The man who directed and designed this film, William Cameron Menzies, was one of the great unheralded geniuses in the history of film. More than almost anyone he raised set and production design to the level of art; and his sets for the silent Fairbanks Thief Of Baghdad are still eye-popping. Menzies will probably be best-remembered as production designer of Gone With the Wind, a film he largely molded visually, and whose best scenes bear his unmistakable stamp. Alas, Menzies was never a good director, though his films are often interesting to look at. A good example is his 1953 Invaders From Mars. The Whip Hand, though, is just awful; dreadful script, poor acting, no pace; and it doesn't even have the Menzies 'look'. Yet as a period piece it is not without interest. It starts beautifully, in a studio-designed rustic setting (and the best set in the film); and then a rainstorm soaks a vacationing fisherman, who proceeds to go into the local town and ask for help in getting treatment for a head injury he sustained when he fell against a rock. The townfolk turn out to be even harder than the rock he hit his head against. They refuse to be more than perfunctorily friendly (with the exception of a superficially outgoing and jokey Raymond Burr), and are continually contradicting one another. It seems that there are strange doings on a lodge across the lake; and nocturnal visits to the lodge by the doctor, who doesn't want to talk about it. As things turn out, Communists have taken over this Minnesota town and turned it into a center for the study of germ warfare!
This movie could have been so good. I was rooting for it all the way; hoping against hope that it would get its act together and finally work,--dramatically, logically, thespically. But it never did. The heavy hand of Howard Hughes had a good deal to do with ruining what slight chance this movie had of being good, as it was originally supposed to be about Nazis, and he decided, as studio chief, that he knew better, so he ordered much of the film re-shot to make the villains Russian agents instead. I'm surprised he didn't put Jane Russell in it as well. Lang, Hitchcock or even Siodmak might have worked wonders with the material. Menzies himself might have done better had his employer showed better taste and judgment. The movie's worth seeing if only for the spectacle of gifted people making asses of themselves both in front of and behind the camera, as there are flashes of real talent here and there.
This movie could have been so good. I was rooting for it all the way; hoping against hope that it would get its act together and finally work,--dramatically, logically, thespically. But it never did. The heavy hand of Howard Hughes had a good deal to do with ruining what slight chance this movie had of being good, as it was originally supposed to be about Nazis, and he decided, as studio chief, that he knew better, so he ordered much of the film re-shot to make the villains Russian agents instead. I'm surprised he didn't put Jane Russell in it as well. Lang, Hitchcock or even Siodmak might have worked wonders with the material. Menzies himself might have done better had his employer showed better taste and judgment. The movie's worth seeing if only for the spectacle of gifted people making asses of themselves both in front of and behind the camera, as there are flashes of real talent here and there.