Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to Weird House Cinema. Rewind. My name
Speaker 1: is Joe McCormick. Today we're bringing you an older episode
Speaker 1: of Weird House Cinema, the movie show that Rob and
Speaker 1: I do on Stuff to Blow Your Mind. Normally, Weird
Speaker 1: House Cinema airs every Friday. Today we're bringing you an
Speaker 1: episode of Weird House from the fault. This episode originally
Speaker 1: published February fourth, twenty twenty two, and it's on the
Speaker 1: nineteen forty six horror films starring Peter Lorie The Beast
Speaker 1: with Five Fingers. Let's jump right in.
Speaker 2: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 3: Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema. This is Rob Lamb
Speaker 3: and this is Joe McCormick, and we're going back to
Speaker 3: the nineteen forties on this one. This is going to
Speaker 3: be only the second time we have ventured into the forties.
Speaker 3: The last time was for the film Doctor Cyclops, and
Speaker 3: this time we're going in for the Beast with Five
Speaker 3: Fingers from nineteen forty six.
Speaker 1: Both of these films that we've done from the forties
Speaker 1: have unusually good special effects for their time. So Doctor
Speaker 1: Cyclops the premise was there's a mad scientist who gets
Speaker 1: a bunch of people into his house and then he
Speaker 1: shrinks them down to about the size of mice, and
Speaker 1: they have to find a way to defeat the giant.
Speaker 1: But this movie is a killer Severed Hand movie, so
Speaker 1: you might wonder, well, I don't know how good could
Speaker 1: the killer Severed Hand effects be in nineteen forty six,
Speaker 1: but I gotta say really good.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the special effects in this film are pretty great,
Speaker 3: especially for the time period. They're very effective. You know,
Speaker 3: if you're looking for the flaws, I'm sure you you
Speaker 3: can find them. You know, that's not an actual disembodied
Speaker 3: hand crawling across the floor. You know, if you're looking
Speaker 3: for a whole lot of blood, you're not going to
Speaker 3: find it in a nineteen forty six picture for the
Speaker 3: most part. But it's there's still some wonderfully creepy scenes,
Speaker 3: especially when you have the wonderfully weird actor Peter Lourie
Speaker 3: interacting with it. Because if anybody can act opposite a
Speaker 3: rubber hand and make you believe it, it's going to
Speaker 3: be somebody of Laurie's caliber.
Speaker 1: That's right. This movie has two meat spiders in it.
Speaker 1: One is the hand and the other is Peter Lourie.
Speaker 3: That's right. Now. One of the fun things about this
Speaker 3: is that I believe we actually mentioned this title though
Speaker 3: neither of us had seen it yet, when we covered
Speaker 3: the nineteen thirty five film Mad Love, which that one
Speaker 3: was just wonderful film starring Peter Laurie Francis Dre Colin Clive,
Speaker 3: and that film featured hand transplants and supernatural paranoid ideas
Speaker 3: of what that might mean. As we discussed at that point,
Speaker 3: hand transplants were science fiction. It had not been pulled
Speaker 3: off yet, and this was a film that you know,
Speaker 3: went wild with the idea, well, if if I received
Speaker 3: the hands of a knife thrower, then am I now
Speaker 3: a knife thrower? You know where?
Speaker 1: Yes you are?
Speaker 3: Yeah, undoubtedly, And it was well utilized in the plot.
Speaker 3: Now that tradition storytelling tradition goes back at least as
Speaker 3: far as the nineteen twenty four film The Hands of
Speaker 3: Orloc which is based on the same source material as
Speaker 3: Mad Love. But The Beast with Five Fingers takes things
Speaker 3: in a related but different direction entirely, and that is,
Speaker 3: if you if you cut a hand off of somebody,
Speaker 3: if you remove the hand, does something of the original
Speaker 3: humans will survive in that hand. Could that hand have
Speaker 3: a life of its own? Could it crawl around and
Speaker 3: manipulate things? Could it strangle people? And so forth, which
Speaker 3: I guess is related to some of the anxieties and
Speaker 3: sci fi ponderings that you find and works like Mad Love,
Speaker 3: but this takes it into an even more ridiculous and
Speaker 3: special effects powered level of monster movie.
Speaker 1: Well, there are actually even more similarities than we've already mentioned,
Speaker 1: because if you'll recall in Mad Love and the story
Speaker 1: was based on which I guess is the hands of Orlock.
Speaker 1: Orlock is not the name of Peter Lourie's character. Peter
Speaker 1: Lourie is the is the sort of is the mad
Speaker 1: surgeon who does the hand transplant. And Orlock is the
Speaker 1: name of Colin Clive's character, who is a concert pianist.
Speaker 1: He's like, these hands have great talent, and his hands
Speaker 1: are badly damaged in a train accident. Colin Clive is
Speaker 1: riding in a train car with a man who has
Speaker 1: a large sausage with him and I think also like
Speaker 1: a dog in a picanic basket. Yeah, but I think
Speaker 1: that the train crashes, his hands are harmed and his
Speaker 1: beloved comes to Peter Laurie and is like, save my
Speaker 1: you know, She's like, save my. My fiance is brilliant hands.
Speaker 1: And the way that Peter where he saves his brilliant
Speaker 1: hands is by transplanting the hands of a murderer onto
Speaker 1: this concert pianist. And he finds, you know, okay, it
Speaker 1: works his hands, he can use them, but now he's
Speaker 1: not really good at the piano anymore. And instead what
Speaker 1: he's really good at is wielding a knife.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he's an expert knife thrower.
Speaker 1: Now, now this movie is also got some weird hand
Speaker 1: magic going on, also involving somebody who's a concert pianist.
Speaker 3: It does. Yeah, And this one is also notable for being,
Speaker 3: I believe, unless I'm missing something like, this is the
Speaker 3: film that starts at all with crawling hand movies. It's
Speaker 3: easy to take crawling hands for granted now because you know,
Speaker 3: it's a well established trope crawling hands or in the
Speaker 3: Dungeons and Dragons Monster Manual, you know that sort of thing.
Speaker 3: Bottom's family, Yeah, Adam's family is a big one. The
Speaker 3: thing now, in that I was looking it up, the
Speaker 3: thing dates back I think to nineteen fifty four. I
Speaker 3: think that's when it first popped up in the Charles
Speaker 3: Adams comic of the Adams Family, but of course it
Speaker 3: famously appeared in the TV series. It of course factored
Speaker 3: into the two major nineteen nineties films of the Adams Family,
Speaker 3: as well as the third I want to say made
Speaker 3: for TV or direct to video sequel. But one thing
Speaker 3: I was surprised at in that is that the thing
Speaker 3: in those films, all three of those, was played by
Speaker 3: Canadian actor and magician Christopher Hart. Which it makes sense
Speaker 3: if you want to you want somebody to play a
Speaker 3: disembodied hand, you get a slighter hand, guy, you get
Speaker 3: a magician in.
Speaker 1: There, right, Yeah, the graceful movements and the well, I
Speaker 1: mean the magicians are practiced at doing a twirl of
Speaker 1: the fingers right to kind of yeah, dazzle you while
Speaker 1: they misdirect your attention. Now, now, Rob, I noticed, though
Speaker 1: you keep calling it the thing. I think it's just thing.
Speaker 1: I think thing is its name.
Speaker 3: I think you're correct on that thing, not the thing. Now,
Speaker 3: in terms of other crawling hand features that came out
Speaker 3: after the Beast with five fingers, you have the nineteen
Speaker 3: sixty three's the crawling hand you have a segment of
Speaker 3: the Amicus film Doctor Terror's House of Horrors from sixty five,
Speaker 3: starring Christopher Lee. There's another film from Amicus titled and
Speaker 3: Now the Screaming Starts, and that has Peter Cushing and
Speaker 3: Herbert Lawm in it. There's also a Mexican horror film
Speaker 3: that I believe I've watched part of called Demonoid Messenger
Speaker 3: of Death Crawling Hand movie. There's also famously The Hand
Speaker 3: from nineteen eighty one as well, directed by Oliver Stone
Speaker 3: and starring Michael Caine. Have you seen this one, Joe.
Speaker 1: I haven't, but I've seen it described as a remake
Speaker 1: of the movie we're talking about today, The Beast with
Speaker 1: Five Fingers. I don't know if that's accurate.
Speaker 3: I don't remember being angry. This is a film that
Speaker 3: I think I watched it on A and E, like
Speaker 3: on a Sunday afternoon back in the day. It was
Speaker 3: one that was in rotation there and I remember it
Speaker 3: being it seemed to be like more of a serious
Speaker 3: psychological treatment. But no, no, I take that back. I
Speaker 3: think there was really a crawling hand in it. But yeah,
Speaker 3: Michael can good in it, and he's like a comic
Speaker 3: book artist. It's weirdly named Joe Lansdale. I think John Lansdale,
Speaker 3: John Lansdale, Okay, yeah, But every time I look it up,
Speaker 3: I'm like, is that supposed to be a reference to
Speaker 3: Joe Lansdale. I don't know.
Speaker 1: Okay, so that, but in that one, is it also
Speaker 1: like his hand has such talent in it, and then
Speaker 1: it becomes severed from his body and goes and does
Speaker 1: its own business.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, but then it comes back. But yeah, there's
Speaker 3: also a lot of, like you know, Michael Caine, dark
Speaker 3: psychological stuff going on in that one. Now, if you're
Speaker 3: an Evil Dead fan, The Evil Dead two from eighty
Speaker 3: seven famously features some crawling hand shenanigans.
Speaker 1: Right, Ash's hand becomes possessed by a demon and he
Speaker 1: has to chop it off and then put it under
Speaker 1: a bucket which he weighs down with a stack of books,
Speaker 1: the top of which is a farewell to arms yuck.
Speaker 3: Yuh oh. Yeah, And that's the thing, right It kind
Speaker 3: of I guess increases. It's so well known at this
Speaker 3: point that it's increasingly about gags, So I think there's
Speaker 3: a crawling hand gage at least in nineteen ninety three's Leprechaun.
Speaker 3: And then there is the comedy horror film from nineteen
Speaker 3: ninety nine titled Idle Hands. I vaguely remember seeing this one.
Speaker 3: I want to say it has either either Gary Busey's
Speaker 3: son or that other guy. Is it Matthew Lillard or
Speaker 3: Jake Busey.
Speaker 1: I don't think either one. I've really seen it. I
Speaker 1: think I saw this.
Speaker 3: I with that money that one of those two guys
Speaker 3: is in this movie.
Speaker 1: It's got Devin Salwa. He's the main guy. He plays
Speaker 1: a stoner kid. It has Jessica Alba, who was all
Speaker 1: the rage at the time. It has Seth Green and
Speaker 1: another guy who plays you know, they play a couple
Speaker 1: of stoner buddies. I definitely don't recall Jake Busey or
Speaker 1: who's the other one.
Speaker 3: You said, what Matthew Lillard?
Speaker 1: No, No, there are no lil Ardians in the film
Speaker 1: at all.
Speaker 3: Huh. Well, there you go, and in my mind I
Speaker 3: see them clearly running around with a disembodied hand.
Speaker 1: Well, I can see why you'd think that, because it
Speaker 1: has some of the same sheen or grime to it
Speaker 1: as say hackers, like it's going for a alternative stoner
Speaker 1: cool kid in the late nineties sort of thing. I
Speaker 1: guess Hackers was probably earlier, maybe early nineties, I'm not sure,
Speaker 1: but anyway, it's not quite at that level. It's more
Speaker 1: of a low brow, stoner horror comedy. A lot of
Speaker 1: the jokes are about marijuana.
