The Hand

When I first saw this movie in the 1960's, it seemed an interesting little piece, which stood up quite well as a double-bill feature (with Village of the Damned, maybe?). However, now it just comes across as a rag-tag effort with not much substance, and virtually no style whatsoever. The opening scenes are quite effective, and are by far the best in the film. What follows is largely disappointing, and the storyline has more holes in it than a colander - it just barely makes any sense. This isn't helped by the poor direction & editing, as well as the stilted acting, especially by the lead detective played by Ronald Leigh-Hunt, who seems to hesitate, in thought, every time a line is to be delivered. The transfer to DVD is also poor and, all in all, the end product is a big let down.

Great start!

And yeah - lots of talk, and no action - which was the curse of British B movies of the time. But you've got to pay attention to the dialogue this time, or you won't work out what the motivation is. In other words, Ray Cooney's dialogue is a bit cleverer than the norm at the time.

Nasty shots (for 1961) - one severed hand (natch!)

Who's the murderer, then? Bloody Hell - Derek Bond has the lead role on the posters, and doesn't appear after the MEANINGFUL prologue until well into the movie.

Ray Cooney wrote the screenplay, and went on to script several extremely successful comedy/farce plays. This seems to have been his only foray into nasty stuff.He also appears in the movie. Several rewinds suggest that he's the main Cop's second hand( heh, heh!) man.(The credits aren't helpful)

I had to hunt this movie down after many years. Hard to find. Is it good? Well - all I can say is that, had I the chance to view it at the time, I may not have been disappointed. Very English, shoestring budget. Today?

It's an hour long, you've got to pay attention to throw-away dialogue - but it's much better than those Butcher Film movies that send you to sleep after 5 minutes and -

Amazing for 1960: Bad language! In the prologue, a character calls his WW2 captors "Dirty Bastards!" Believe me, STRONG stuff for the time.

BUT - this is NOT a lost classic. Tape it on late night TV if it ever shows, but don't pay what I did to give you this review.

GEISTERZUG

It was very rare that the British film industry gave us such films, besides the pure horror genre in the Hammer Films or Tiggon productions fashion, most notorious horror films companies. Because this film is a crime thriller with a rather American style plot. It is short, maybe too short for this kind of scheme. It is tense, sharp, riveting, exciting, maybe the most interesting film from director Henry Cass, who gave us some horror flicks. It is not complex to understand or follow, no real deep mystery plot, complicated links to assimilate. It is useless to put many action scenes in such a story which may seem a bit disturbing for some audiences. I highly recommend it to any movie buff.

Director Henry Cass's final exploitation film before he embraced Moral Rearmament.

Both very cheap and very nasty with an incredibly complicated plot devised by a young Ray Cooney and Tony Hilton, who also kept costs down by both playing coppers investgating a gruesome discovery made in a then contemporary East End of payphones with button Bs (when the NHS was already staffed by foreign nurses).

In only sixty minutes it also manages to throw in Japanese wartime atrocities and incredibly only carried an 'A' certificate from the British censor. But AIP were sufficiently satisfied with it to release it stateside.

I am extremely indebted to the other reviewers of this Butchers B Movie since i realised after viewing it that i had rather lost the plot.I just could not fathom out what was happening.Mind you when a film starts with the subtitle "Burma 1946" and starts with scenes set in the Second world war you are bound to be a bit mystified.As has been stated by other reviewers the best part of the film is the opening 7 minutes set in Burma.The rest of the film rather lets it all down.The climax in particular is extremely badly handled.The ending is predictable and ironic but there is a total lack of suspense.You would think that with just an hour to tell a story that it could be kept fairly straightforward,but alas the producers of this film failed to achieve that.