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.  

HANDS OF A STRANGER

d. Newt Arnold (1962)

A noir-ish take on the much filmed Hands Of Orlac, this is a torrid tale of a self-obsessed concert pianist called Vernon Paris who has his hands mangled to buggery in a car crash. He is treated by an equally egocentric surgeon, who takes the decision to illegally graft the hands of a victim of a gangland slaying onto Paris’ bloodied stumps. The operation is a complete success, if you don’t count the bit where Rose goes insane and starts killing people, first by mistake, later by design. Oh, and afterwards he plays the piano like a chimp at a tea party, so that didn’t work either.

This is a terrifically entertaining film, filled with intense performances and clever but florid dialogue which goes a mile a minute and would probably call a spade a hand operated metal and wood earth penetrating excavation device. It’s also choc-a-bloc with clever camera work and punchy visual motifs, mostly hands and pianos and hands playing pianos. Everything is played in deadly earnest and without a scintilla of camp, which, of course, makes it all ten times better (and ten times camper).

Unlike the Orlac story, we never find out who the transplant hands belong to, so there is little emphasis on the hands as being evil or imbued with evil, although it does make you wonder why they spent the time establishing that the donor was a gangster if they weren’t going to use that as part of the story. Here, the supernatural is replaced by the practical, the psychological: put simply, the accident and transplant snap Paris’ already brittle mind, and drive him to kill over and over again (he breaks his victims fingers, then strangles them). This ripe exchange sort of marks the boundaries:

'If you're concerned with the possibility that the donor might have been some kind of madman, let me assure you that psychotic tendencies don't transfer themselves to the physical extremities after death!'

'You know that for a fact?'

'No, no, I don't!'

Need I say any more? Recommended.

THE MONOLITH MONSTERS

d. John Sherwood (1957)

After a marvellously solemn monologue about the nature of comets and the daily threat they pose to the Earth, The Monolith Monsters starts with a chunk of obsidian black space rock smashing into a Californian salt flat, spreading debris all over the desert. When the rock gets wet, it grows, forming vast towers which then topple over and smash, with each broken piece growing again to form a new tower. For the people of the small community of San Angelo this presents two problems: firstly, their little town is directly in the path of the rampaging rocks and, secondly, anyone who gets too close to the space debris has all the silicone sucked from their bodies and subsequently turns to stone. It’s a hell of a concept (sci fi film genius Jack Arnold was one of the men behind it) and it’s well executed, too.

The shots of the black monoliths growing, falling, then springing up again, in particular, are startling, especially when you realise that, with nothing to stop them, they could, with time and rain, crush the whole world. There’s no question of the rock being intelligent, it just does what it does, over and over, unthinking, unfeeling, and unaware of any consequence. It’s rather chilling, but then nature, regardless of its point of origin, often is.

The main characters in the film are Geologists* and Doctors, so the focus is on finding a logical, scientific solution rather than simply screaming and hoping for a lucky break or an act of God. I’m not sure if a sentence like ‘Chert, Feldspar, Pyroxene, almost all of the Olivine group, Flint, almost solid Silica' makes any sense to someone with a BSc, but it sounds right to someone who hasn't, and that’s half the battle.

* The chief scientist is the excellent Grant Williams, perhaps best known as The Incredible Shrinking Man, another Jack Arnold master work.

THE TWILIGHT PEOPLE

d. Eddie Romero (1972)

Edgar ‘Eddie’ Romero was a legend of the Filipino film industry. Working from the late 1940s up until 2008 (he died in 2013, aged 88), Eddie produced, wrote and directed dozens of films and TV shows, eventually attaining a respectability and artistry that few non-auteurs achieve. For the narrow purposes of this weblog, we’ll concentrate on the hugely entertaining English language exploitation films he made in the 1970s, specifically his shoestring take on The Island of Doctor Moreau, The Twilight People.