Speaker 3: Okay, Interestingly enough, Christopher Hart, who played Thing in those
Speaker 3: three Adams Family movies, also plays the hand in Idle Hands.
Speaker 1: It's the best performance in the film.
Speaker 3: Oh and then also this guy goes on to play
Speaker 3: a hand in an episode of TV's Angel as well.
Speaker 1: I never watched Angel. That's the Buffy spin off.
Speaker 3: This the Buffy spinoff. Yeah, but yeah, I wasn't familiar
Speaker 3: with Christopher Hart beforehand, but this was beforehand. This was
Speaker 3: the guy for Disembodied Hands for pretty much an entire decade.
Speaker 3: So I guess my main point here is that, yeah,
Speaker 3: this is this film sets a trend. This film introduces
Speaker 3: what would become a trope, and so it's interesting to
Speaker 3: go back and watch it and think, well, audience had
Speaker 3: audiences had never seen this before. It's old hat to
Speaker 3: anybody who lived during the age of the Adams Family,
Speaker 3: you know, but at the time, like these scenes where
Speaker 3: you finally see the beast with five fingers, which is
Speaker 3: a hand, is a disembodied hand. It's pretty shocking, especially
Speaker 3: since the effects are so good.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I agree. Now, I know we set this up
Speaker 1: at the beginning sort of in contrast with Mad Love,
Speaker 1: and I would not say that this movie is anywhere
Speaker 1: near as great as Mad Love, But on its own terms,
Speaker 1: it is a fun and silly and pretty inventive little
Speaker 1: horror thriller with good special effects for the time.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Absolutely.
Speaker 1: Now at this point, do we even need to give
Speaker 1: an elevator pitch. We've sort of already done it. It's like,
Speaker 1: what if there were a murder mystery in which the
Speaker 1: hand of the killer wasn't attached to a wrist. Yes,
Speaker 1: let's hear some trailer audio.
Speaker 4: A piano, long, silent mysteriously plays again its weird an
Speaker 4: ominous chords, filling up a deviled house with stark terror.
Speaker 4: A concerto of death, a cobra music of a dead
Speaker 4: man played by a hand that returned from the grave
Speaker 4: to wreak vengeance on his betrayals, marking each for a
Speaker 4: murder as it strikes within human power. A horrifying monster
Speaker 4: that takes its evil commands from beyond they cannot return
Speaker 4: to the tomb till it completes its mission of destruction.
Speaker 3: Now, one thing that's worth noting about this film too,
Speaker 3: and I'm not sure. I'm not sure if this was
Speaker 3: ever even possible, but it seems like if you were
Speaker 3: watching this with absolutely no spoilers and having never seen
Speaker 3: the trailer or a poster or anything, the big reveal
Speaker 3: that the hand is crawling around on its own might
Speaker 3: have been more impactful because they kind of set it
Speaker 3: up like, what's happening, what's you know? And the first
Speaker 3: time you see the hand, you can't tell that it
Speaker 3: has that it's not attached to a body.
Speaker 1: Right, somebody will appear in the crack of a door
Speaker 1: and then a hand reaches around from behind them and
Speaker 1: grabs their throat and starts choking them. But for all
Speaker 1: you know, the hand could in fact be attached to
Speaker 1: a wrist. It could just be somebody killing this guy.
Speaker 1: And then there's actually some question later on in the
Speaker 1: movie about whether it is. In fact, it probably is,
Speaker 1: the movie implies, but it doesn't make it clear even
Speaker 1: when you see the hand, that the hand is not
Speaker 1: just a regular hand that's running around on its own.
Speaker 1: You don't get to that until probably two thirds of
Speaker 1: the way through the movie.
Speaker 3: Yeah, all right, Well, let's talk about some of the
Speaker 3: people involved in this one. The director is Robert Floret,
Speaker 3: who lived nineteen hundred through nineteen seventy nine. Industrial strength
Speaker 3: French American director who worked from the twenties through the sixties.
Speaker 3: One of these guys where you check out his filmography
Speaker 3: and it's just this long list of one hundred and
Speaker 3: eighteen credits. He's just absolutely cranking out pictures during the
Speaker 3: nineteen thirties especially, he's hustling. Yeah. Now, his early career
Speaker 3: was apparently more about avant garde expressionist, but he increasingly
Speaker 3: became just like a cinematic workhouse and also apparently the
Speaker 3: very dependable filmmaker someone of the studios could turn to
Speaker 3: to really put the picture together, you know, put it out,
Speaker 3: you know, under budget and on time.
Speaker 1: That kind of great. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Now, from a purely horror standpoint, he's perhaps best known
Speaker 3: for Murders in the Room Morgue from nineteen thirty two,
Speaker 3: based on the Edgar Allen post story and starring Hungarian
Speaker 3: American film legend Bella Lagosi, oh as well as ape
Speaker 3: Suit legend Charles Gemora, who we've mentioned on the show before.
Speaker 3: Another Float film of note is The Face Behind the Mask,
Speaker 3: which was one I was also looking at potentially to
Speaker 3: cover in this episode, but went with The Beast instead.
Speaker 3: This was a film that starred Peter Laurie as an
Speaker 3: immigrant watchmaker who's who you know. It comes in with
Speaker 3: a lot of optimism about what he can make of
Speaker 3: himself in America, but then he's kind of chewed up
Speaker 3: by dark American realities and he becomes a disfigured crime
Speaker 3: boss instead. And then also of interesting note, I was
Speaker 3: not familiar with this film, but Florat directed a noir
Speaker 3: film titled Daughter of Shanghai from thirty seven, which featured
Speaker 3: a female Chinese American lead in the form of Anime Wong,
Speaker 3: as well as Korean American actor Philip On, and this
Speaker 3: was in some ways progressive for the time, as Asian
Speaker 3: leads were often played by white actors, and in fact,
Speaker 3: in the same year, Wong lost out the lead role
Speaker 3: of a Chinese character in The Good Earth. So again
Speaker 3: I haven't seen Daughter of Shanghai, but it seems to
Speaker 3: be noteworthy in film history now. I think Wong typically
Speaker 3: played sort of dragon lady stereotypes, but still it was
Speaker 3: apparently something of the time to see her at the
Speaker 3: top in the lead, even in a noir sort of
Speaker 3: crime thriller type of a film. Daughter of Shanghai, by
Speaker 3: the way, also features a young Anthony Quinn popping up
Speaker 3: in a lesser role. So, like I said, Flore busted
Speaker 3: out a bunch of films, directed a lot of TV
Speaker 3: later on during his career, and his last credit is
Speaker 3: actually an episode of the original Outer Limits series, so
Speaker 3: one titled Moonstone, and he also did three different Twilight
Speaker 3: Zone episodes.
Speaker 1: Oh, you're the Outer Limits connoisseur, ho's Moonstone.
Speaker 3: Well, I'm not a connoisseur as much of the original series.
Speaker 3: I'm more of a connoisseur or growing connoisseur of the
Speaker 3: nineteen nineties Outer Limits revival. So I don't think i've
Speaker 3: seen Moonstone. I've seen some of the original Outer Limits episodes,
Speaker 3: and of course they're great, but I haven't seen that one. Likewise,
Speaker 3: I looked up the three Twilight Zone episodes he did,
Speaker 3: and I faintly remember one of them, but I don't
Speaker 3: think any of them are like the really famous Twilight
Speaker 3: Zone episodes.
Speaker 1: You like the era of the Outer Limits that sometimes
Speaker 1: has CGI that looks like it's from one of the
Speaker 1: Wing Commander games.
Speaker 3: It really does. I mean sometimes there's also, to be fair,
Speaker 3: there's a lot of great practical alien makeup and some
Speaker 3: cool set design as they figure out like how can
Speaker 3: we on a budget create a different alien or futuristic
Speaker 3: hallway for every episode of this series. But yeah, there's
Speaker 3: some truly awful CGI at times as well.
Speaker 1: I love it now.
Speaker 3: The screenplay for this film was written by a pretty
Speaker 3: famous name, Kurtzodmack, who lived nineteen oh two through the
Speaker 3: year two thousand. It's a German born novelist and screenwriter
Speaker 3: who left Germany first for Britain and then for the
Speaker 3: US due to concerns overrising anti Semitism under the Nazis.
Speaker 3: His family was Jewish. His German output was already pretty
Speaker 3: successful prior to this, however, including the sci fi film
Speaker 3: I was looking at this one FP one doesn't answer,
Speaker 3: which seems to be about sort of a sort of
Speaker 3: an air aircraft carrier base, like a not a ship,
Speaker 3: but like some sort of like a large like at
Speaker 3: the time sci fi aircraft platform in the middle of
Speaker 3: the ocean. Once he left for the UK. He did
Speaker 3: British war thrillers, and he did some comedies, but then
Speaker 3: he started striking it big with some horror screenplays. He
Speaker 3: did the screenplay for the nineteen forty one film The
Speaker 3: Invisible Man Returns that has Vincent Price in it ooh,
Speaker 3: and then he wrote an original screenplay for nineteen forty
Speaker 3: one's The wolf Man, starring Claude Rains, Bell Lagosi and
Speaker 3: lom Cheney Junior. He went on from there to write
Speaker 3: a ton of screenplays, including Frankenstein Meets Wolfman from forty three,
Speaker 3: I Walked with a Zombie from forty three, Son of
Speaker 3: Dracula from You Guessed At nineteen forty three, and then
Speaker 3: House of Frankenstein from nineteen forty four, along with just
Speaker 3: a lot of other stuff. But those are some of
Speaker 3: the titles that jumped out of me. He also wrote
Speaker 3: the nineteen forty two sci fi novel Donovan's Brain, which
Speaker 3: has been adapted three times. I don't think he was
Speaker 3: personally involved in any of the adaptations, but it was
Speaker 3: adapted in nineteen forty four as the Lady in the
Speaker 3: Monster in nineteen fifty three Is Donovan's Brain, and in
Speaker 3: nineteen sixty two as the Brain.
Speaker 1: Donovan's Brain is a great poster. Have you seen it?
Speaker 3: Yeah? Yeah, with a In fact, I think the Brain
Speaker 3: from sixty two also has a pretty snazzy poster. But yeah,
Speaker 3: I'm all about a good brain film.
Speaker 1: I love the colors. It's got these big bars of
Speaker 1: yellow and then these creepy eyes and a green background.
Speaker 1: And it says a dead man's brain in a hidden
Speaker 1: laboratory told him to kill, kill, kill.
Speaker 3: So you can see why this was the perfect guy
Speaker 3: to adapt The Beast with Five Fingers. And I say
Speaker 3: adapt because it's based on a short story by William
Speaker 3: Fryar Harvey, who lived eighteen eighty five through nineteen thirty seven,
Speaker 3: I think, professionally known as W. F. Harvey, a British
Speaker 3: writer who wrote horror and ghost stories. All right, let's
Speaker 3: get into the cast of this film. The credited lead
Speaker 3: is not Peter Loriie. It is Robert Alda playing Oh
Speaker 3: let's see in the In the credits is listed as
Speaker 3: Conrad Ryler. But that's not what people call him, right, No.
