HANDS OF A STRANGER (1962)

A promising concert pianist, James Stapleton, loses the use of his hands when they are thrust through the glass of a taxicab during a low-speed crash. The viewer must assume this is at least remotely possible. His hands are a mangled mess of flesh and bone. Not a scratch on his face by the way. Therapy is not an option. He receives a groundbreaking double hand transplant from the hands of a recent murder victim. Lead surgeon Paul Lukather declares the operation a success. At least he has hands that inhabit normal living. But the pre-owned hands do not respond to Stapleton's brain. They cannot discern black keys from white. In fact, both hands seem to have a brain of their own, completely taking control of the pianist's psyche. In reality, it suggests the high-strung artist had some prior mental and emotional issues.

More thriller than horror, if the title or its miss-categorized genre does not explain the premise, the first fifteen minutes will. Then settle in for the less-than-thrilling outcome. Distributed by Allied Artists Pictures—uh-oh!—it is a routine attempt to bamboozle an audience, preferably at a drive-in. The best part of this one-hundred-seventy-grand film may be the marvelous opening and subsequent scenes by photographer Henry Cronjager, Jr. The piano concert music score throughout by Richard LaSalle is appropriately used. One may spot some familiar television faces but it may be difficult to put a name to them. Also unknown at the time is Sally Kellerman, whose film fame was only slightly proportionately longer than her script, here. There are solid, sensitive performances by the three leads, however. If it were possible at the time, this movie might have gone straight to DVD.

In Stapleton's distress, the blame lies entirely with the surgeon. His older sister, Joan Harvey, is of the same mind. She hysterically believes the surgeon wanted personal glory for doing hand transplants. Talk to the hand! Her over-the-top performance during this scene made me wish I could be transplanted to another room. One expects a murder rampage will work its way into the film's eighty-five minutes. Hands-downs, this is the main reason for its theatrical release. No real point going into detail about how or who, but know that Stapleton's script calls for him to kill—accidentally or on purpose—repeatedly thanks to those clunky criminal mind hands. The violence is only alluded to with any gore unnecessary since most victims expired by hand. He sets his sights on the doctor who assisted in the surgery and presumably will get around to the rest of the medical staff in due course if he survives the film.

The ending is what one would expect. We find Stapleton in a vacant, echoing concert hall as Harvey and Lukather arrive and spot his latest victim. After a few disparaging remarks, Stapleton begins pounding on the keyboard—something he never excelled at before—proving that his future may likely include boxing.

THE BRAIN THAT WOULDN’T DIE (1962)

Modern commentators amazingly may suggest—in the unrestricted freedom of hindsight—that this film has deeper meanings than what appears on the surface. Yes, it is deep. About ankle-deep. This is bottom-of-the-barrel filmmaking, yet this preposterous result has garnered almost more attention than The Longest Day. William Castle’s thumbprints are assumed on each film's canister yet he did not produce it. In this case, imitation is the lowest form of flattery. This decapitated budget disaster was produced by Rex Carlton and Mort Landberg with direction by Joseph Green, who co-wrote the story with Carlton. Though completed in 1959, this science fiction horror double feature was theatrically released with an inane score three years later by American International Pictures. Europe’s salacious eighty-one-minute version includes gratuitous “naughty bits” with no benefit to a bizarre screenplay. This hardly unknown, seventy-minute version is still a good ten minutes too long.

Television stalwart, Jason (Herb) Evers, in his first leading film role, plays the obligatory mad surgeon who has invented a serum to keep human body parts alive. Mary Shelley was way ahead of him. He and his fianceé, Virginia Leith, are cruising to his country estate in her Mercury convertible. As any insane person might do, his speed increases to a point where the land barge has little chance of negotiating the downhill curves. The cheap, oft-used mounting of a camera on the front bumper’s corner fakes a sense of high speed. One can expect a poorly edited crash at any moment. The three-second, decades-old stock sound effect of screeching tires and metal crunching is used. There is a quick edit of Evers’ silently screaming in horror as the camera lens rapidly rotates. He then perfectly rolls down an embankment (whee!) to find the car exactly where it was positioned. It is a clean decapitation of Leith. Well, I think her head simply popped off. Instinctively, Evers grabs her head thinking he could probably do something with that later.

