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