Speaker 1: It's all over the place. The promotional materials for this
Speaker 1: movie call him Conrad Riyler. But then characters on screen
Speaker 1: call him Bruce Conrad. So it sounds like his name
Speaker 1: was changed in like the shooting script, but then something
Speaker 1: else ended up using a name from an earlier draft
Speaker 1: or something.
Speaker 3: That's that's crazy, because yeah, it's still listed on IMDb
Speaker 3: as Conrad Ryler. So it's a sort of disservice to
Speaker 3: I mean, they couldn't have possibly realized this that one
Speaker 3: day people would be watching your film going to the
Speaker 3: you know, this official listing of character names to keep
Speaker 3: track of what's going on, and if you don't have
Speaker 3: the right names there, we're just going to be lost.
Speaker 1: Well, whether it's his first name or his last name,
Speaker 1: he is Conrad, so we can at least stick with that.
Speaker 3: Yes.
Speaker 4: So.
Speaker 3: Alda was born nineteen fourteen died nineteen eighty six. Originally
Speaker 3: a vaudeville singing dance guy who made his way up
Speaker 3: through the worlds of radio and burless theater before landing
Speaker 3: a role in nineteen forty five's Rhapsody in Blue playing
Speaker 3: George Gershwin. Huh yeah, so by the time Beast with
Speaker 3: Five Fingers comes out, this Beast is only his fourth
Speaker 3: film role.
Speaker 1: Okay, well, got he's got a very optimistic youthful energy
Speaker 1: in this Yeah, yeah, calm confidence.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he's got a good I'm not sure what you
Speaker 3: call the style of mustache that he has.
Speaker 1: It's it's kind of like Clark Gable.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's like a Clark Gable, which which gives him
Speaker 3: a unique look. He has kind of a I think
Speaker 3: he pointed out, he has kind of his character has
Speaker 3: kind of a loopine quality to it. Yes, Alda continued,
Speaker 3: We'll talk more about his character Conrad as we move forward.
Speaker 3: But all To continued to act in film and increasingly
Speaker 3: in TV. But he did very well on Broadway, popping
Speaker 3: up and made fifties and sixties runs of stuff like
Speaker 3: Guys and Dolls. And I'm delighted to report that he
Speaker 3: was also a cast member on Super Train from nineteen
Speaker 3: seventy nine, a show about an atomic powered train full
Speaker 3: of like extravagant cars that had things like swimming pools
Speaker 3: in them, so kind of a predecessor to snow Piercer.
Speaker 1: Like the whole show takes place on the train, right.
Speaker 3: And I think they have murder mysteries and stuff. Everything
Speaker 3: is terrible. That a video with clips from the mini
Speaker 3: from the TV movie that kickstarted the one season series.
Speaker 1: Oh, I got to look this up after we're done.
Speaker 1: But oh, one thing that I wondered about, and you
Speaker 1: can rest assured, yes, indeed, Robert Alda is Alan Alda's dad.
Speaker 1: Another thing I was reading about, though there's some lack
Speaker 1: of clarity here, I've read that the lead in the
Speaker 1: Beast with Five Fingers was originally supposed to go to
Speaker 1: Paul Henried, the actor who plays Victor Laslow in Casablanca.
Speaker 1: Though I can't hell if this means he was supposed
Speaker 1: to play the Robert Alder role or the Peter LORII role,
Speaker 1: but either way it would have been a very different movie.
Speaker 1: Robert Olda is giving a strangely variable performance in this movie,
Speaker 1: and I guess the role itself is strangely variable. Sometimes
Speaker 1: he's like I said, he's Clark Gable, He's sometimes he's
Speaker 1: a smooth, rascally con man with this lustful twinkle in
Speaker 1: his eye. And then other times he's just like a
Speaker 1: straight down the middle galahad. He's just this perfectly steady
Speaker 1: and virtuous hero.
Speaker 3: Yeah. And one of the weird unexpected things about this,
Speaker 3: you know, we'll get into the plot in a bit, but.
Speaker 1: He, you know, he starts.
Speaker 3: He's the he's the top build actor in the film.
Speaker 3: He's he's the pretty much the first it's introduced, I believe,
Speaker 3: and you expect him to play a more pivotal role
Speaker 3: in like the final quarter of the film, but he's
Speaker 3: not really. He really kind of fa He's inconsequential for
Speaker 3: the most part. When you get into the final act.
Speaker 1: It seems like in the second half of the movie,
Speaker 1: really he's just there to be the handsome man that
Speaker 1: Andrea King is in love with, and that's pretty and
Speaker 1: he stands around and watches things happen.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Yeah, he has increasingly little agency, which ultimately I'm
Speaker 3: fine with, you know, it's it's kind of nice to
Speaker 3: see the you know, the attractive male lead in a
Speaker 3: film from this era ultimately mean nothing.
Speaker 1: Well, right, you got to make more room for Peter Lourie,
Speaker 1: which I'm all for.
Speaker 3: Yeah, now, before we we already mentioned Andrea King as
Speaker 3: she plays Julie Holden. Impossible to forget her name because
Speaker 3: there's a lot of screaming for Julie, a lot of
Speaker 3: characters wandering around this big castle mansion and screaming her
Speaker 3: first name.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and like the commissario with the Italian accent, just
Speaker 1: saying Julie many many times.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so so yeah. You easily remember her name. If
Speaker 3: you remember no other characters name in this you remember
Speaker 3: her so. Andrea King was a French born American actor
Speaker 3: who was especially active in the forties and fifties, but
Speaker 3: had a pretty long career on screen and on TV,
Speaker 3: known for God Is My co Pilot and The Very
Speaker 3: Thought of You. But she also pops back up in
Speaker 3: the nineteen seventies in House of the Black Death and Blackenstein.
Speaker 1: Now. I was looking at her other stuff to see
Speaker 1: if I'd seen her in anything else, and there was
Speaker 1: nothing that really stood out to me, So I don't
Speaker 1: know what she's like. Usually, I got to say, her
Speaker 1: performance in this movie feels phoned in. She does not
Speaker 1: seem to be super interested in being in the Beast
Speaker 1: with five fingers. However, her relatively flat acting performance sometimes
Speaker 1: makes scenes more amusing than they would have been if
Speaker 1: she was more into it, Because I don't know, it's
Speaker 1: just like a funny compliment to the weird stuff going
Speaker 1: on around her and to her awe inspiring hairds. This
Speaker 1: movie is an event of profoundly big hair, which makes
Speaker 1: me want to see another movie I saw that she
Speaker 1: was in. It's a nineteen fifty topic film called I
Speaker 1: Was a Shoplifter, which, with an exclamation, hide things in
Speaker 1: her hair to get him out of the store.
Speaker 3: I think. But before I watched it, when you were
Speaker 3: telling me a little bit about that about it, you
Speaker 3: said you compared her hair to Dracula's hair, like the
Speaker 3: Old Man.
Speaker 1: Gary Oldman, Yeah, with the butt cut in the Francis
Speaker 1: Ford Coppola Dracula, Yeah, a couple of times she has
Speaker 1: an enormous, like curly butt cut.
Speaker 3: Well, there are some pretty hilarious scenes where her very
Speaker 3: flat performance is in stark contrast to say, Peter Lourie's performance.
Speaker 3: But I hesitate to heap the blame on her for this,
Speaker 3: or to really cast any blame on her at all,
Speaker 3: because there are some questions that arise concerning the script,
Speaker 3: Like there are scenes where it's like one character can
Speaker 3: see things that are not there, and she is perhaps
Speaker 3: legitimate Her character is legitimately supposed to be looking at nothing,
Speaker 3: and therefore maybe it makes sense that she is not
Speaker 3: reacting the same way other characters are.
Speaker 1: Well, yeah, and I also want to say it makes
Speaker 1: perfect sense in the earlier parts of the movie where
Speaker 1: there's like another character who is obsessed with her and
Speaker 1: she is not into him at all, and so her
Speaker 1: flat performance is great in those scenes because you can
Speaker 1: tell she's just conveying like an you get me out
Speaker 1: of here kind of feeling yeah.
Speaker 3: And kind of going for like a steely calm because
Speaker 3: there is some crazy dude ranting at you and you're
Speaker 3: trying to not escalate the situation in trying to like
Speaker 3: maybe play into their delusions a little bit so that
Speaker 3: you can make a b line for these gay.
Speaker 1: Okay, So I'd say with both of our lead actors
Speaker 1: so far, there's a little bit of weirdness in how
Speaker 1: the character is realized on screen. But then we get
Speaker 1: to Peter Lourie. He gets like third billing, right, and
Speaker 1: he plays a character named Hillary Cummins, and this is
Speaker 1: the main event.
Speaker 3: That's right. So we're not going to go super into
Speaker 3: Laurie's biography and filmography here because we spend a lot
Speaker 3: of time with it in the Mad Love episodes, So
Speaker 3: definitely go back to that. But he lived nineteen oh
Speaker 3: four through nineteen sixty four. He was an Austro Hungarian
Speaker 3: actor of Jewish descent who made it big in Fritz
Speaker 3: Ling's em Before like siomc fleeing the rise of anti
Speaker 3: Semitism under the Nazi regime. A great actor, plagued at
Speaker 3: times by substance abuse and health problems, but completely unequaled
Speaker 3: in his ability to play these kind of artful mixes
Speaker 3: of sympathetic weirdos and absolute mad men. Like it's a
Speaker 3: careful you know, it's a careful mixology going on at
Speaker 3: times with a Peter Lourie roll, because it's not like
Speaker 3: he's just great at playing like a scary weirdo. It's
Speaker 3: like he does to have this sympathetic nature. And then also,
Speaker 3: you know, just is really able to emote through his
Speaker 3: performance in ways that it seems like many actors around
Speaker 3: him in any just any given film he's in, either
Speaker 3: didn't have the ability to or did not have like
Speaker 3: you know, free free reign to do.
Speaker 1: So I like what you say about him being more
Speaker 1: sympathetic than you would expect a character in this role
Speaker 1: to be, because there's several scenes in this movie of
Speaker 1: him making these desperate begging pleas for something that is
Speaker 1: actually a totally unreasonable request. But he's such a good
Speaker 1: performer that you feel sad for him, you kind of
Speaker 1: get on his side. You're like, yeah, why won't why
Speaker 1: won't you just stay with this old man forever so
Speaker 1: that Peter Lourie can continue as occult research.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, there's just something about him. I mean, also,
Speaker 3: I just I just really like a good Peter Laurie performance.
Speaker 3: That's probably I mean, that's that's one of the reasons
Speaker 3: I was looking at this film anyway. And while I
Speaker 3: was watching this, my wife asked me. She's like, how
Speaker 3: can you enjoy a film like this compared so, Yeah,
Speaker 3: she's just not as into like the older pictures, you know,
Speaker 3: She's like, how can you you know, you enjoy film
Speaker 3: like this the same way you enjoy a film from
Speaker 3: like the eighties or the seventies. And you know, I
Speaker 3: mean part of it is like, yeah, it is a
Speaker 3: different era, it's a different there are different sensibilities in play.
Speaker 3: But I think a big part of it too, is
Speaker 3: like there's something about Peter Laurie's voice. It just it
Speaker 3: calms me to hear it. Like, yeah, there's something about
Speaker 3: a Peter Laurie performance that I'm I'm just captivated by
Speaker 3: the whole thing.
