MartinHafer John Agar stars as Alex Marsh, a researcher working on a combination nerve gas and hypnotic drug. However, there's an accident in the lab and instead of killing Marsh, the poisonous gas turns him into a giant toxic monster. Just touching him kills folks...yet he somehow is immune to it. Can they stop him or turn him back into the handsome researcher?There are many problems with this film. First and foremost, there's enough material for about 30 minutes worth of film. As a result, the film is heavily padded and you see many, many scenes of Marsh running about town evading the authorities. Second, the weird costume they put on Agar didn't allow him to talk or act. In fact, it could have been ANYONE inside the ridiculous looking getup. Third, it just wasn't interesting...in fact, it was pretty boring...which means it's a pretty typical John Agar film.By the way, when the monster came upon a gas station attendant played by Joe Besser, I sure was hoping to see him touch him! I never could stand Besser and his naughty little boy shtick back in the 50s and he was probably the worse guy to try playing Curly's part in the Three Stooges...even worse than Joe DeRita!!

copper1963 Clocking in at a paltry 58 minutes, Hand of Death will leave you reaching for the sunscreen. And in a hurry. For if John Agar gets a grip on you--you're a roasted duck. I could not believe this was filmed in Cinemascope! And on-location in Malibu and Santa Monica, California, too. Mister Agar becomes exposed to some type of experimental nerve gas he's concocting out in the desert for the military. He quickly dispatches his lab mate to the fire pit in the sky. Only then does he realize something is amiss. So he gives his mentor a ring and hightails it over to the gentleman's (he's confined to a wheelchair, never a good sign) suburban abode. He resides there with his daughter, the picture's love interest. The rest of the film breaks down as some kind of shopping stroll toward insanity. He becomes increasingly agitated, disfigured and insane. He slaughters his mentor and goes looking for the girl. On the way to the beach, and his certain downfall, he sends some more people to the above mentioned fire pit in the sky. The poor victims--taxi driver and gas jockey--are working stiffs. He also encounters a small boy romping along some jagged rocks and a seawall. He survives. The ending recalls an earlier film about a fellow with a flat head and protruding iron bolts. I enjoyed this loopy movie. I must be losing my bolts, too. I saw this on AMC when the sun was rising and my mind was clear. Honest.

sol1218 Not all that bad horror, if you take it for an unintentionally comedy, film with it having a former member of the three stooges as well as the hilarious Stinky Davis of the Abbot & Costello TV show Joe Besser as a gas station attendant as well as one of the "Hands of Death's" victims. "Hand of Death" with it's star John Agar as the obsessed and crazed scientist Alax Marsh who ends up turning into what looks like a overripe avocado. Marsh runs and drives around L.A doing his best to terrorize everyone he comes in contact with but mostly leaving them in a state of total bewilderment trying to figure out just what the hell he, or it, is.Trying to perfect this nerve/hypnotic gas for the US military that would not only knock out anyone who's affected by it but turn them into obedient zombies Marsh working day and night in his out of the way desert laboratory. One day Marsh falls asleep and knocks down a bottle of the nerve agent and gets infected by it. The gas gives him the power to kill by just touching anyone. Later Marsh develops a leprosy-like appearance that even his own mother would run from.Killing everyone he as much as touches Marsh trying to hide his identity, as the killer Avocado Man,just puts on a Humphrey Bogart like trench-coat and fedora hat thinking that would be enough to fool anyone! One of the craziest scenes in the movie is when Marsh pops into a taxi cab trying to communicate to the cabbie ,Fred Korne, where he want's to go, to the beach in order to get a suntan? The taxi driver turning around and seeing this weird and grossed-out guy isn't at all surprised or even scared at how he looks! Is he used to picking up customers like him,looking like vine-ripe avocados,in the city's many farmers markets and fruit and vegetable stores?Trying to contact his girlfriend Carol ,Paula Raymond, so he can take her, I could only guess, to the local drive-in to see someone who looks a lot like him his screen hero "Ceature from the Balck Lagoon". Marsh later gets to where she's hiding from him at her friends Tom Holland's, Stephen Dunne, beach-front home. As he breaks in Carol calls Tom gets the police who both come to her rescue. Marsh running along the beach and trying to take a dip into the ocean, with his heavy and bulky street cloths on, is shot dead and left floating on the waves as the movie finally comes to an end.Hard to believe that anyone would have been insane enough to take, much less pay for a movie ticket, "Hand of Death" seriously back in 1962 when it was released. "Hand of Death" looks like it must have been the final movie that was part of a quadruple feature following even the cartoons and coming attractions where by the time it came on the screen there was almost nobody left in the movie-house to watch it. Which may well have been the best thing that could have happened to the professional careers of everyone unfortunate enough to be in it.

usaf8th Scientist John Agar gets himself into trouble with some nerve gas in an experiment. His experiment not only turns himself into a mutant freak (which reminds me of the Thing from Marvel Comic's "Fantastic Four), but it also gives him the touch of death. Watching this movie is pretty much the touch of death itself.