A famous zen koan asks what is the sound of one hand clapping, but I think a far more interesting twist on that would be speculate that the sound of one hand strangling Peter Lorre would sound like. And we will learn that in 1946’s The Beast with Five Fingers.
Actually, there isn’t much sound, but there are significant bruises left on the man’s neck by the fingers of Victor Francen. Those fingers are on Francen’s left hand, the only appendage he can apparently move. He is a very bitter man, as is understandable for a man with his restrictions. He was once apparently a highly accomplished pianist, who has been reduced to playing Bach variations playable on one hand, as devised for him by fellow musician Robert Alda. Francen’s attempted strangulation of Lorre happens when he is informed Alda and Francen’s nurse (Andrea King) will be leaving together.
We aren’t far into the runtime before Francen dies accidentally. That he had just happened to change his will the night before makes the others staying in and around the castle look suspicious, especially to the deceased’s immediate relatives (Charles Dingle and John Alvin) when they learn King is the new sole inheritor.
The rest of the film has characters stalked by the reanimated and disembodied left hand from Francen’s corpse. Or is the hand possibly an elaborate ruse, or even some sort of hallucination. While only a couple of characters actually see the hand, everybody is hearing and seeing the piano seemingly play itself at night.
I am completely on board with the idea of a murderous, severed hand taking on a life of its own. What I do take issue with is how readily the other characters immediately and completely accept this idea. Alda, Dingle, Alvin and police chief J. Carrol Naish all go to the mausoleum. In the tomb, they see a knife in the right hand of the corpse and the nothing protruding from the left sleeve. From this, these characters (including the chief of police) come to the conclusion the corpse cut off its own hand.
There’s a lot to parse there. First, they readily accept a dead person did this. Two, even if we accept the idea of the dead returning to life, Francen could not even move his right hand in real life, so why would he be able to do that as a zombie? Extending this logic one step further, why cut off the other hand, which had always been functional? And, if a hand that was previously impaired is now working, might it also be possible his legs are working and he could just go on a murderous rampage in his entirety?
I immediately experienced a complete disconnection from the movie which was never fully restored. That said, I did laugh hard when they find handprint in the dirt beyond a broken window of the mausoleum where, according to Naish, the hand “walked away”. He challenges the others with, “Can you give me a better explanation?” I know I can, such as ANYTHING. Any number of other possibilities makes more sense than your theory, especially the likelihood somebody, possibly a mentally unbalanced person, is messing with you.
The problem is the movie sets itself up as being smart and fairly witty up until this point, and with characters who clearly are not imbeciles. Alda, in particular, is the type of droll smartass American ex-pat that has been popular through all ages of cinema. We first see him fleecing some fellow Americans visiting the rural Italian village in which the movie is staged. Woe to the con man who doesn’t even try to figure the angles in something as preposterous as the scenario in which he finds himself.
Mind you, everything was pretty loopy even before Francen dies. For whatever reason, much focus is given to Lorre’s obsession with astrology, which Francen encourages through the purchase of the rare books on the subject which fill his library. He seems to be of a mindset akin to those even today who believe alchemy is possible, as he looks for “the law that changes unknown fate into predictable fact”, information lost since the destruction of the library at Alexandria.
That Lorre keeps a straight face while saying that is a tribute to the actor’s ability. Alas, some of his overemoting, which worked so well in similar films, escalates what was already ridiculous material into high camp. Similarly, Naish’s Italian stereotype character doesn’t play well, and he also seems to push his performance into farce. Francen is memorable commanding in his brief time on the screen. King is solid in a simple role without much room to do more than exactly what is required. Alda has the best role and maximizes the potential in it. It is easy to imagine his son, Alan, doing similar justice to the part.
Better than any of the actors are the effects of the severed hand crawling around. In a few shots, it is clearly a rubber hand being clumsily manipulated by occasionally obvious wires. But there are some completely stunning moments when a real hand is clearly “walking” around like a spider on various surfaces. The hand is that of director Robert Florey, and I think I can discern where a fake stump ends and his hand begins. That said, the skin tone is matched perfectly. Watching frame-by-frame, I see where there is a bit of a black-clad arm just barely visible in some shots, and the hand is even semi-transparent is a few images. So, there was some sort of compositing performed, but I am bewildered as to how it was accomplished.
The Beast with Five Fingers is a baffling film, uncertain as to what tone it wants to assume and populated with characters who are intelligent until they suddenly aren’t. It could have succeeded as straight horror or it could have succeeded as farce, but it can’t have it both ways. There were times when it was so absurd that I thought it had to be a subversive parody, only for it to play other moments completely straight. Most irritating is the final minute of the runtime, where a characters breaks the fourth wall and proceeds to mug shamelessly directly to the audience. At that moment, I concluded I wouldn’t need all the words spewed here to succinctly review this picture. I would only need one hand, and just one finger on that hand.
Dir: Robert Florey
Starring Robert Alda, Andrea King, Peter Lorre
Watched on Warner Archive blu-ray