Beast with Five Fingers, The (Blu-ray Review)
- Review Date: Jan 21, 2025
- Format: Blu-ray Disc
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Director
Robert FloreyRelease Date(s)
1946 (October 29, 2024)Studio(s)
Warner Bros. (Warner Archive Collection)- Film/Program Grade: B+
- Video Grade: A
- Audio Grade: A
- Extras Grade: B+
Review
The Beast with Five Fingers has the distinction of being the last Gothic Hollywood horror film of the 1940s. Horror had been a reliable box office money maker since 1931’s Dracula, but other genres were coming into vogue and increased censorship made the old style of horror picture more difficult to make. Focus shifted from monsters to psychological horror that dealt with altered mental states, guilt, and paranoia. The Beast with Five Fingers is an old-dark-house tale involving mystery, murder, and mayhem.
At the turn of the twentieth century, paraplegic pianist Francis Ingram (Victor Francen, The Mask of Dimitrios) lives in a mansion near a small Italian town. Living in the house are his secretary Hilary (Peter Lorre, The Maltese Falcon) and his nurse Julie Holden (Andrea King, Red Planet Mars). Frequent visitors to the estate are genial con man Bruce Conrad (Robert Alda, Norma Prentiss) and Ingram’s lawyer, Duprex (David Hoffman, The Creeper). Conrad sells fake antiques to unsuspecting tourists and smooth-talks local police inspector Ovidio Castanio (J. Carrol Naish, House of Frankenstein), using questionable mathematics, into believing that he’s committed no crime. The scam artist also has found winning at chess with Ingram to be a regular source of income.
Ingram assembles these individuals and asks them to attest to his sanity because he’s about to change his will. Shortly afterward, Ingram’s wheelchair careens down a flight of stairs, killing him. Ingram’s only living relatives are Americans Raymond Arlington (Charles Dingle, The Little Foxes) and his son Donald (John Alvin, Train to Alcatraz). On learning that Ingram has named Julie the sole heir to his estate, they’re immediately suspicious. When a light is seen in the mausoleum where Ingram is interred, it’s discovered that the body was desecrated. Ingram’s left hand has been removed.
Soon the house is filled with the sounds of a Bach selection that Ingram was known for. When the disembodied hand is seen playing the piano and crawling through the library, the routine murder mystery becomes an exercise in gruesome horror.
The Beast with Five Fingers is based on a short story by William Fryer Harvey in which a disembodied hand appears to have a mind of its own. Because the original story wasn’t substantive enough for a feature-length film, screenwriter Curt Siodmak created the first two thirds of the script to expand the plot and develop characters, and used events in the story for the final third. The film builds gradually, starting in familiar territory and progressing toward a supernatural element that adds another layer of melodrama.
Lorre steals the show with a fine performance as the obsessed Hilary. With his trademark bulging eye, gritted teeth, and whiny delivery, Lorre projects a calm demeanor in early scenes that becomes increasingly unhinged as the film progresses. He plays many scenes with only the hand as his scene partner, and his terror is palpable as the hand inches toward his neck.
Robert Alda (Alan Alda’s father) is awfully bland as Conrad. The scene in which he takes advantage of the tourist couple works because he plays it with self-assurance, a pleasant smile, and a salesman-like patter. Later, however, he sort of blends into the scenery. His weak screen presence makes him a poor choice for the nominal hero.
Francen conveys an arrogance that wealth and entitlement have nurtured. He’s not very likable and doesn’t care. Francen projects austerity and humorlessness that suggest an unhappy, physically helpless man.
Andrea King is attractive but not much of an actress. Julie is a key character but King’s portrayal is so dull that it gets lost among all the stronger performances. When Julie develops a backbone and stands up to the obnoxious relatives from America, King makes it unconvincing. Julie is the resident damsel in distress but never gets appropriately upset by eerie events in the house even as they escalate, and comes across as practically lifeless.
J. Carrol Naish, like Lorre, is a scene stealer. His Police Inspector Castanio offers some comic relief in this otherwise dark tale of murder and vengeance. Unfortunately, he’s in the very last scene of the film, a scene that completely undermines the mood of the film. This is the fault of the script and perhaps studio head Jack Warner, who didn’t like horror and felt that such movies should leave audiences laughing.
The special effects are quite good for the time and involved laborious efforts to simulate a human hand moving of its own volition. Shot from various angles and even in close-up, the illusion works and results in some memorably creepy sequences.
