davidcarniglia A very entertaining and spooky murder mystery. Peter Lorre is at his best as moony-eyed, nutjob astrologer secretary to the cadaverous Victor Francen's Ingram. The mansion, with all its medieval flourishes, exudes character. A fine supporting cast; although I found Andrea King's Julie a bit wooden. Playing opposite so many guys, she adds little, except perhaps in her last scene with Lorre. As many have pointed out, after a long lead-up, the pace picks up steam after Ingram's death. His severed hand becomes a character, as a sort of ghost/delusion.We are left with a fairly logical explanation of the apparent supernatural stuff: Lorre, not quite all there initially, goes over the verge of sanity. Cleverly, his delusion of the hand's 'revenge' is an outgrowth of his own plot to scare off and eliminate those who would toss him and his books aside. Robert Alda's Conrad is an interesting character too. He's sympathetic, yet hardly above-board. He has even less claim on Ingram's estate than Lorre/Hilary, but also much to lose. Of course marrying Julie represents his trump card. His outsider quality gives us a window, so to speak, to the goings-on at the mansion. Like the Commassario, he functions as both a witness and a participant.I'd like to have seen more exposition of Lorre's relationship to Francen. It might've been more interesting if Francen/Ingram shared Lorre's fascination with the New-Agey stuff. That could've enhanced the supernatural explanation of subsequent events. At a more basic level, it's hard to see why the hand goes after Lorre, whether it's appearing of its own volition or not. When he was alive Ingram tried to kill Hilary; if anything, it should then be Hilary who goes after him. Hilary does try to 'kill' the hand, but only after it has gone on a 'murder' rampage. Maybe there's too many supporting characters to allow for fleshing out the principals with more scenes.I usually don't like campy stuff tacked onto a dark atmosphere, but it works here. The Commassario seems to go out of his way to drop a hint, with his final enigmatic laugh at the audience, that there's yet more to the story. His dropped glove surely is just a tease, but how is it that Ingram's ring is on his finger now?Even with a few false steps, The Beast With Five Fingers is an engaging experience.

MartinHafer A nasty old man, Francis Ingram dies. When it comes time to read his will, the two remaining family members arrive and automatically assume that the man's fortune is now theirs. They are a nasty pair and they're in for a nasty surprise when the will is read, as the fortune is left instead to his nurse. The pair plan on using a crooked attorney to contest the will but soon after they make this plan, folks start dying--and it looks as if the dead man, or perhaps the dead man's hand is doing the killing! I never watched this film until recently because I thought I'd already seen it. After all, Peter Lorre is in this film and "Mad Love"--and both films are about possessed hands that kill! Fortunately, the two movies sound very similar but are different enough that it's worth seeing both. However, unlike "Mad Love", "The Beast With Five Fingers" suffers late in the film because the ending goes on a bit long AND is a bit dumb. After all, when the identity of the killer is known, the person who realizes it TELLS the killer and then admits that they haven't told anyone!! Duh! Despite this, the effect of the crawling hand is cool and the film engaging.

JohnHowardReid Apart from its title, its setting in the library and two or three incidents (the servants quitting, the hand being locked in the safe), the movie, "The Beast With Five Fingers" bears very little relationship to the Harvey story. If anything, the screenplay tells a more spine-chilling tale, and tells it more effectively. In fact, Peter Lorre contributes one of his most dramatically macabre portraits. He receives great support from Victor Francen's chilling study of an eccentric pianist. Some memorable bits from Pedro De Cordoba's surly innkeeper and David Hoffman's slimy lawyer also add to the atmosphere. On the other hand, after his promising opening scene, Robert Alda slips into the hackneyed emotions of a conventional hero. As for Andrea King, whilst she certainly makes an attractive heroine, her acting is not altogether convincing. And then there's J. Carroll Naish who seemingly can't make up his mind whether to play his role for chills or misplaced humor!Fortunately, while he has obviously concentrated less on his players, director Florey has brought the film in with a fair amount of visual style. In fact, in at least two or three instances, Florey's direction is so compellingly inventive, it's impossible to take your eyes from the screen. McGann's masterly special effects are also compellingly realistic, while ever-reliable Max Steiner has contributed a music score as moodily atmospheric as his "Most Dangerous Game" or "King Kong".

