HALLOWEEN HORRORFEST 2019: The Beast With Five Fingers (1946)

Once again, we’ve got no sponsor, so the Randomizer has dragged me back to the 40‘s again...although, thankfully, this is a film that has a reputation of being kind of good.  Of course, that reputation is as probably the best among the small lot of ‘severed hand’ horror films.

This film has a pretty decent pedigree--It’s directed by Robert Florey from a script by the great Curt Sidomak, which explains how pretty much everyone in this movie is so damn eloquent.  But I think the real star of this rodeo is Peter Lorre, who is third billed and pretty much owns this film from the moment he appears.  People are so used to the parodies of Lorre, which have permeated the culture, that they don’t realize that the man was a pretty decent actor who was slotted into certain roles because of his looks.  In this film we do see the hysterical, bug-eyed Lorre we all know in the third act...but the measured, intense performance he gives in the first two acts is what’s really impressive.

Now, to be fair, calling this a horror movie is kinda fudging a bit.  This is a mystery with a spooky element added to it by the killer to muddle the waters a bit; think of it as an adult, less frenetic and more cerebral episode of Scooby-Doo.  It also plays fair with the viewer--the two times we see the hand attack someone, we see an arm attached--so that when our heroine (Andrea King’s Julia) puts it all together, we don’t feel cheated. 

And while we’re speaking of our heroine....I want to give Sidomak credit for that character.  In the first act, Julia just seems to be the regulation girl school screamer, there to move the plot along and be saved by Robert Alda’s Bruce (he’s called Bruce throughout, even though the cast lists his character as ‘Conrad Ryler).  But it’s Julia who figures out what’s going on, confronts the killer and, when threatened, finds a way to get herself out of trouble.  I was not impressed with Andrea King up until this point, but Sidomak gives her an aspect sorely missing from other female leads, and she rises to the occasion.

Wisely, Florey keeps the severed hand offscreen until roughly the one hour mark, and the special effects are effective for the time.  There are some moments when the hand is obviously a rubber prop, but there are other moments where it scuttles along in a pretty creepy way.  As always, I can see some horror fans used to CGI and extreme gore laughing at this stuff, but it works in the context of this film.

This is a very interesting feature that shows two notable figures in the Golden Age of Studio Horror at their best and has a remarkable performance from Lorre.  I definitely recommend it.

Tomorrow our sponsor is my Croation Brother krešimir zvonarić.  He has chosen the 1981 slasher film featuring special effects by Tom Savini and shot in New Jersey, where life is cheap, The Prowler!

There is only one slot left for this year’s Halloween Horrorfest.  Anyone who joins the Domicile of Dread Patreon  at the $3 or more slot not only gets bits of writing and exclusive podcasts (like the upcoming Pacific Rim Rialto and maybe a little surprise at the end of this month), but can sponsor one of those slots and choose the film I have to watch and report on!