Scott LeBrun Francis Ingram (Victor Francen) hasn't let being paralyzed on his right side bring him down. In fact he's mastered playing the piano. He lives in a traditional spooky old mansion with two people devoted to him: his secretary Hilary Cummins (Peter Lorre), and his nursemaid / companion Julie Holden (Andrea King). He conveniently takes a fatal tumble down some stairs not long after crafting a new will and testament. A police commissioner (J. Carrol Naish) is not so certain that it was accidental, and begins to work his way through the assortment of possible suspects.The title makes you think that you're going to be in for some utter schlock, but it's misleading. This is really a pretty conventional "old dark house" type of period melodrama, taking place in an Italian village around the turn of the century. Much of the plot centers around the will, with horror elements fairly limited in this "what is illusion and what is reality" tale, scripted by Curt Siodmak. That said, director Robert Florey is very good at telling the story, creating the atmosphere, and getting excellent performances out of his well chosen cast. Certainly the horror highlights deal with Lorre, whose character is obsessed with astrology, and his confrontations with the disembodied hand of Ingram. This body part keeps dogging him, even when he's seemingly pinned it in place with a hammer and nail.Lorre is well worth watching; in fact, he's the *main* reason to watch, as he was in so many things. But everybody on screen is engaging, including leading man Robert Alda, whose character manages to be rather likable even though he's kind of a sleazy guy. Francen is memorable in his brief amount of screen time, and Naish is likewise a great deal of fun. The latter injects much humor into the goings-on with his performance, and even gets to break the fourth wall at the end.This is entertaining material through and through, provided one knows what to expect. The 1981 Michael Caine thriller "The Hand" is actually somewhat comparable.Seven out of 10.

sddavis63 I would recommend this film for the performances of the leads more than anything. Peter Lorre, Robert Alda and Andrea King all did very well with their parts. Lorre, as Hilary (personal assistant to disabled but famed pianist Francis Ingram, played by Victor Francen), was really tailor made for this type of film, playing a suspicious and even somewhat creepy character. Alda (as a sort of con artist named Conrad Ryder, whose relationship with Ingram I never really did understand) and King (as Ingram's personal nurse Julie) were both much better known for their television roles than for movies, but both did well with their parts.The story revolves around Ingram, his "friendships" (for lack of a better word) with the three aforementioned characters, and others who become suspicious when Ingram dies in an accident - his wheelchair having fallen down a staircase - and leaves his entire estate to Julie. In the midst of some concerns about the will, Ingram's only two living family members show up and challenge the will. The title then begins to make sense, as what is apparently Ingram's disembodied hand begins a murderous rampage.This worked fairly well as a suspense movie, but I wouldn't call it a "horror" movie. I never believed (well, perhaps I had a shade of doubt for a moment, but it didn't last long) that there was really a disembodied hand on the loose. Clearly, there was another explanation. We just had to wait for it to be revealed. It was a decent enough story. There was nothing spectacular about it, but it's certainly not a failure. It featured some pretty decent special effects (for the time) with the disembodied hand, but it made a huge mistake in the last scene, suddenly trying to be funny, which was out of keeping with the entire story up to that point and which actually left me a bit dry. I didn't see the need for that "humourous" ending - which wasn't that funny anyway, and which was entirely out of place. Still, it's a decent enough movie to watch. (5/10)

Lee Eisenberg Who better to star in a sinister story like "The Beast with Five Fingers" than bug-eyed, raspy-voiced Peter Lorre? The movie depicts an Italian town where a string of murders is attributed to a severed hand. Yeah, kinda silly, but it's still a very enjoyable movie. Oliver Stone remade it as "The Hand", starring Michael Caine as a cartoonist whose hand gets chopped off but doesn't stay dead (this was early in Stone's career, so the movie has nothing political).So, this one is just some good old-fashioned Gothic horror, including a trick at the end. A fine achievement for Lorre, along with Robert Alda, Andrea King, Victor Francen and J. Carroll Naish.

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.