The film stars John Ashley, a recurring presence in Romero films of the period. Ashley had been a minor teen idol and even more minor pop star, playing eternal youths in AIP horror and beach films well into his thirties. He happily relocated to Manila when US roles dried up, eventually working behind the scenes of Apocalypse Now for an extended period: he was the guy who arranged to borrow the helicopters. Here he plays Matt Farrell, a slightly pudgy playboy and renaissance man who is kidnapped by a mad scientist who wants to splice his superior genes with wildlife, thereby creating a super race of human-animal hybrids that he believes will form the next stage of evolution. 

It’s not working too well so far, as all he’s managed to do is to create a menagerie of unhappy freaks: apart from his mad, mutated wife, he has a man bat (disturbing), a goat man (perplexing), a monkey boy (randy and annoying) and a young woman who has a very furry face who I eventually realised was supposed to be part dog. Oh, and he also has a constantly miaowing Panther Woman, played by the magnificent Pam Grier (underused). It’s all a bit disorganised and deeply unethical, and Farrell is the sort of straight up guy who inspires confidence, so he very quickly turns the mad scientists daughter against her Father and breaks out the hybrids, who make their way into the jungle in search of freedom, closely pursued by the scientists hired thugs, led by a peroxided sadist who only drinks milk. 

As you might expect, the film is no masterpiece but it is surprisingly well written, well directed and mainly well-acted, as well as being shot in a number of interesting locations. For all its quiet competence, however, it is sometimes marred by abrupt edits, as if material has been removed or added at the last minute, leading to jarring and sometimes noisy transitions. The monster make up is okay (lots of stick on fuzz and silly teeth), and the special effects, including spurting blood and some animation, are about right. In the end analysis, it’s a cheaply made but ambitious film about strange and fantastic things, kept from tipping into silliness by a matter of fact and professional approach - which sounds slightly dull but actually never is.

THE MAN WHO TURNED TO STONE

d. Leslie Kardos (1957)

We’re in one of our favourite cinematic locations (alright one of my favourite cinematic locations), the women’s prison. This particular jail is notable for its high incidence of fatal heart attacks amongst the prisoners, usually preceded by lots and lots of screaming. Somewhat unpredictably, It turns out that the prison governors are all 150 years old, the last surviving guinea pigs of experimental animal magnetism experimentation. Apparently, the treatment has formed an invisible stone sheath around their bodies, protecting them from knives, bullets, breaks, bruises and the ravages of time. Every now and again, the treatment needs renewing, so, before they turn into statues, they order their lumbering henchman to steal a female convict, at which point they dump her in a warm water bath, attach some electrodes and suck the energy out of her until she’s good and dead.

No, I don’t know how they came up with them, either. But I’m glad that they did, as it’s another mad minor classic from that most psychotronic of cinematic years, 1957 AD.

THE BRAIN THAT WOULDN'T DIE

d. Joseph Green (1962)

'Let me die, let me die'

The human brain is the most complex thing in the Universe and, since the Enlightenment downgraded the soul to a might have rather than a must have, it's also the most important thing we possess. Little wonder, then, that the brain fascinates scientists the world over, particularly in films like The Brain That Wouldn't Die, where the line between scientific genius and obsessive fanaticism is a very thin one indeed.

Doctor Bill Cortner is full of the energy and arrogance of youth, a man in a hurry to prove his theories on the transplantation of limbs and organs to the extent that he has become unethical, performing illegal operations using body parts pilfered from the hospital where he works. When his fiancee Jan is decapitated in a car crash, he takes the opportunity to pluck her severed head from the burning wreckage, wrapping it up in his jacket and taking it to a secret lab, bringing it back to life with a 'new special compound' that not only reinvigorates the head but makes it telepathic.

Jan's head, plonked on a metal tray full of chemicals and filled with tubes and pipes, is pretty pissed off about the arrangement and asks repeatedly to die. Bill has other ideas, however, checking out strip clubs and beauty contests in search of a suitably pneumatic replacement chassis before settling on a facially scarred but otherwise intact nude model.

From here, it all gets quite complicated, despite being defiantly non complex. All I can say is that between the giant homicidal freak locked in a closet and poor decapitated Jan's overpowering death drive, it can only end in flames.