Speaker 1: Long stretches of the first half of this movie, though
Speaker 1: I would say suffer from Peter Loriie deficiency. But he
Speaker 1: has more of a role as the movie goes on,
Speaker 1: and whenever he returns to screen, our grail of delight
Speaker 1: overfloweth because he plays this this queasy, bookish little man
Speaker 1: who is obsessed with discovering forbidden secrets of astrology, and
Speaker 1: his obsession just builds to these points of absurdity with
Speaker 1: these excellent freak out scenes. I love him in this.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I have to say one of the main reasons
Speaker 3: I hesitated with this film was that I expected him
Speaker 3: to be a minor character that gets killed off half
Speaker 3: through the picture, so I was delighted when that was
Speaker 3: not the case. Though Peter Laurie is not the only
Speaker 3: actor playing a crazy person, which is great because we
Speaker 3: also have Victor Fransen playing Francis Ingram. This is a
Speaker 3: fun performance. This is the actor here. Fransen was born
Speaker 3: in eighteen eighty eight died in nineteen seventy seven, Belgian
Speaker 3: born actor known for Hold Back the Dawn, Helen high Water,
Speaker 3: and I accuse he's pretty great in this as the
Speaker 3: while he's still alive before he becomes just a hand
Speaker 3: as the overly dramatic composer and concert pianist.
Speaker 1: This movie proposes that if you are paralyzed on one
Speaker 1: side of your body, as Victor Franson's character is, so
Speaker 1: that you cannot use one of your hands, the other
Speaker 1: hand somehow becomes incredibly good at both piano playing and choking.
Speaker 1: And Victor Franson embraces this premise with cranky alacrity, really
Speaker 1: really powerful.
Speaker 3: Yeah, this was like a sort of a weird, weird
Speaker 3: movie logic for the beast with five fingers to dwell on.
Speaker 3: But yeah, it's like he only has the one hand,
Speaker 3: so it has the strength of two hands. But then
Speaker 3: on top of that, he's also this this brilliant pianist,
Speaker 3: and so he's you know, his fingers danced across the uh,
Speaker 3: you know, the ivories with just amazing dexterity. And I
Speaker 3: guess the idea is that all that intense piano playing
Speaker 3: just makes your the hands of a professional piano player
Speaker 3: like a couple of coconut crabs. Yes, so like somebody,
Speaker 3: like a like a Tory Amos could just rip a
Speaker 3: phone book in half with those dexterous digits averse.
Speaker 1: But if she could only use one hand. Then she
Speaker 1: could rip a phone book in half with one hand, right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there there. Yeah. There are times where characters are
Speaker 3: grabbed by Ingram and they're like his his hand was
Speaker 3: so so powerful. It's it's it's wonderful and ultimately like
Speaker 3: that's part of it. It's like the hand becomes so
Speaker 3: powerful that it cannot die. Like the man dies, but
Speaker 3: the hand lives on. The only other actor of note
Speaker 3: here for our purposes is Jay Carrol nsh who plays
Speaker 3: Detective Video Castanio. This is the Italian law enforcement guy
Speaker 3: who commissario the Commissario, Yeah, who becomes involved with the
Speaker 3: various murders going on.
Speaker 4: Now.
Speaker 3: The actor in question here is actually of Irish descent.
Speaker 3: He's playing an Italian. This is a role that I
Speaker 3: would say feels really fun and balance for most of
Speaker 3: the picture, but by the apps, by the time the
Speaker 3: credits roll, you're sick of him.
Speaker 1: He still sick of him, Yeah, because at the very
Speaker 1: end of the movie they have him look directly into
Speaker 1: the camera and then do a vaudeville comedy act. Yeah what.
Speaker 3: Yeah, this is something we've run into before with films
Speaker 3: where it's like you just could not send the audience
Speaker 3: home with any ounce of dread in their body. You
Speaker 3: had to take whatever was funny or heartfelt about the
Speaker 3: f and not only double down on it, but triple
Speaker 3: down on it in the closing moments. And that's exactly
Speaker 3: what they do with this guy's character.
Speaker 1: You remember, Actually there is an ending to Bava's Black
Speaker 1: Sabbath much like this that suddenly at the end, Boris
Speaker 1: Karloff shows up and he's doing a comedy routine and
Speaker 1: he's like, actually there are no ghosts, so ho.
Speaker 4: And the.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and you see the crew and they're all like,
Speaker 1: don't be afraid. Now, it's safe to go to bed.
Speaker 1: There's nothing in your closet.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I mean, it's just I guess it's just an
Speaker 3: artifact of the time. You just couldn't send the audience
Speaker 3: home with the sense of dread. You had to send
Speaker 3: them out with a smile on their face. I mean,
Speaker 3: this is theater, right. One of the interesting things about J.
Speaker 3: Carrol Nish, however, is that he's an Oscar nominated actor
Speaker 3: for Sahara from nineteen forty three and for a Medal
Speaker 3: for Benny from nineteen forty five. His final film role
Speaker 3: was the role of doctor Frankenstein in nineteen seventy one's
Speaker 3: Dracula Versus Frankenstein alongside long Cheney Junior. All right onto
Speaker 3: just a few of the I guess artistic mentions here
Speaker 3: Max Steiner did the music. Steiner lived eighteen eighty eight
Speaker 3: through nineteen seventy one. Austrian born American music composer, nominated
Speaker 3: for twenty four Academy Awards, winning three for The Informer
Speaker 3: in thirty five, Now Voyager in forty two, and Since
Speaker 3: You Went Away in forty four. He also composed the
Speaker 3: score for Casa Blanca. I don't know if this jumped
Speaker 3: out at Jiujoe. I wasn't familiar with this individual, but
Speaker 3: the costume designer on this was Travilla. Just Travilla, just Travilla, Yes, Madonna, Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: this was born William Travilla. He was famed for his
Speaker 3: work with Marilyn Monroe on various films, including The Seven
Speaker 3: Year Itch. So that costume that she's wearing in The
Speaker 3: Seven Year Itch over the subway grate that is the
Speaker 3: work of Travilla. He was also the costume designer on
Speaker 3: the Day the Earth's Stood Still.
Speaker 1: Oh okay, So he came up with the gort.
Speaker 3: Suit maybe so, but anyway, Yeah, it was apparently a
Speaker 3: big name, if not at the time. I guess at
Speaker 3: the time, you can't just call yourself Travilla and not
Speaker 3: be a big deal. I mean, I'm convinced, but he
Speaker 3: lived nineteen twenty through nineteen ninety.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Travilla's great. So I figure we should call it
Speaker 1: the special effects because they were so good for the
Speaker 1: time they I didn't find much written about them, but
Speaker 1: the special effects are credited to William McGann as the
Speaker 1: special effects director and then also h kind of camp asc.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I was looking into either of these guys to
Speaker 3: see of Sometimes with films like this, you can see
Speaker 3: where the special effects people went from there and you
Speaker 3: can recognize, oh, well this guy was this guy was
Speaker 3: a synthetic flesh master, because we see it reflected in
Speaker 3: various pictures they were involved in. But I couldn't find
Speaker 3: any direct signs of that here. But I guess these
Speaker 3: are the guys to thank for these wonderful crawling hand effects,
Speaker 3: because again, they hold up really well.
Speaker 1: Should we discuss the plot?
Speaker 3: Oh, let's do all right.
Speaker 1: Well, we begin somewhere in an outdoor market place, it
Speaker 1: seems in a kind of Mediterranean region, though there are
Speaker 1: mountains in the background. And then we get a text
Speaker 1: that pops up that says, this is the story of
Speaker 1: what happened or seemed to happen in the small Italian
Speaker 1: village of San Stefano nearly fifty years ago. So if
Speaker 1: it was nearly fifty years ago at the time of
Speaker 1: the movie, this would put this in like the eighteen nineties.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I believe so.
Speaker 1: By the way, I could not find evidence of a
Speaker 1: real San Stefano in Italy, though there is one in Bulgaria.
Speaker 1: But it looks like, you know, business is booming in
Speaker 1: the marketplace. We see children running all around fruit carts
Speaker 1: with big dangling strings of garlic, and we see a
Speaker 1: horse drawn cart carrying a bunch of tourists around and
Speaker 1: it stops so they can have lunch. And then, looking
Speaker 1: on from the shadows nearby like a wolf staring at
Speaker 1: a herd of cattle. Is Robert Alda playing this character again,
Speaker 1: who has multiple names depending on where you look. But
Speaker 1: in the movie they call him Bruce Conrad, though if
Speaker 1: you look him up it might say he's Conrad Ryler.
Speaker 1: Either way, he's Conrad. He's our guy. And just just
Speaker 1: look at him.
Speaker 3: I mean, yeah, I mean he's just an obvious con
Speaker 3: man from the get go. Here.
Speaker 1: Yes, he's got the pencil mustache, he's got that Clark
Speaker 1: Gable smirk. He's got a brimmed hat kind of pulled
Speaker 1: down low over his eyebrows, cigarette dangling loosely out of
Speaker 1: his mouth, and a kind of smooth looking suit jacket
Speaker 1: with wide lapels. Obvious obvious cigarette smoking wolf. And he
Speaker 1: slithers up to a couple of American rubes who sit
Speaker 1: down at a cafe table. He insinuates himself into their
Speaker 1: lunch state and eventually cons them into buying some fake
Speaker 1: artifacts he's got, like, he's got this whole story about
Speaker 1: how he buys things that are actually priceless antiques, but
Speaker 1: he gets them for a song by going through people's
Speaker 1: estates and then he ends up selling something. I did
Speaker 1: not know what these were, by the way. They're called cameos,
Speaker 1: but Rachel and I watched this together and she explained
Speaker 1: it to me. They're like these little oval things that
Speaker 1: have people's heads in profile on them.
Speaker 3: Oh okay, so sort of a combination between like a
Speaker 3: person's likeness and jewelry that you might remember them by.
Speaker 1: Yeah, kind of. But he gets these people, you know,
Speaker 1: these ignorant farmers to believe that they are buying priceless
Speaker 1: fifteenth century antiques they are not. The lady is like,
Speaker 1: I love cameos, and the dude ends up buying a
Speaker 1: bunch of them.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, he completely hustles them. It's it's it's
Speaker 3: completely apparent before anything else happens with the plot to
Speaker 3: confirm the matter.
Speaker 1: Right, So Conrad pulls off the con he gets some
Speaker 1: sweet US dollars, and he ends up strolling on down
Speaker 1: the avenue, where he strikes up a conversation with the
Speaker 1: local commissario commisario a video Castanio, who is a smooth
Speaker 1: Italian version of Ircule Poirot.
Speaker 3: Yes, yeah, I think that's a fair comparison.
Speaker 1: And it's funny when you see them walking next to
Speaker 1: each other because they're like both guys in hats with
Speaker 1: thin mustaches, smoking rolled tobacco products.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and this scene that they have together is actually
Speaker 3: pretty fun. I like the dialogue in this.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, because the commissario he's a fun character, at
Speaker 1: least for most of the movie, because he clearly knows
Speaker 1: that Conrad is crooked, but it also implies their kind
Speaker 1: of buddies and he's not interested in actually arresting him.
Speaker 1: He's like, oh, you are aware it is illegal to
Speaker 1: sell sell antiques without a license, and Conrad's like, I
Speaker 1: am aware of every law.
