Hand of Death (1962)

Lately, I've been catching up with a number of B-movies that piqued my interest when I first became interested in horror films - more years ago now than I care to remember - but which I was never able to see due to their lack of availability on UK TV back then.  We're talking about the pre-internet era here, when we had only three TV channels and home video was in its infancy.  So, if a film didn't turn up on one of those three channels, then you weren't going to be able to see it, it was that simple.  To research my new found interest, I had to rely on books (often borrowed from my local library), which usually included all too brief write ups of the films and tantalising stills from them.  So it was that I first became aware of Hand of Death (1962), from a single still in a book about movie monsters.  It showed a guy with grotesquely swollen face and hands steadying himself on, rather bizarrely, a parking meter.  The caption on the picture simply named the film and there was no other reference to  it in the main text.  In the years that followed I found out a bit more about the movie from other books - cast, director, basic plot outline - but was never able to catch up with the film itself, which remained an obscurity, not even to be found anywhere on the net.  Until now, that is, when I found a number of copies have turned up online.  

So, having finally ended my decades long wait to see Hand of Death, was it worth it?  The most immediately striking thing about the film is that it is very traditional science fiction/horror B-movie, yet was made as late as 1962.  The plot could easily have come from thirties or forties Universal or Monogram B-movie starring Karloff or Lugosi: scientist working on revolutionary new gas that can pacify those who inhale it, gets a whiff of his own invention and finds that his very touch deals death.  Even his motivations for developing the gas - for use on the battlefield to incapacitate enemy armies without harming them - could have come from one of those thirties films an over-reaching scientist's good intentions turn out to pave the road to Hell.  While mad scientist type films were still being made in the fifties and into the sixties, they tended to have moved with the times, with experiments involving then fashionable radiation to grow insects to giant proportions and the like becoming the norm.  Moreover, they were also increasingly tailored to the youth market, as drive in audiences became ever more important to the box office fates of low budget films.  AIP, in particular, targeted this demographic with the likes of I Was a Teenage Frankenstein, I Was a Teenage Werewolf and Blood is My Heritage, to name but a few.  Hand of Death, by contrast, makes no concessions to this market, with its middle aged cast and lack of hot rods and surfers, (although a beach does feature prominently at the climax - but there are no parties going on there).

What we get instead is a pretty standard science-gone-wrong plot, as the protagonist finds not just his body, but also his mind warped by his encounter with the gas he has developed, (reminiscent, to some degree, of Universal's The Mad Ghoul (1943)).  The performances, from a cast of B-movie veterans, including John Agar as the unfortunate scientist, are pretty standard for this sort of film.  What is outstanding is the make-up worn by Agar as he starts changing into a monster, with both hands and face hugely swollen, with blackened, cracked skin.  Indeed, the scenes where he wanders around the streets in this state, wearing a trench coat and trilby hat are more than a little surreal and give the film a genuinely bizarre feel.  (It is from this sequence that the still with the parking meter, which sparked my interest in the film, was taken).  The film tries hard to make Agar's character a tragic hero: not only were his original intentions peaceful, but he never intentionally kills anyone in the film, it's just that people keep touching him or forcing him to fend them off, resulting in his fatal touch killing them.  (The make-up effects for his victims are also above average, with his initial touch leaving a black mark on them, before their skin swells, blackens and cracks like his).  The problem is that his character is too stereotypically written and performed for the audience ever to care much about him.  

In terms of production values, Hand of Death looks pretty decent for a low budget movie, making good use of its locations and featuring some memorably shot sequences. These include the aforementioned street scene as well as the long tracking shots of Agar stumbling along the beach toward the end, while a child plays on a terrace in the foreground, the set-up constantly teasing a collision between the two.  The low budget shows, though, in the generic-sounding electronic jazz-style score, which never really seems to match the onscreen action.  Still, at around an hour, Hand of Death is a reasonably brisk experience, with an interesting set-up and a great-looking monster in a pretty standard plot.  Was it worth the wait?  Probably not, but I still found it a reasonably entertaining diversion for and hour or so.