The Hand (1960)

Director:

Henry Cass

Writers:

Ray Cooney (writer)
Tony Hilton (writer)

Release Date:

October 1960 (UK)

Genre:

Crime | Horror

Plot:

During World War II, a group of British soldiers are captured by the Japanese, tortured and their hands are cut off. Years later, a mad killer terrorizes London by cutting off the hands of his victims. |

Plot Keywords:

WWII | Hand Cut Off | Betrayal | 1940s | 1950s

Cast

Derek Bond	...	Roberts Crawshaw / Roger Crawshaw
Ronald Leigh-Hunt	...	Munyard
Reed De Rouen	...	Michael Brodie
Ray Cooney	...	Pollitt
Bryan Coleman	...	Adams
Walter Randall	...	Japanese Commander
Tony Hilton	...	Foster
Harold Scott	...	Charlie Taplow
Gwenda Ewen	...	Nurse Johns
Michael Moore	...	Dr. Metcalfe
Ronald Wilson	...	Doctor
Garard Green	...	Simon Crawshaw
Jean Dallas	...	Nurse Geiber
David Blake Kelly	...	Marshall
Reginald Hearne	...	Noel Brodie

Runtime:

61 min

Country:

UK

Language:

English

Color:

Black and White

Aspect Ratio:

1.75 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono

Certification:

UK:A

Company:

Bill and Michael Luckwell Ltd.

THE HAND (Henry Cass, 1960) **

I was expecting this to be a horror film of the disembodied hand variety (as would be the case with its 1981 namesake, which, incidentally, I watched fairly recently); instead, it's an eccentric, cheap but surprisingly tolerable Edgar Wallace-type policier which, for its modest length (running barely over an hour), turns out to have an unnecessarily complex plot – wherein myriad characters (many of them having lost the titular body part) are involved with organ-trafficking, impersonation, suicide, murder and the like!

The plot has a WWII Burma-set prologue in which three British soldiers are captured by the Japanese; the latter seek to learn the position and number of the opposing Allied forces and, to this end, two of the prisoners suffer the loss of a hand. Then, we cut to the present day, where it transpires that the third had turned cowardly – so his companions' sacrifice was in vain – and, rather than having the maimed duo seeking the traitor out for revenge, it is he who's still persecuting them! The finale, however, sees the villain getting his just desserts in a most ironic (yet totally predictable) fashion.

Investigating the weird goings-on are a couple of Scotland Yard detectives; bafflingly, one of the most frustrating aspects to this intriguing but ultimately unsatisfying film is the peculiar fact that a lot of the male actors here boast strikingly similar physiognomies and, so as not to get hopelessly confused, one has to keep reminding himself of just who the various characters are and what they represent!