Speaker 3: Yeah. They're basically like, I would just like to remind
Speaker 3: you what the law is. And he's like, oh, I
Speaker 3: know what the law is. I would not dream of
Speaker 3: passing that line. And he's like, well, I'm just here
Speaker 3: to remind you where that line is, and so forth.
Speaker 3: Like they have a fun back and forth.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And it.
Speaker 3: Also kind of drives home that our character Conrad here
Speaker 3: is maybe not too bad. He's not so bad that
Speaker 3: the local law enforcement is telling him, hey, cut it out.
Speaker 3: It's more like, all right, just make sure make sure
Speaker 3: you know what you're doing a small time con man,
Speaker 3: and don't get too big time on me.
Speaker 1: Right. They don't mind, they don't mind him out here
Speaker 1: mildly hustling the tourists. Yeah, but Conrad also gets some
Speaker 1: news from the commissario. It is gossip about the Villa Francesco,
Speaker 1: the estate of somebody named Francis Ingram, who we understand
Speaker 1: as a very rich old man who has been unwell,
Speaker 1: and apparently somebody named Julie is planning to leave the
Speaker 1: Ingram place. The Commissario reveals that he has just authorized
Speaker 1: her exit visa earlier this morning. Presumably I guess to
Speaker 1: leave the country, and it's also implied that Conrad has
Speaker 1: some kind of relationship with Jew. Mister Kommisario's like, aren't
Speaker 1: you going to go see her before she leaves? So
Speaker 1: we follow Conrad to the Villa Francesco as he approaches
Speaker 1: through the elegant courtyard that has a lot of lush
Speaker 1: greenery and fancy looking statues, And meanwhile, a sullen looking
Speaker 1: Peter Lorie watches from a second story window as Conrad approaches.
Speaker 1: He's just shooting laser beams of gray sadness out of
Speaker 1: his eyeballs. And the whole time we hear piano music.
Speaker 1: Somebody is playing with great skill and intensity, and it
Speaker 1: turns out it is mister Francis Ingram himself, again played
Speaker 1: by Victor Fransen, the old man who owns the Villa
Speaker 1: Francesco is a skilled pianist, though with a twist because
Speaker 1: he is paralyzed on one side of his body, so
Speaker 1: he only plays the piano with one hand, the left hand,
Speaker 1: though his left hand alone is implied to be of
Speaker 1: the most incredible skill, the incredible virtuosity of his one
Speaker 1: handed piano playing, and Conrad stops at the door to
Speaker 1: listen while he does this performance. And also, meanwhile, Julie
Speaker 1: played by Andrea King, she is sitting beside the piano
Speaker 1: in a nurse's uniform, supposedly listening to him play, but
Speaker 1: honestly looking excruciatingly bored. I was trying to think of
Speaker 1: how to describe it. She looks like an adult at
Speaker 1: a party who gets cornered by a friend's seven year
Speaker 1: old kid who is explaining the plot of dragon Ball
Speaker 1: Z for thirty minutes.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, or walking you through the evolution
Speaker 3: of various pokemons.
Speaker 1: Yes, and you're just like, oh wow, yeah.
Speaker 3: I have learned, by the way to ask very good
Speaker 3: questions about Pokemon. I am a good receiver of Pokemon
Speaker 3: conversation at this point.
Speaker 1: So you can do this without looking as bored as she.
Speaker 3: Does, right, I hope, So, I hope. So.
Speaker 1: Anyway, after he finishes playing, Julie picks up this very
Speaker 1: conspicuous gigantic ring and puts it on mister Ingram's finger
Speaker 1: and Buddy, this ring is bananas. It is probably it's
Speaker 1: like the biggest ring I've ever seen.
Speaker 3: Yeah, one gets the impression that it is this is
Speaker 3: a black and white movie, but I get the impression
Speaker 3: that it's deeply red, you know, and so on the
Speaker 3: film it's it's deeply dark and black, and it just
Speaker 3: kind of like sucks you in.
Speaker 1: Right, So it sticks in your mind, and it's supposed
Speaker 1: to because you will see it later to I think,
Speaker 1: help you identify whose hand you're looking at. When you
Speaker 1: just see a hand, it's this giant, conspicuous ring. And
Speaker 1: he always takes it off and sits it on top
Speaker 1: of the piano when he plays.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and there's this this scene with Julie here where
Speaker 3: he holds out his hand for her to put the
Speaker 3: ring back on, which seems kind of weird. I mean,
Speaker 3: it is weird, like they're getting married. Yeah, Like there's
Speaker 3: a ritualistic quality to it, but they're cinematic payoff later.
Speaker 1: Right, So Julie lets Conrad inside and we learn more
Speaker 1: about all of their relationships. So we find out that
Speaker 1: Conrad is well known Villa Francesco. He and Ingram are
Speaker 1: good friends, such good friends that Ingram seems to know
Speaker 1: about Conrad's tourist scamming racket, because Conrad's like, you look
Speaker 1: very well, and Ingram's like, ah, save it for the tourists.
Speaker 1: Don't do that on me. And we find out that
Speaker 1: they play chess together a lot, often for money, and
Speaker 1: Conrad always wins and takes Ingram's money.
Speaker 3: There are a lot of freeloaders in this household. Yeah,
Speaker 3: I mean, I mean not, I mean, Julie's not a freeloader,
Speaker 3: but Conrad and and Peter Lourie's character Hillary, Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 3: I gat I mean, I guess there's there's camaraderie here.
Speaker 3: I guess Ingram's getting some he's getting companionship out of it.
Speaker 3: But they're they're very much there, you know, enjoying the
Speaker 3: facilities and sharing in his money.
Speaker 1: Julie is the only one working right, everybody else has
Speaker 1: a different kind of hustle going. But so Conrad also
Speaker 1: complements Ingram's piano playing. I think the situation is that
Speaker 1: he he was once a famed pianist who played with
Speaker 1: both hands, and then he had a stroke or some
Speaker 1: other kind of medical event, and his right hand became paralyzed,
Speaker 1: so he learned to play concert piano all over again
Speaker 1: with only one hand. And Conrad helped him in this
Speaker 1: because he's also a musician, and he rescored famous pieces
Speaker 1: of music for Ingram in such a way that they
Speaker 1: could be played one handed on the piano. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the film reminds you a couple of times, yeah,
Speaker 3: that Conrad is himself a musician, that we never actually
Speaker 3: see him doing anything musical.
Speaker 1: I don't think, no, I don't think once. And there's
Speaker 1: a moment of that bilateral hand awe because like Ingram
Speaker 1: starts looking at his left hand and he says, now
Speaker 1: that all my strength, all my will is concentrated in
Speaker 1: these fingers, and Conrad says exactly the power, the tonal quality,
Speaker 1: the prodigious technique. So it's not explicit, but they seem
Speaker 1: to be implying that it's only logical that if a
Speaker 1: man has use of only one hand, it will double
Speaker 1: in strength and skill, absorbing the latent power of the other.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Perhaps, even like over, it's kind of implied, especially
Speaker 3: with some of the occurrences that happen later on, that
Speaker 3: the hand becomes more powerful than Ingram himself, like yeah,
Speaker 3: it is. You know, it no longer needs Ingram.
Speaker 1: Ingram is holding it back, right, Yeah, and maybe it
Speaker 1: should be freed of Ingram so that it can achieve
Speaker 1: its own dreams. Oh. But also at the same time,
Speaker 1: Ingram has this obviously unhealthy fixation on Julie, who is
Speaker 1: his nurse. You know, she's supposed to be there helping
Speaker 1: take care of him during his illness, but he's he's
Speaker 1: obviously got different plans. He's like, he's like, Julie, since
Speaker 1: you came, I've found new life, a new source of energy,
Speaker 1: a stronger ambition to live. And he keeps talking about
Speaker 1: her beauty and stuff. And then when she leaves the room,
Speaker 1: he's confessing to Conrad, He's like, I need her. She's
Speaker 1: the only one I care about, and she is quite
Speaker 1: rightly just kind of like, eh, like looking for ways
Speaker 1: to leave the room. Well, anyway, Ingram invites both Julie
Speaker 1: and Conrad to a dinner that he's hosting, where he
Speaker 1: will be having his lawyer from Rome, a man named Duprex,
Speaker 1: and also Hillary, his secretary, who is Peter Loriie. And
Speaker 1: the next scene is the one where we actually meet Hillary.
Speaker 1: Peter Lourie is tucked away up in his study, reading
Speaker 1: from occult tomes. It's supposed to be implied that he's
Speaker 1: doing serious, deep arcane research. That we get to see
Speaker 1: the title page of the book that he's got in
Speaker 1: his hands, and I don't know, it just doesn't seem
Speaker 1: that wild to me. It's called Lombardo's History of Astrology,
Speaker 1: a Complete Textbook for Astrologers by Federico Lombardo, And I
Speaker 1: don't know. I thought it was funny because in a
Speaker 1: minute he starts talking about how he's unlocking the ancient
Speaker 1: secrets of the stars. But he's doing that by reading
Speaker 1: what looks like a mass printed introductory textbook for astrology.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the way they set it up, you'd expect it
Speaker 3: would be more of some sort of ancient tome that
Speaker 3: he's consulting.
Speaker 1: But yeah, this original scroll from ancient Babylon. But no,
Speaker 1: it's like a it's a printed book.
Speaker 3: Well, we don't know how he seems obsessed with this research,
Speaker 3: but we don't know how far along he is. He's
Speaker 3: maybe he just started it the other day and he's
Speaker 3: just super into it, but he got to start somewhere.
Speaker 3: I might as well start with the with this before
Speaker 3: you move on to the an economicon and so forth.
Speaker 1: I guess so. But in this scene we learn of
Speaker 1: a conflict between Hillary and Julie because Julie is exhausted
Speaker 1: by constantly attending to the old man and she's creeped
Speaker 1: out by his obsession with her, so she wants to
Speaker 1: quit and travel back to the United States. You can
Speaker 1: totally understand that. But then meanwhile Hillary is like, you
Speaker 1: cannot do that, you will regret it. Why is this, Well,
Speaker 1: it's because he is in the middle of achieving a
Speaker 1: world historical breakthrough in unlocking the secrets of ancient astrology
Speaker 1: with this introductory textbook, and if he unlocks these secrets,
Speaker 1: they would allow him to predict the future with absolute certainty.
Speaker 1: He tells us that this knowledge has been lost since
Speaker 1: the burning of the Alexandrian Library, but he is now
Speaker 1: just on the cusp of rediscovering it. And anyway, so
Speaker 1: he explains to Julie, look, you have to stay here
Speaker 1: and let Ingram be obsessed with you, because if you don't,
Speaker 1: I'm going to have to do work for him, and
Speaker 1: I don't have time for that. I'm learning elite zodiac sorcery.
Speaker 3: Yes, it's like the boss is obsessed with you. If
Speaker 3: you'll leave, he will make me work, yeah, to take
Speaker 3: away all of my free time for my astrology Wikipedia
Speaker 3: scrolling right.
Speaker 1: So, and he begs her quite desperately to stay with
Speaker 1: Peter Lourie's trademark pitiful puppy dog, eyes welling with tears
Speaker 1: at the thought of not succeeding at becoming a wizard.