In his estate’s basement laboratory, Evers keeps Leith’s head wired and tubed for days with an added pair of stylish headphones. The effect of her head on a tray is well done, convincing in a gullible way. Her new existence is sheer agony. Her nose itches. He ignores her pleas. Leith brings a new definition to brain power as she instigates a kinship with an insidious mutant by telepathy—Evers’ early experiment gone awry. It is one of the worst makeup attempts in cinema. I think Evers’ surgery has to garner the blame. One eye is positioned forty-five degrees opposite the other with a head shape that can best be described as a descendant of the Conehead family from the original Saturday Night Live skits. A reference photo of any human may have helped. The mutant’s first sounds of grunting or vomiting are pretty funny. If only he had also farted.

Evers, now with the option of taking Leith’s figure to a whole new level, hunts for a body specimen at a sleazy burlesque club, and a beauty contest, and lusts after girls who “randomly walk cul de sacs.” He settles on a former girlfriend—now a “figure” model—a face reminiscent of Elizabeth Taylor from certain angles. Her hair hides a hideous facial scar from a male attacker. Understandably, she is turned off by men. She can add one more to her list as he drugs her and takes her to his country estate's lab.

Given the ridiculous concept of this film and her lack of body language, Leith's alto voice acting is well done as the head of the table. But Evers has had enough of her constant yapping and puts tape over her mouth. This may work at home but is never successful at stopping telepathy. It is pretty ghastly when Mr. Mutant first tears an arm from a lab assistant and then takes a bite out of Evers' neck, spewing blood—and then some—from his carotid artery. The director, wondering how to possibly end this debacle, sets fire to the lab, as one would expect. Leith ends the film with cryptic nonsense, “I told you to let me die.”

Note: This project ended Virginia Leith’s film career—perhaps out of total embarrassment. Understandably, she refused to return for some post-production recording, so her voice had to be dubbed here and there. The drive to the country estate is the first time her voice is obviously dubbed with a higher vocal register complete with a southern accent—most frequently used is an out-of-place laugh. Actress Doris Brent, the nurse at the beginning of the film, did the honors.

BEAST FROM HAUNTED CAVE (1959)

Right up front, the producers acknowledge their gratitude to South Dakota for their cooperation in making this film (only for the extended television print). Specifically, the use of their snow. No Hollywood fake snow in this one. The random graphics splashing on the screen are typical of the era. These circles look more like Reese's Cup silhouettes, however, as the credits are displayed in a non-traditional arrangement. The film will eliminate seventy-five minutes from your life. Double-billed with The Wasp Woman, many Dakotans may have been expecting another “comedy” from this grammatically challenged “Tonto-esque” titled film. But many probably came away skittish about hitting "plenty big slopes" given the spooky creature. The slow-burn film, produced by Gene Corman, Roger’s kid brother, has the Corman touches. But accolades are due for being primarily a heist film with the science-fiction premise almost the film's sidebar. Never mind the salacious, misleading poster, designed to attract an audience.

A Corman always pads their films and there is plenty of ski footage, supported with misplaced music. Alexander Laszlo’s recycled score, in part, is from other Corman movies. From a Hammond organ to soap opera strings to a cool jazz segment (see note below), the music is certainly disjointed. And totally expected. The film was distributed by Filmgroup—the Corman boys—for Allied Artists Pictures. Charles Griffith’s script of clipped and witty banter, however unlikely, is quite suitable for the drive-in crowd. And the “special effect beast” is handled with restraint relying mostly on ominous shadows, a claw, and a prehistoric scream that sounds like someone tightening their vocal cords while inhaling a high pitch for a screeching effect. Lessening the embarrassment are undefined facial features as it supernaturally floats about, sometimes superimposed in the corner of the screen. After a decade of low-budget, paper mache science fiction “monsters” this one relies a bit more on imagination. The squeamish element is that the beast spins its live victims in a web-like cocoon, placing them in various locations until it can return for the kill. Certainly more creepy than Roger’s outcome with Susan Cabot’s laughable wasp head.