The Beast with Five Fingers was shot by director of photography Wesley Anderson on 35 mm black & white film with spherical lenses, finished photochemically, and presented in the aspect ratio of 1.37:1. The Blu-ray is sourced from a 4K scan of the original nitrate camera negative. Clarity and contrast are superior. Blacks are deep and rich, contributing to the film’s atmosphere. Details are well pronounced, including King’s elaborate wig, Alda’s rakish hat, Francen’s character wrinkles, and the creepy crawling hand. Shadows thrown on the wall from a banister and pools of darkness within the frame draw attention. After Ingram crashes down the stairs, the scene darkens except for illumination on his left hand. In the last third of the film, Anderson uses odd angles to suggest a supernatural element. Peter Lorre is lit from below in several scenes, giving his Hilary a sinister gaze that reflects his mental breakdown. In one scene, when Hilary emerges from darkness and appears unexpectedly behind Julie, the scene is shot as a reflection from a mirror. Some of the special effects are the same used in The Invisible Man, made thirteen years earlier. A traveling matte gives the impression that the disembodied hand has a will of its own.
The soundtrack is English 2.0 DTS-HD Master Audio. English SDH subtitles are an available option. Dialogue is crisp. Though the setting is Italy, no one but J. Carrol Naish bothers to adopt an Italian accent. The film benefits greatly from Max Steiner’s score. Though it doesn’t have the grandeur of his score for King Kong, it quite nicely adds the right mood for the strange goings-on in the huge mansion, building excitement and tension.
Bonus materials on the Blu-ray release from the Warner Archive Collection include the following:
- Audio Commentary by Dr. Steve Haberman and Constantine Nasr
- The Foxy Duckling (7:35)
- The Gay Anties (6:26)
- Theatrical Trailer (2:03)
Audio Commentary – Author/Film Historian Dr. Steve Haberman and Filmmaker/Film Historian Constantine Nasr refer to The Beast with Five Fingers as ‘“powerful Gothic horror.” The only horror film made by Warner Bros. in the 1940s, it was the last horror film from a major Hollywood studio in the 1940s. Films in the mid-1940s started focusing on subtext based on Freudian psychology. The severed hand relates to Freud’s castration anxiety theory. Haberman makes numerous references to symbolism in the film. Screenwriter Curt Siodmak was adept at exploring the psychology of characters and how their mental breakdowns occurred. He was critical to elevating the horror film in a psychological way when film noir was supplanting the genre. The Beast with Five Fingers was Siodmak’s “swan song.” He changed direction and started working in other genres but never achieved similar success in future years. Siodmak wanted Paul Henreid for the part of Hilary, but the actor didn’t relish the idea of playing his major scenes with a hand. Director Robert Florey made the film on a ten-day schedule with a budget of $750,000. He wanted the film to look expressionistic but the studio deemed his vision non-commercial. Nevertheless, Florey incorporated some canted angles to suggest a supernatural element. Horror films were always profitable, but The Beast with Five Fingers also received very good reviews. Florey went on to direct many TV episodes of horror/mystery anthologies, including The Twilight Zone, The Outer Limits, Thriller, and Alfred Hitchcock Presents. He was involved in planning the original Frankenstein but didn’t get to direct it. As consolation, Universal assigned him Murders in the Rue Morgue, which enabled him to create a strange, otherworldly, expressionistic milieu. The commentators praise the excellent score by Max Steiner and add that Steiner hated horror films and never permitted his score for The Beast with Five Fingers to be re-recorded for collections of his work.
The Foxy Duckling – In this 1947 Technicolor Merrie Melodies cartoon from Warner Bros., an insomniac fox is desperately trying to get some sleep. He tries sleeping pills and clips that force his eyes shut but still he can’t sleep. Thinking a down-filled pillow will be comfortable enough to let him sleep, he pursues a yellow duck, using a decoy and duck call, but is shot at by hunters. The fox then constructs an elaborate wooden trap from from a tree branch, but it collapses, giving the duck the last laugh. Voice characterizations are provided by Mel Blanc.
The Gay Anties – A colony of ants invade a young couple’s picnic in the 1890s and plan to steal their food. Frustrated repeatedly in their attempts to make off with a sandwich, the ants seek revenge. Interludes include the ants doing a Russian dance, a female ant singing a torch song in a high, piercing voice that causes the other ants to scurry for cover, and a chef ant coordinating the creation of sandwiches that the humans eat. Released in 1947, this Technicolor Warner Bros. Merrie Melodies cartoon was directed by Friz Freleng and features the voices of Mel Blanc and Virginia Rees.
The Beast with Five Fingers still delivers after more than seventy years. Director Florey combines murder and psychological terror, and balances dialogue with periodic eerie touches that keep the viewer involved. The Italian setting is negligible, since it has no bearing on the plot. Had the film been set in some desolate area in America, it would work just as well. This is really Peter Lorre’s film. His intensity and total immersion in the role of Hilary is what makes the film work. And that crawling hand, which deserved co-star billing, is a memorable scene partner for Lorre.
- Dennis Seuling