.\u00a0 He heads downstairs whereupon Julie locks both doors and throws herself on her bed and has a breakdown.\u00a0 Now why she is sure there isn\u2019t a third door is unknown to me.<\/p>\n
At this point we get to watch Lorre\u2019s Hilary go completely bonkers.\u00a0 He sees the hand at the piano and grabs it and starts grappling with it.\u00a0 Eventually he throws it in the fire place and tries to keep it in there with a poker.\u00a0 But for some reason eventually he just sort of sits there with his bulging eyes and does nothing while the hand crawls up his shirt, grabs him by the throat and strangles him to death.\u00a0 Loser.<\/p>\n
The next day Commissario Castanio shows Conrad the string that Hilary used to trigger a recording of Ingram playing the piano that everybody attributed to the hand.\u00a0 Everything else could be explained by Hilary walking around with the severed hand and strangling people.\u00a0 Julie decides to give the estate to the Arlingtons and she and Conrad get exit visas from the Commisario to start their new lives together elsewhere.\u00a0 At the very end of the film a servant girl starts screaming because she sees a glove on the staircase.\u00a0 The Commisario picks up his glove and puts it on and says how silly to think a hand can move on its own.\u00a0 At which point in the close up shot we see a hand coming up to his throat.\u00a0 Pulling the shot back we see it\u2019s his hand.\u00a0 Hilarity ensues.<\/p>\n
This thing is almost silly enough to be an Abbott and Costello horror movie.\u00a0 But I would say Peter Lorre\u2019s disturbed manner, voice and face adds just enough creepiness to make it interesting.\u00a0 Your mileage may definitely vary.\u00a0 Let\u2019s call it mildly fun.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I have to admit I have mixed feeling about calling this a classic movie review.\u00a0 Even though it falls within the \u201cGolden Age\u201d of Hollywood<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[239,238,237],"tags":[1238,354,2693,191,1240],"class_list":["post-12412","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-movie-reviews","category-classic-movie-reviews","category-reviews","tag-hollywood-golden-era","tag-horror","tag-j-carrol-naish","tag-ocf-classic-movie-review","tag-peter-lorre"],"yoast_head":"\n