HAND OF DEATH

d. Gene Nelson (1962)

Dr. Alex Marsh (schlock superstar John Agar, Shirley Temple's first husband) is one of those madly intense scientists obsessed with making the world a better place by inventing unspeakable things. The main thrust of his work is to combine a hypnotic drug and non-deadly nerve gas, thereby giving the U.S.A a paralyzed and compliant enemy to invade. His reasoning is that it will save the horror and destruction of nuclear war but, as he speaks, his eyes glitter and his mouth grows wet: the idea excites him very much, a lot more than his over-eager fiancee seems to, who is reduced to playing the coquette with his cheerful best friend in desperate lieu of attention from her permanently working husband to be.  

One late night, an exhausted Marsh clumsily spills some of his experimental solution over his hands, and tears open his lab coat and Hawaiian shirt in pain and horror before falling onto the bed and hallucinating test tubes, beakers and scurrying white mice. When he awakens, he not only has a first class tan, but the merest touch of his hands means instant death, a lesson his Mexican lab assistant learns very quickly. Ever responsible, Marsh douses the corpse and the rest of the lab in white spirit and puts a match to it before driving off to cause chaos downtown.

A film that runs out of steam very quickly and soon descends into jumbled images of a bloke just staggering about, Hand of Death is most notable for Marsh's transformation from handsome(ish) young(ish) scientist to bloated, blackened monster, as mutation turns his head into a lump of swollen coal and his deadly hands into bunches of over-ripe bananas. Interestingly, to disguise the disfiguring condition that has distorted his entire body and robbed him of his speech and sanity, he does the only thing he can under the circumstances: he puts a hat on.  

FREUD: THE SECRET PASSION

d. John Huston (1962)

I've written before about the attractions of psychoanalysis films, in which mental illness is portrayed as a dark, menacing spider that lurks in the shadows of an attic room, and talking therapy is the lure that brings it out into the open so that it can be whacked with a broom. Such films have a refracted feel, of something at the corner of the eye. They are unsettling and, usually, inventive and surreal, particularly at the hands of established mainstream directors making the most of the opportunity to do something weird.

Freud: The Secret Passion is an important entry in the sub-genre, not least because it is effectively a biopic of psychiatric practice. Directed by genius journeyman John Huston and starring  poor old Montgomery Clift as an obsessive and controversial Sigmund Freud, the narrative alternates between intense hypnotic therapy sessions and gauzy interludes from Freud's own personal history which serve to help him iron out the wrinkles in his own crumpled psyche. Although the depiction of treatment is greatly simplified and the outcomes far more emphatic than in reality, the film does a good job in joining the dots, ably assisted by excellent performances, moody music and a feeling of eerie, scalp prickling mystery. In many ways, Freud is a horror film or, at least, a film about ghosts, where the haunted house is the human mind. 

Clift burns at the centre of the film, his damaged face conveying the agony of the seeker as he obsessively pursues his goal, alienating his family and scandalising his peers as he relentlessly moves towards understanding. It's an outstanding performance, but Clift was apparently difficult on set, and this caused the film to go over budget, effectively ending his career. Clift had always been demanding and, after his near fatal car crash in 1956 became increasingly erratic - but he still made money. In Hollywood, then as now, you can self-medicate and misbehave all you like, but as soon as you start cutting into the profits, you're finished.