Speaker 1: And she she's like, I don't know. I mean, i'd
Speaker 1: like to help you, but I really do need to
Speaker 1: get out of here. And he's like, no, please. And
Speaker 1: she also has no comment at all about the astrology
Speaker 1: or wizardry or anything. She's just like, yeah, I get it,
Speaker 1: but I need to go.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: There's very little follow up really on the on the
Speaker 3: astrology thing. I kept expecting it to become more of
Speaker 3: a of a plot focus, but I and then ultimately
Speaker 3: I guess it's not as important, Like just we know
Speaker 3: that it's his area of obsession and if his if
Speaker 3: his if his obsession were threatened, then who knows what
Speaker 3: might happen.
Speaker 1: Anyway, later we see this dinner where Ingram and Julie
Speaker 1: and Conrad and Hillary and the lawyer Duprex are all
Speaker 1: gathered around the table, and then I love the scene
Speaker 1: that follows where the old man is like, let's all
Speaker 1: go around the table now, and everyone talk about how
Speaker 1: sane I am, and they're, oh, you you're extremely saying
Speaker 1: you're the sanest person I've ever met. Well, I think
Speaker 1: you're even saner than he does.
Speaker 3: I think one of the things I was thinking watching
Speaker 3: this though, is like, I don't really remember what dinner
Speaker 3: parties were like exactly. Yeah, so you know, since they
Speaker 3: were pre pandemic. So it's like I'm thinking, maybe this
Speaker 3: is what they will be like when they're finally back.
Speaker 3: No one will actually know how to entertain multiple people
Speaker 3: at a dinner table, and we'll just like go around,
Speaker 3: am I not saying?
Speaker 1: Right? Yeah, everybody will just go on at length about
Speaker 1: how your mental balance is awesome and and make sure
Speaker 1: that your lawyer can can hear them saying that. Now,
Speaker 1: why this whole performance, Well, it's because Duprex, the lawyer,
Speaker 1: has brought a new copy of Ingram's will, and everybody
Speaker 1: there asked to sign it to testify that Ingram is
Speaker 1: of sound mind when he authorizes this this version of
Speaker 1: the will. And then Ingram plays the piano for everybody,
Speaker 1: and I was wondering, Okay, so is Duprex the lawyer
Speaker 1: getting paid to have dinner and listen to him play
Speaker 1: the piano.
Speaker 3: I mean probably, so you know, he's he's you know,
Speaker 3: he's charging by the hour.
Speaker 1: Anyway, later in the garden, Conrad and Julie meet up,
Speaker 1: and I think this is the first time we really
Speaker 1: see them having some alone time, and they discussed what
Speaker 1: they each want. Conrad confronts her about whether she's leaving,
Speaker 1: and she says, how did you know? And then Conrad says,
Speaker 1: there are three forms of communication, the telephone, the telegram,
Speaker 1: and the commisario. Commisario is the fastest. So it's like
Speaker 1: gossip cop strikes again. I don't know if that is
Speaker 1: unique to the character in this movie, or was there
Speaker 1: a general idea at the time that, like late nineteenth
Speaker 1: century Italian police were huge gossips.
Speaker 3: I guess I just I figured he's he's kind of
Speaker 3: the you know, a central part of the community. He
Speaker 3: kind of knows what's going on with everybody, and he's
Speaker 3: also he's also very a nosy about everything.
Speaker 1: Right he is. And they talk about what they want,
Speaker 1: and it's a very tender scene and She discusses how
Speaker 1: she feels guilty but also that she has to escape,
Speaker 1: and Conrad confesses that he's in love with her, and
Speaker 1: it seems like she likes him too, so they decide
Speaker 1: to run away together and they kiss. Meanwhile, Peter Laurie
Speaker 1: is creeping on them from behind the hedges where he
Speaker 1: overhears everything and you can just see the anguish in
Speaker 1: his face. He's like, no, my astrology research, I will
Speaker 1: never achieve awesome power unless I sabotage this right now.
Speaker 1: So he goes to Ingram and just immediately tattles.
Speaker 3: Yes. Yeah, He's like, like, Conrad's out there, he's talking
Speaker 3: to Julie. They were smoochin. He's going to take her
Speaker 3: away from you, and we can't let that happen, Ingram.
Speaker 1: But of course Ingram, he doesn't want to hear this,
Speaker 1: you know, is this is rocking his world and he's
Speaker 1: not happy with it. So he becomes enraged and brutally
Speaker 1: chokes Hillary with his left hand, and Julie runs in
Speaker 1: just in time, just in time to save Hillary's life,
Speaker 1: and dude has horrible scars on his throat. Ingram orders
Speaker 1: Hillary out of the house. He says, I never want
Speaker 1: to see you again. And oh, we also see that Duprex,
Speaker 1: the lawyer is nearby.
Speaker 3: Spy.
Speaker 1: Did you notice how many scenes of a character hiding
Speaker 1: in the shadows spying on other characters there were in
Speaker 1: this movie. It's constant, it is.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there's a lot of conniving and eavesdropping in this picture.
Speaker 1: But later that night, the spookiness sets in because the
Speaker 1: atmosphere changes. Wind tears through the gardens and the window
Speaker 1: shutters are banging and clattering in the dark, and then
Speaker 1: ominous music swells as Ingram senses something and he wakes up.
Speaker 1: He gets out of bed, he gets into his wheelchair,
Speaker 1: and he goes out to the main hall where he
Speaker 1: believes he hears a ghostly figure playing his piano like
Speaker 1: he hears his own piano performances. But there's nobody there,
Speaker 1: nobody at the piano, and this appears to drive him
Speaker 1: mad and he ends up falling down the stairs and
Speaker 1: he dies.
Speaker 3: Yeah, this is a weird scene. It was a weird
Speaker 3: scene at the time, not knowing what was going to happen,
Speaker 3: and by the end of the film, looking back on it,
Speaker 3: I have a lot of questions about what was actually
Speaker 3: occurring here. But they do that kind of like wayvy
Speaker 3: optical effect that makes it feel like there is some
Speaker 3: sort of delusion going on here, that he is hallucinating
Speaker 3: and is unwell.
Speaker 1: Now, given what we find out at the end of
Speaker 1: the movie, though, do you think there was a hidden
Speaker 1: record player involved in this scene?
Speaker 3: I mean, I want to make an argument for it,
Speaker 3: but then I feel like if that were the case,
Speaker 3: it would break a lot of things about the plot
Speaker 3: as we understand it, because it means there's some other
Speaker 3: villain at play here. Well, I don't know, could.
Speaker 1: Be Hillary a hidden record player to drive them in
Speaker 1: mad by thinking that he's hearing somebody playing his own music.
Speaker 3: Maybe I don't know it. It doesn't feel like a
Speaker 3: perfect fit for some reason. I'm not sure though.
Speaker 1: Okay, well, I guess that's jumping ahead to the Scooby
Speaker 1: Doo ending, which we'll have to come back to in
Speaker 1: a bit. But I thought also, I know they weren't
Speaker 1: doing this on purpose, but there was a bit of
Speaker 1: slightly awkward editing where for some reason it cuts from
Speaker 1: Ingram's death scene to church bells and mourners in procession,
Speaker 1: and for some reason, the feeling the edit suggests is
Speaker 1: that this is Ingram's funeral, and it's like fifteen minutes later.
Speaker 3: Yeah, like Ingram died and they just called the whole
Speaker 3: town over. They're like, all right, everybody, come, it's happened.
Speaker 3: We got to do this now.
Speaker 1: I think it's because they're both at night, and I
Speaker 1: don't know something visual about the cut. It just makes
Speaker 1: it seem like and then a few minutes later, here's
Speaker 1: where we are, and Ingram's laid out on a big
Speaker 1: black cushion and people are observing him, and the Commissario
Speaker 1: even comes to the funeral where he and Conrad have
Speaker 1: some Marsala together and talk things over, and they discuss
Speaker 1: how Ingram's money grubbing. Distant relatives have already showed up.
Speaker 1: They are here to claim their inheritance. They want the money.
Speaker 1: And these are a couple of American guys from London
Speaker 1: named Raymond and Donald Arlington. Raymond is the father played
Speaker 1: by Charles Dingle, and I think he is supposed to
Speaker 1: be the Ingram's brother in law. He was married to
Speaker 1: Ingram's sister. I think correct, yes, and then Donald is
Speaker 1: his son, and they say, yeah, we're his only living relatives,
Speaker 1: so they think that they are here for some money.
Speaker 1: And oh oh, and there are people, of course mourning outside,
Speaker 1: and the commissario explains, oh, these are the professional mourners.
Speaker 1: They will be mourning through the night. It is customary
Speaker 1: in these parts. And Raymond and Donald are obviously they're
Speaker 1: very stuffy types and they're bothered by all of the
Speaker 1: audible mourning. So Donald is like, ask those witches to
Speaker 1: stop howling. And they're not very sympathetic to local customs.
Speaker 3: Well, they're not looking to put down roots here, they're
Speaker 3: looking to collect and cut out right.
Speaker 1: In fact, they're even they focus on the occult books,
Speaker 1: the astrology books. Raymond Donald start just grabbing books off
Speaker 1: the shelf and they're like, oh, Lombardo's Astrology a you know,
Speaker 1: the British Library will give me ten pounds for this book.
Speaker 1: And meanwhile, Peter Lourie is in the background going like no.
Speaker 3: It's it's a kind of an alarming scene where he
Speaker 3: actually gets in in Donald's face. Yeah, and it's like
Speaker 3: tells him to leave the books alone, and it's it's
Speaker 3: one of those moments where like Laurie is intimidating in
Speaker 3: this moment, like maybe he's even a little too intimidating,
Speaker 3: like they actually maybe should have done another take and
Speaker 3: backed it up a little bit, you.
Speaker 1: Know, yeah, yeah, yeah, Well he's furious and you understand why,
Speaker 1: like they're undercutting his his wizard quest and just to
Speaker 1: get a few pounds from the British Library. So so
Speaker 1: immediately there is conflict over who will be inheriting the goods.
Speaker 1: It's a classic murder mystery setup, right, it's you know,
Speaker 1: there are a ton of movies like this. Oh you know,
Speaker 1: it's actually the same premise as Knives Out.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I thought, really, you know, thinking back on Knives Out,
Speaker 3: you know, fine film would have benefited from a disembodied hand. Yes,
Speaker 3: maybe they're going to do that in the sequel.
Speaker 1: Right, So everybody's got to fight over the dead man's possessions,
Speaker 1: and we get a reading of the will scene where
Speaker 1: we learn, gasp that in the most recent revision of
Speaker 1: his will, the one that everybody had to come to
Speaker 1: dinner and talk about how sane he was in order
Speaker 1: to make possible, Ingram radically changed the distribution of his assets.
Speaker 1: So in the previous draft, everything had been going to
Speaker 1: Donald Arlington, the mean youth, who was like, make those
Speaker 1: witches be quiet, and now Ingram has changed it so
Speaker 1: that all of his possessions are instead going to Julie.
Speaker 1: And obviously the Arlingtons do not like this. They're here
Speaker 1: for the money, and when they find out they're not
Speaker 1: getting the money, they're instantly threatening to sue. They say
Speaker 1: they're going to go to court and get this will
Speaker 1: thrown out so that they can get possession of the
Speaker 1: Villa Francesco and all of Hillary's press astrology books. And
Speaker 1: there's some scheming that goes on. Oh, Duprex, the lawyer,
Speaker 1: he's doing some triple dealing. He's like telling the Arlington's
Speaker 1: in private that if they will promise him a third
Speaker 1: of the inheritance, that he will come work for them
Speaker 1: and definitely get the new copy of the will thrown
Speaker 1: out in court. Yeah, and it seems like a done deal.
