The Beast with Five Fingers **** (1946, Peter Lorre, Andrea King, Robert Alda, J Carrol Naish, Victor Francen) – Classic Movie Review 3114

‘Your flesh will creep… AT THE HAND THAT CRAWLS!!’

Director Robert Florey and writer Curt Siodmak’s 1946 horror movie is highly amusing stuff about a creepy crawly handy sort of beast that roams about a castle till it finds a piano that it can play Bach on.

Siodmak’s screenplay is based on a story by William Fryer Harvey, in which Francis Ingram (Victor Francen), the tyrannical, occult-believing owner of an Italian palazzo, is murdered and then the local villagers believe the pianist’s severed hand is responsible for several new murders.

There is good fun to be had from Peter Lorre as Hilary Cummins, who finally tries to nail the man’s disembodied left hand to a table. Andrea King and Robert Alda, J Carrol Naish also star as Julie Holden, Conrad Ryler and Ovidio Castanio.

The piano music played by Ingram and later his disembodied hand is the Bach Chaconne in D Minor, as arranged for the left hand alone by Johannes Brahms. It is performed by the Hungarian-American pianist Ervin Nyiregyhazi.

Also in the cast are Charles Dingle, Belle Mitchell, Pedro De Cordoba, John Alvin, David Hoffman, Patricia White, Barbara Brown, William Edmunds and Ray Walker.

© Derek Winnert 2015 Classic Movie Review 3114

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