The Beast with Five Fingers (1946)
September 22, 2024 5:44 PM - Subscribe
[Trailer] In a turn-of-the-century Renaissance Italian mansion, its tyrannical owner, a wheelchair-using one-handed pianist with a strong belief in the occult is murdered. - IMDb
Okay, so I've been thinking about this a lot and I'd say the film could have been one of the all-time greats but instead tops out at intermittently successful. It's billed as a horror movie but works best as a character study, and there's also some tonal inconsistency which feels unintentional.
The central problem with the movie is that the mystery isn't very mysterious and the horror isn't very horrifying, and the central reason for that is that it's hard to believe that there's a severed hand wandering around strangling people. Even if The Addams Family weren't thoroughly embedded into pop culture as a gentle comedy, most people aren't completely disconnected from reality.
Early on the policeman investigating the crime reminded me of Inspector Clouseau in his cluelessness, and the film never really recovered from that. To top it off, after a handful of minor successes, the film wraps it up with an unnecessary coda where someone speaks directly to the camera, mocking the superstitions of the time. This is an obvious bit of pandering to the audience, a real "bring the lights back up" moment meant to give people time to blink and look around and have time to shove the movie into a corner of their mind before they get up and go home and start making dinner.
And just, no. For a horror movie, that's a bad beginning and a bad ending.
The inspector mentioned in passing that he has his superstitions, but the delivery was all wrong and the moment wasn't given the weight it needed to allow the film to work. The way to make this more effective as both a horror film and a mystery film would be to start with the inspector. Show that he wants to be a man of science but that he still has his superstitions. Maybe while making a meal he knocks over the salt and throws a pinch over his shoulder, smoothly, unthinkingly: a matter of habit. Maybe this reminds the audience of a beloved grandparent who did that sort of thing--if it does it should also give them permission to accept it in the movie.
Then when the murder happens and the hand supposedly starts its reign of terror, it makes the horror easier to accept and (even if that fails) allows the audience to view the procedural with sympathy rather than a shallow sense of superiority. When the film ends (without that sneering coda) it should leave the audience with the unspoken question of whether they have unrecognized superstitious beliefs which have been so fully integrated into their lives that they're not even recognized anymore, whether they also have some gap between what they want to be and what they are.
posted by johnofjack at 4:13 AM on September 25
Spoiler
The central problem with the movie is that the mystery isn't very mysterious and the horror isn't very horrifying, and the central reason for that is that it's hard to believe that there's a severed hand wandering around strangling people. Even if The Addams Family weren't thoroughly embedded into pop culture as a gentle comedy, most people aren't completely disconnected from reality.
Early on the policeman investigating the crime reminded me of Inspector Clouseau in his cluelessness, and the film never really recovered from that. To top it off, after a handful of minor successes, the film wraps it up with an unnecessary coda where someone speaks directly to the camera, mocking the superstitions of the time. This is an obvious bit of pandering to the audience, a real "bring the lights back up" moment meant to give people time to blink and look around and have time to shove the movie into a corner of their mind before they get up and go home and start making dinner.
And just, no. For a horror movie, that's a bad beginning and a bad ending.
The inspector mentioned in passing that he has his superstitions, but the delivery was all wrong and the moment wasn't given the weight it needed to allow the film to work. The way to make this more effective as both a horror film and a mystery film would be to start with the inspector. Show that he wants to be a man of science but that he still has his superstitions. Maybe while making a meal he knocks over the salt and throws a pinch over his shoulder, smoothly, unthinkingly: a matter of habit. Maybe this reminds the audience of a beloved grandparent who did that sort of thing--if it does it should also give them permission to accept it in the movie.
Then when the murder happens and the hand supposedly starts its reign of terror, it makes the horror easier to accept and (even if that fails) allows the audience to view the procedural with sympathy rather than a shallow sense of superiority. When the film ends (without that sneering coda) it should leave the audience with the unspoken question of whether they have unrecognized superstitious beliefs which have been so fully integrated into their lives that they're not even recognized anymore, whether they also have some gap between what they want to be and what they are.
posted by johnofjack at 4:13 AM on September 25
The premise is so ridiculous and schlock that you half expect it to go careening over the edge but I think that's mostly a bait and switch sort of thing as the film itself is more subtly (its more about guilt) then you expect for a, ostensibly, disembodied hand movie. I think it is a minor work and it mostly works for me. I don't think it is meant to withstand much interrogation.
The film is directed by the underrated, IMO, journeyman director Robert Florey (probably his best know work is the Lorre starring film The Face Behind the Mask tho I like his Tarzan sequel Tarzan and the Mermaids) with a script by the equally underrated genre writer Curt Siodmak. It is based on a story by the way.
posted by Ashwagandha at 10:38 AM on September 25 [2 favorites]
The film is directed by the underrated, IMO, journeyman director Robert Florey (probably his best know work is the Lorre starring film The Face Behind the Mask tho I like his Tarzan sequel Tarzan and the Mermaids) with a script by the equally underrated genre writer Curt Siodmak. It is based on a story by the way.
posted by Ashwagandha at 10:38 AM on September 25 [2 favorites]
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About the film itself ... I wanted to love it, but instead found it just good enough that I wanted it to be much better (though it does have its defenders). I'll hold off saying more for now.
posted by johnofjack at 5:47 PM on September 22 [1 favorite]