Collector's Item: The Left Fist of David (1957 TV Movie) User Reviews

Pretty Good

[Tim-121 · 2 March 2004]

I just watched this pilot as a bonus piece on my "The Last Man on Earth" dvd from Critic's Choice. This was an unsold pilot with only one episode, "The Left Fist of David". Vincent Price plays an art appraiser/collector whose partner is Peter Lorre. They go to Florida to catalog the collection of a large estate. Thomas Gomez plays a creepy schemer (although Lorre's character is kind of creepy too) who alerts them to the possibility that the collection may contain a legendary piece known as the "Left Fist of David".

It would have worked much better as a full hour story as opposed to a half hour. They should probably remake this as a full hour show because I think it could have a lot of possibilities with a different story every week. Who would be today's equivalent of Price and Lorre, though?

The Critic's Choice version is a little choppy and some scenes are dark, but we are talking about a 1958 TV pilot so I don't know if that's normal or not.

Interesting

[comicman117 · 12 November 2011]

Collector's item (1958) Directed by Starring Vincent Price and Pete Lorre. A pilot produced for a proposed TV series, but never got picked up (The series would have been intended to air on CBS if it had). A very interesting story about valuable artifacts and a theft that happens could have made for a very interesting Mystery series, but sadly the people at CBS never bothered to pick it up. This only runs 25 minutes (including the credits) so there isn't a lot to talk about, but the biggest thing I liked about the pilot was the paring of Vincent Price and Peter Lorre. The duo made three movies in the 60's (two directed by Roger Corman, two also starring Boris Karloff and Basil Rathbone, one of which was a trio of stories). The two also appeared in two movies in the 50's (the story of Mankind and the Big Circus, although they clearly share no scenes in the first of those, and in the later I'm not sure as I haven't been able to watch it yet). To see them in yet another thing, let alone the possibility of a TV series, sounded fantastic (shame it never got picked up). It's a very interesting story, with Thomas Gomez excellent in support as the villain. It's free to watch on Youtube in three parts, so I suggest you check it out.