MARIO GAUCI This proved to be Warners' sole foray into the horror genre during the 1940s after a handful of variable efforts made in the previous decade (the John Barrymore vehicles SVENGALI and THE MAD GENIUS {both 1931}, the two-strip Technicolor showcases DOCTOR X {1932} and MYSTERY OF THE WAX MUSEUM {1933}, both featuring stalwarts Lionel Atwill and Fay Wray, and the black-and-white sequel THE RETURN OF DR. X {1939}, with an ill-at-ease Humphrey Bogart).Though third-billed after romantic leads Robert Alda and Andrea King, Peter Lorre was obviously the star here – his own third stab at the popular form, following MAD LOVE (1935; produced by MGM) and THE FACE BEHIND THE MASK (1941; a Columbia picture also directed by Florey), and to which he would briefly return towards the end of his career at AIP. Lorre, in fact, was a staple of Warner's typical noir-ish style of the era (in which THE BEAST WITH FIVE FINGERS itself is shot) – beginning with the classic THE MALTESE FALCON (1941) and continuing in his other films with either Humphrey Bogart or Sydney Greenstreet; actually, this was his only solo vehicle at that studio and, like the actor's earlier afore-mentioned genre turns, he not only carries it with aplomb but delivers a memorable performance.While the film is ideal Halloween fare (I watched a number of horror-related stuff throughout October in conjunction with my ongoing Luis Bunuel retrospective), it also forms part of that tribute to the Spanish Surrealist master because he claimed to have supplied Warners – while employed there during his American exile – with an idea for a motion picture about a rampaging disembodied hand, which they rejected at the time but eventually found itself on the screen anyway (though the story was attributed to somebody else)!; that said, he would have his revenge by 'appropriating' the device for himself – using it within a surreal context – for one of his major works i.e. THE EXTERMINATING ANGEL (1962), with the result being clearly much superior to its 'inspiration'! For the record, other 'appearances' of the titular 'monster' are to be found in: THE WITCH'S MIRROR (1960), a cult item emanating from Mexico; the low-budgeter THE CRAWLING HAND (1963); the Amicus horror compendium DR. TERROR'S HOUSE OF HORRORS (1965); the 1960s TV series and 1990s film versions of THE ADDAMS FAMILY; the Oliver Stone-Michael Caine dud THE HAND (1981); and, most recently, TRICK 'R TREAT (2007; which I have just watched).To get back to the subject at hand (no pun intended), the phoney European setting of THE BEAST WITH FIVE FINGERS seems to have been influenced by that seen in the second phase of Universal horrors; even so, a good deal of the action takes place inside a sprawling villa – which, ironically, not only looks back to the 'animated' mansion from the French Poe adaptation THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF USHER (1928; on which Bunuel himself had served as Assistant Director) but forward to the endless spate of Mexi-Horrors often revolving around a gloomy hacienda (let's not forget that Bunuel spent almost 20 years rebuilding his film-making career in Mexico). Anyway, we get plenty of brooding atmosphere here – with the special effects dealing with the murderous limb being reasonably effective for their time; still, while the Max Steiner score was appropriately moody (particularly the main theme that, for plot purposes, recurs throughout), I was a bit distressed by how similar it sounded to the same composer's distinctive work on the Howard Hawks/Humphrey Bogart noir masterpiece THE BIG SLEEP which, though begun in 1944, was only released – after considerable re-shooting – just a few months prior to THE BEAST WITH FIVE FINGERS itself! The cast the of film under review also highlights J. Carroll Naish as the Police Commissioner of the traditionally superstitious Italian village and Victor Francen as the exacting crippled pianist (encouraged in his illusions by impoverished composer Alda, cared for by lovely nurse King – who, naturally, arouses jealousy between the two – and assisted in his affairs by scholar/secretary Lorre, though too often finding himself on the receiving end, both physically and psychologically, of the old man's uncontrolled fury). When King is revealed as Francen's heir – over his only living relatives – immediately before his death from a staircase fall, foul play is suspected and Naish is called in; however, dead-of-night piano-playing suggests the involvement of the supernatural and, sure enough, the pianist's hand is discovered missing from his coffin! Lorre is particularly tormented by the latter, but he eventually manages to nail it down and lock it away in Francen's safe; ultimately, though, the culprit for the various goings-on at the villa emerges to be no more than human – with the depredations of the creeping hand attributed to his unbalanced mind (this disappointingly conventional ending, then, is augmented by an even lamer gag in which Naish uncharacteristically jokes around with the audience about the improbability of such a tall tale occurring)! In conclusion, this came off rather better than I recalled (I had not watched it in a long time) – even if, as I already explained, its reputation as a minor genre classic mainly boils down to Lorre's presence and the distinctive Warners style.