Speaker 1: They're like okay, and Duprex is like okay, tomorrow the
Speaker 1: will will be broken. But later that night, strange things
Speaker 1: start happening. For example, the servants in the kitchen notice
Speaker 1: there is a light out in the mausoleum where Ingram's
Speaker 1: body was laid to rest. And this is apparently so
Speaker 1: frightening that when the maid in the kitchen sees it.
Speaker 1: She screams and drops something breakable on the floor, which
Speaker 1: that seems to me a little bit excessive. Just seeing
Speaker 1: a light in the crypt that is that scream worthy?
Speaker 1: I'm not sure.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, might be something to be alarmed about,
Speaker 3: but it doesn't necessarily mean that Dad or coming back
Speaker 3: to life.
Speaker 1: Well, the Arlingtons go to investigate, but they find nobody
Speaker 1: out there, nothing out of the ordinary. But later that
Speaker 1: night Duprex, oh, he has a date with He's gonna
Speaker 1: have a whole handful of trouble, and we get some
Speaker 1: wonderful close ups on his face. I'm sorry you listeners
Speaker 1: out there cannot see the screen grabs I got and
Speaker 1: I'm having rob look at right now, but wide eyes.
Speaker 1: There's a really great part. Is like you see a
Speaker 1: hand wearing Ingram's ring reach around a door as it
Speaker 1: creeps open, and then Duprex is like pinned up against
Speaker 1: the wall doing the like face back, nostrils flaring kind
Speaker 1: of thing that it's coming to get me. The Mummy
Speaker 1: is going to break my neck. And honestly, I miss
Speaker 1: Duprex when he's gone from the movie.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, he was a fun presence.
Speaker 1: I think he's just got one of those kind of
Speaker 1: curious looking faces that is nice to round out a movie.
Speaker 1: Oh but also, somebody starts playing piano in the middle
Speaker 1: of the night, sounding just like Ingram, and people are
Speaker 1: woken up by the sound. But when they go to investigate,
Speaker 1: there's no one at the piano, though Ingram's giant ring
Speaker 1: is there. It's sitting on top of the piano. And
Speaker 1: they find a dead lawyer in the corner of the room.
Speaker 1: It's dup Rex. He has been choked. So oh, and
Speaker 1: then it looks like the Arlingtons aren't going to get
Speaker 1: their special astrology books after all. But the police are
Speaker 1: called in to investigate, and what do you know, it's
Speaker 1: our old friend, the Commissario gossip cop once again, and
Speaker 1: he's there to do all the forensics. So they look
Speaker 1: for fingerprints. They take fingerprint dustings from the piano and
Speaker 1: they compare those to everybody alive in the house, and
Speaker 1: it turns out that they match no one alive in
Speaker 1: the house. Huh. So there's a lot of talking about,
Speaker 1: you know, motive, who could it have been? And they
Speaker 1: do discuss that a former will existed that would have
Speaker 1: left everything to Donald, which would seem to implicate Julie
Speaker 1: or implicate Conrad as Julie's ally, and so people go
Speaker 1: all around pointing fingers. But I love how Conrad just
Speaker 1: comes straight out and he's like, well, obviously Ingram's ghost
Speaker 1: killed Duprex because he didn't want his will contested. And
Speaker 1: then the Kammisario is like, but there are no such
Speaker 1: things as ghosts. But then there's a there's just absolutely
Speaker 1: exquisite logic scene that follows. So the Kammasario is like,
Speaker 1: how can we know it was a ghost? I've never
Speaker 1: seen a ghost, and Conrad says, neither have I, but
Speaker 1: one can never be absolutely sure they don't exist. So
Speaker 1: oh well, then it must have been a ghost. You know,
Speaker 1: you can't prove they don't exist. Then therefore this murder
Speaker 1: was done by one.
Speaker 3: I mean, it's it's believe. It was what the Sherlock
Speaker 3: Home quote, you know, when when all natural.
Speaker 1: Excluded the impossible, the improbable room whatever it is.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, so in this it's it's similar. It's just
Speaker 3: if you've thought of the impossible, just stick with that.
Speaker 3: That sounds good.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, anyway, the next day, everybody goes to the
Speaker 1: mausoleum to investigate a lead about the light in the
Speaker 1: crypt of the night before, and they find a number
Speaker 1: of very odd things. There is a tiny window broken
Speaker 1: from the inside to the outside, with a little jagged
Speaker 1: opening that a person could clearly not fit through.
Speaker 3: And they also's point, I'm getting excited like that. That
Speaker 3: was like, oh, well, we're getting there, we're getting to
Speaker 3: the hand.
Speaker 1: It's going to be a hand, and the coffin has
Speaker 1: been tampered with. They open it up and uh oh,
Speaker 1: the corpse of Ingram is missing its left hand.
Speaker 3: Yeah, this was really excellent, I thought, because yeah, everybody shocked,
Speaker 3: and I was afraid they weren't going to show it.
Speaker 3: But then they do show it. There's a knife in
Speaker 3: like the paralyzed hand. Yeah, and then there's the bloody
Speaker 3: stump where the superpowered hand was previously.
Speaker 1: Attached, right. And then they also find outside the broken
Speaker 1: window no footprints, but hand prints, yeah, single a line
Speaker 1: of single hand prints, as if a hand by itself
Speaker 1: was crawling along the ground.
Speaker 3: Or if not crawling, then at least like flip flopping,
Speaker 3: like doing yea some sort of a fish out of
Speaker 3: a water thing.
Speaker 1: And then there's a kind of fun sequence where they
Speaker 1: go out in public. Conrad and Julie like go to
Speaker 1: the cafe to get some brandy, and the whole town
Speaker 1: just shuns them because apparently they believe somebody at the
Speaker 1: Villa Francesco has the evil eye and they just can't
Speaker 1: can't do business with them anymore. Even like the guy
Speaker 1: at the cafe who had served them before is like,
Speaker 1: I reserve the right to refuse service. You can't come
Speaker 1: in here.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean I think Conrad's realize. He's like, we're
Speaker 3: going to have to leave because otherwise we will starve.
Speaker 3: Nobody will feed us.
Speaker 1: Right, They're going to be starved out of the town.
Speaker 1: And then also they meet up with the Commissario and
Speaker 1: there is new evidence. I think he says, am I
Speaker 1: right about this. He's like, Okay, so the fingerprints on
Speaker 1: the piano who we assume belonged to the killer, they
Speaker 1: were Ingram's and they were not older than a day,
Speaker 1: so this would have been after Ingram was dead. But also,
Speaker 1: can you date fingerprints?
Speaker 3: I mean, you can do anything with forensics in a
Speaker 3: motion picture.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Oh. But at some point the Kammissario seems to
Speaker 1: be won over because he says, in my mind, there
Speaker 1: is no doubt the hand is walking around, but I'd
Speaker 1: say it's right about here that the movie transitions into
Speaker 1: high gear hand mode, would you agree, Yeah.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, absolutely. And I was totally on board with
Speaker 3: all of this because it's clear that this is a
Speaker 3: disembodied hand crawling around attacking people in the night. And
Speaker 3: they have some just some fabulous scenes follow.
Speaker 1: Right, there's a great confrontation between Hillary and Donald Arlington
Speaker 1: the shut those witches up, kid, and so Donald Arlington
Speaker 1: comes into Hillary's office and he's like, hey, what are
Speaker 1: you expecting to find in all these old astrology books?
Speaker 1: And Peter Laurie says that you know the law that
Speaker 1: changes unknown fate into scientific fact. Oh great, And as
Speaker 1: an example or a demonstration of what he can predict
Speaker 1: with his astrology knowledge, he's like, hey, Donald, did you
Speaker 1: know that there were two other people who lived hundreds
Speaker 1: of years ago who have the same birthday as you
Speaker 1: and they both died by being choked to death. And
Speaker 1: Donald's like wow, okay.
Speaker 3: Yeah, He's like, well, good, I hate surprises, like a
Speaker 3: kind of a fun comeback.
Speaker 1: There, and they oh oh oh. And then there it
Speaker 1: turns out Donald remembers where there was a safe hidden
Speaker 1: behind the bookcase in the study here because he saw
Speaker 1: Ingram open it when he was a young child. He
Speaker 1: remembers there is a jingle to summon the combination to mind,
Speaker 1: and Donald comes back later in the night to try
Speaker 1: to return to the safe. But then meanwhile the commissario
Speaker 1: is in the house. He's like hiding out behind the fireplace,
Speaker 1: watching from the shadows, and it's those bad fingers striking
Speaker 1: once again. Donald's creeping around and he opens up the
Speaker 1: door to the study a crack while the commissario is looking,
Speaker 1: and a hand reaches around as if from behind, and
Speaker 1: grabs him by the throat, wearing the Ingram ring. But
Speaker 1: this time it's like, man, this is a lock, because
Speaker 1: the police detective is right there and he witnesses the
Speaker 1: attack by the killer hand.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so at this point I'm completely convinced and excited
Speaker 3: to see more of the hand.
Speaker 1: Though technically still the hand, you can't see if it
Speaker 1: belongs to an arm or not, because it's like the
Speaker 1: door is only open a crack.
Speaker 3: I would say one of the advantages to the plotting
Speaker 3: here is that at this point in the film you
Speaker 3: might not know exactly how good the special effects will
Speaker 3: be and so you don't know if the limitations here
Speaker 3: are based on what was possible with the effects, Like
Speaker 3: maybe the hand is always going to attack people close
Speaker 3: to a door, because that's all that's possible with the filmmaking.
Speaker 1: Right. So Donald is not killed, he is injured, and
Speaker 1: Julie says that there is a possibility of brain fever,
Speaker 1: but he's there recovering in the night. Meanwhile, the servants
Speaker 1: all flee the villa because they believe that the hand
Speaker 1: is loose and it's the devil. And then later that
Speaker 1: night there is one of the best scenes in the movie,
Speaker 1: this great long one on one scene between Peter, Lorie
Speaker 1: and the hand and we finally see the hand revealed
Speaker 1: in all its glory.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean it's pretty great. I mean, you know
Speaker 3: exactly what it's going to be nowadays, it's going to
Speaker 3: be that effect of the disembodied hand, like they've somehow,
Speaker 3: you know, cut out the rest of the body. Today
Speaker 3: today you would accomplish it with a like a green
Speaker 3: suit with everything covered except for the hand. But it
Speaker 3: looks really good.
Speaker 1: So what happens in the scene, Oh.
Speaker 3: Well, it's I mean, it's cool. I mean, it's a
Speaker 3: pretty complex scene, I guess because it's it's crawling across
Speaker 3: the table. It's crawling towards Hillary and the ring that
Speaker 3: he was looking at that he puts out on the
Speaker 3: table crawls out of this box like a crab, like
Speaker 3: a spider, and he's like overcome with this, this complex
Speaker 3: array of Peter Laurie emotions a lot of dread in there,
Speaker 3: but also this sense of maybe wonder. The hand crawls
Speaker 3: across the table to him, and then it kind of
Speaker 3: it sort of does a dinosaur, you know, like how
Speaker 3: you do with your your hand where you put the
Speaker 3: middle finger becomes the like a brachiosaurus neck. It kind
Speaker 3: of does that. But it's clear what it is doing.
Speaker 3: It is doing what Ingram did in life. It is
Speaker 3: reaching out and asking if the ring be put on
Speaker 3: the finger. Oh so good, and Laurie's character Hillary does it,
Speaker 3: and yeah, it's a pretty a pretty crazy scene, a
Speaker 3: pretty horrifically satisfying scene, especially for a picture from the
Speaker 3: nineteen forties.
Speaker 1: But then Laurie he gets the better of the hand
Speaker 1: and he ends up trapping it in a drawer and
Speaker 1: he runs and get gets Conrad's help. He's like, hey,
Speaker 1: come look, the hands alive. I caught it in a drawer.
Speaker 1: But when then when they go check, it's not there,
Speaker 1: and Hillary has this epic fit of screaming, searching around
Speaker 1: for the hand. He's all over the place. He eventually
Speaker 1: finds the hand hiding behind a bunch of books and
Speaker 1: the book.
Speaker 3: This is a great sequence too, because it shot. It's
Speaker 3: shot from the point, you know, the impossible point of
Speaker 3: view of behind the bookshelf, and we see Laurie's mad
Speaker 3: face the whole time as he's pulling these books off
Speaker 3: the shelf. And then the hand's cowering like a like
Speaker 3: a cornered spider, like a corner tarantula behind the last
Speaker 3: two books, and he pulls those off as well, and
Speaker 3: he grabs it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and he wrestles with the hand and then ends
Speaker 1: up nailing it to a base.
Speaker 3: Oh God, such a good scene.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. Oh. And then later Donald and Raymond they're
Speaker 1: going to I think Donald remembers how to open the
Speaker 1: safe to get the whatever it is out of it.
Speaker 1: He's looking for. Maybe it's the will or something I
Speaker 1: don't recall, but he's trying to get in there. And
Speaker 1: they managed to open up the safe and then when
Speaker 1: they do what's inside the safe? It's the severed hand. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so Donald sees it and then runs away screaming. But
Speaker 1: then we get the final sort of confrontation and real sequence.
Speaker 1: So how do we describe that.
Speaker 3: Well, so at this point in the film that we've
Speaker 3: come up to it, like, it really feels like this
Speaker 3: hand is a reality, right, Yeah, there, we've seen it
Speaker 3: crawling around, I guess. But then you quickly are made
Speaker 3: to realize who has actually seen the hand in its
Speaker 3: full glory. Only one character, Peter, and that's Peter Laurie's
Speaker 3: Hillary character. No one else has seen it crawling around
Speaker 3: on the table, and no one else has nailed it down.
Speaker 3: And his attempts to show it to other people, come, look,
Speaker 3: it's in the drawer haven't actually panned out.
Speaker 1: Now, Donald and Raymond did see it in the safe,
Speaker 1: but it wasn't moving. It's laying there in the safe.
Speaker 3: So yeah, we're coming to the realization that, yes, that
Speaker 3: corpse's hand is missing, that corpse's hand is in the safe,
Speaker 3: nailed to a board, but perhaps it isn't actually alive.
Speaker 3: Perhaps only Peter Laurie's character Hillary thinks that the hand
Speaker 3: is alive and if that that is the case, well
Speaker 3: who's doing all the strangling, Well it would have to
Speaker 3: be Peter Lourie's character.
Speaker 1: Hillary, right, And that's the conclusion that Julie seems to
Speaker 1: come to. There's kind of a confrontation between Julie and Hillary,
Speaker 1: and then Hillary tries to choke her but fails, and
Speaker 1: then he further descends into madness. He loses his mind,
Speaker 1: and he thinks he sees the hand everywhere.
Speaker 3: Right, And there's a scene where he's he's coming and
Speaker 3: increasingly unhinged, and he's approaching her with a knife and
Speaker 3: she kind of turns the tables on him. She plays
Speaker 3: into his madness and she's like, no, you're right, it
Speaker 3: is the hand. We've got to get that hand. We've
Speaker 3: got to stop that hand. And that buys her a
Speaker 3: little time.
Speaker 1: She's on team anti hand. Yeah, but I think what
Speaker 1: we're supposed to understand is that so Hillary did indeed
Speaker 1: sever the hand, Yes, And so he went to the
Speaker 1: grave cut off the hand and then used the severed
Speaker 1: hand to attack the lawyer Duprex and like put the
Speaker 1: fingerprint all over the piano and stuff to fool everybody
Speaker 1: and make make them think the hand had come back
Speaker 1: to life, but then he started to believe his own story,
Speaker 1: and as he's losing his mind, he thinks the hand
Speaker 1: is actually pursuing him.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there's kind of a healthy dose of the telltale
Speaker 3: heart and all of the swear. Yeah, he's driven mad
Speaker 3: by his own crimes and begins to believe that the
Speaker 3: hand is actually alive, begins to see the hand, and
Speaker 3: then ultimately, you know, ends up battling the hand.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's a great SmackDown scene where he fights the
Speaker 1: hand and in the end he has to purge it
Speaker 1: by fire.
Speaker 3: Yes, yes, throws the hand into the fireplace. And this
Speaker 3: is all just a great showcase for Laurie. You know,
Speaker 3: he gets to act mad and physical and you know,
Speaker 3: just enraged and also full of horror. Really fun performance
Speaker 3: that he didn't think we were going to get, because again,
Speaker 3: the first half of the film, you can easily imagine
Speaker 3: it's going to be all this character Conrad battling the
Speaker 3: hand and saving the female lead at the end. But
Speaker 3: Conrad's never really not seen much.
Speaker 1: What's he doing. He's somewhere, you know, having.
Speaker 3: A smoke or something. I guess, selling some crap to
Speaker 3: some tourists.
Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, he's trying to sell Julie some cameos. But
Speaker 1: in the end, after this big confrontation, wait, I'm suddenly
Speaker 1: forgetting Hillary dies. But how does he die?
Speaker 3: The hand it chokes him. He falls down, and then
Speaker 3: we do a fade where the hand disappears to make
Speaker 3: it clear to the audience. I guess that the hand
Speaker 3: was a figment of his imagination.
Speaker 1: So did he choke himself?
Speaker 3: Well? I thought that when the hand disappeared it was
Speaker 3: or the hand was going to be shown to be
Speaker 3: his own hand, But then there's no hand there at all,
Speaker 3: So I don't know if it's just like he died
Speaker 3: via psychic damage from the madness, or if he it's
Speaker 3: implied that he choked his self and it's just maybe not.
Speaker 3: They didn't really show it on screen in a way
Speaker 3: that was convincing.
Speaker 1: But it's a full on Scooby Do ending because they
Speaker 1: like uncover all of the like here's what they were
Speaker 1: do it because there is a gramophone. There's like a
Speaker 1: record player inside a suit of armor that was hidden
Speaker 1: there to apparently simulate Ingram's ghost playing the piano, because
Speaker 1: it was a recording of Ingram playing and they would
Speaker 1: and that they said that Hillary would play that in
Speaker 1: order to fool people into thinking that Ingram was running around.
Speaker 3: Yeah, which is great. We love an ending. When they
Speaker 3: describe something, they give you all the details in a
Speaker 3: way that it makes no sense whatsoever. Like, yeah, this
Speaker 3: means that it's such a good vinyl recording where it's
Speaker 3: such a good late nineteenth century sound system that it's
Speaker 3: indistinguishable from live piano performance. People in the house are
Speaker 3: just like, the piano is clearly playing the dead have
Speaker 3: come back to life, right, And it just feels like,
Speaker 3: you know, it's one of these ending. It's like, don't worry,
Speaker 3: there's nothing supernatural exists. There are no monsters, there are
Speaker 3: no hands. This was all just a clever scheme and
Speaker 3: it wasn't clever and for the good guys, don't you
Speaker 3: forget it?
Speaker 1: Yeah, and then the commisario does the whole comedy routine.
Speaker 1: Oh there's the glove. There's like the glove that's dropped
Speaker 1: on the stairs and you think it's a hand, but
Speaker 1: then it's just a glove.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Like I thought they were, Oh, maybe they're going
Speaker 3: to go for it and they're going to have the
Speaker 3: twist ending. Nope, the hand is real. The hand was
Speaker 3: real the whole time, and it's going to kill you.
Speaker 3: I would have loved that, and I thought that's what
Speaker 3: we were getting. But then they're like, no, he just
Speaker 3: dropped a glove and it made a made faint.
Speaker 1: Well, there's like four twist endings that they take back.
Speaker 1: Then later you think that they're doing it again because
Speaker 1: the hand with the ring is creeping up at the
Speaker 1: Kamasario's neck while he's doing comedy into the camera. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and then he's like, oh, it is my own hand.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's absolutely terrible. It says like, come on, I
Speaker 3: feel like you're making fun of the film that we
Speaker 3: just watched and enjoyed. But like we said, it seems
Speaker 3: to have been more or less the style of the time.
Speaker 3: I mean, didn't Edgar Allan Poe do this, you know
Speaker 3: where at the end of the Telltale Heart he's like,
Speaker 3: you know, he's talking about the Maddening Beach, just kidding,
Speaker 3: is not a real heart at all. I'm just it
Speaker 3: was all in my mind, isn't that kookie? Isn't it crazy?
Speaker 3: There are no undead hearts people don't worry about.
Speaker 1: Oh man, all right, Well, I feel like we got
Speaker 1: to wrap it up for the beast with five fingers.
Speaker 3: All right, yeah, let's do it. But hey, if you
Speaker 3: want to see this film yourself, I guess for the
Speaker 3: most part, you're in luck because it is widely available
Speaker 3: to purchase or rent digitally. You can also pick it
Speaker 3: up on DVD. But on the other hand, we were
Speaker 3: talking about this before we recorded. This doesn't seem to
Speaker 3: be a film that's received any like remastering love or
Speaker 3: certainly doesn't seem to have been released on Blu Ray
Speaker 3: or anything. So maybe we'll get that in the future.
Speaker 3: And that being said, it's still a beautiful looking film.
Speaker 3: It's not like the film quality is degraded or anything
Speaker 3: to any degree that makes it unwatchable. But I feel
Speaker 3: like it deserves more love than it's seen. Agreed, all right, Well,
Speaker 3: write in if you have thoughts on this particular film
Speaker 3: or other crawling hand movies related crawling hand movies that
Speaker 3: we didn't cover. I'd also love to hear from anyone
Speaker 3: out there who plays the piano. What's the deal with
Speaker 3: with one headed piano? Is that?
Speaker 4: Is?
Speaker 3: I mean, I guess is that a thing? Let us know.
Speaker 3: We would love to hear from you in the meantime,
Speaker 3: if you'd like to check out other episodes of Weird
Speaker 3: House Cinema, it publishes every Friday in the Stuff to
Speaker 3: Blow Your Mind podcast feed You know, we're primarily a
Speaker 3: science podcast, with core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays, listener
Speaker 3: mail on Mondays, and an artifact short form episode on Wednesdays.
Speaker 3: But on Friday, that's when we set aside most serious
Speaker 3: matters and just talk about a strange film.
Speaker 1: Huge thanks, as always to our excellent audio producer Seth
Speaker 1: Nicholas Johnson. If you would like to get in touch
Speaker 1: with us with feedback on this episode or any other,
Speaker 1: to suggest a topic for the future, or just to
Speaker 1: say hello, you can email us at contact at stuff
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