The handsome Michael Forest is undeniably the most familiar face in the film. His long list of television appearances allowed him a great deal of notoriety and variety. He and his four co-stars were Corman regulars who account for themselves in a professional manner. Forest is the level-headed element in this film, a ski instructor/guide in snowy Deadwood. In a turtleneck sweater, a prop pipe with his own cabin, he seems too classy, too perfect, to be in this film. He is persuaded to guide a group of four on a multi-day cross-country ski tour to his cabin. The group’s leader, Frank Wolff, has in his possession an unappreciated girlfriend, Sheila Noonan, a free spirit with sarcastic wit, a drinking problem, and insights into her life's bad decisions. She also slurs her lines as if her mouth is actually frozen in the authentic weather. This is Noonan’s second of four roles in her nearly one-year film career. She tries to thaw “Mr. Perfect” who keeps her flirting at arm’s length for a while. Noonan wants out of her bottomless pit and reveals her three skiing companions are gangsters. The other gang members consist of Wally Campo, a nutty little guy, and Richard Sinatra, Francis Albert's real-life cousin. 

Prior to the ski tour, the thieves set off a diversionary explosion in an abandoned cave as cover for stealing gold bars from the town’s bank vault. Forest becomes a hostage in order to get the gang close to their escape plane when it arrives. How the pilot could possibly land among thick evergreens and yard-deep powder is not clearly spelled out. But nothing goes as planned thanks to that stringy spider-beast awakened by the "heap big cave blast." Cocooned bodies are suspended in various locations with the victims helplessly staring out into space. The beast’s lair provides temporary blizzard shelter for the remaining cast. Emphasis on temporary. Chaotic editing makes for a confusing climax in which a final gangster fires two flare guns, giving “haunted beast plenty big sunburn.” 

Note: The extended print for television broadcasts is responsible for ten minutes of extra footage to pad the film. One of those scenes happens before the opening credit roll, focusing on a cutting-edge Polaroid Land Camera. Most viewers were glued at this point. The two guys in a 1960 Corvair station wagon (top image) are casing the town's bank. One will note jazzy saxophone caper music. The brief music snippet may remind one today, humorously, of the chase music later expertly written for the famous cat and mouse chase sequence in the film “Bullitt.” But this is Laszlo, not Lalo. I digress. In the background is a white 1961 Ford Thunderbird. For a film released in October 1959, both vehicles seem a bigger mystery than a cave beast ever existing. As the original length version indicates, the only mode of transportation for the gang is a 1959 Ford. 

I BURY THE LIVING (1958)

Albert Band brings his long list of B-movie credits into play for this United Artists macabre tale about a man who thinks he may be affecting people’s lives by using push pins. I note the excellent cinematography effects by Frederick Gately, below. Still, the score by the award-winning composer, Gerald Fried, sets the stage for a spooky tale using a harpsichord, a frantic tempo, and dissonant chords. The movie seems like an extended episode of television’s, Night Gallery. The viewer is sucked in right from the opening credits with a statement suggesting that some men (mankind) have the ability of great mental power over events—the old “man as God” thing—and that the dead are simply biding their time underground until released back into the unemployment lines. Do not be misled by the studio's poster. There is nothing scary about this film. It is spooky, ghost-believing science fiction at best. As is typical of low-budget “horror” movies, the ending is disappointing with the outcome as expected. It may have, however, elicited some talk around the office water cooler in the era. 

Richard Boone is appointed chairman of a committee that oversees a large cemetery. His acting skill shows restraint and does not go overboard with the character’s emotions. He is quite creditable and, as usual, improves this film. A thirty-four-year-old Theodore Bikel, the caretaker, does his best old man routine with a Scottish accent in one of the more obvious wigs from makeup artist, Jack Pierce, who may have lost interest in the film at some point. Bikel is not that convincing but he had a nice limp going there for a while.

Black pins mark the filled graves on a map resembling a Picasso sketch of the cemetery grounds. The white pins indicate unoccupied graves. Boone accidentally places two black pins where they should not be and both persons mysteriously die in an automobile accident—surely a coincidence. But it repeatedly happens either through experimentation or challenges from doubters. Boone believes he is cursed and he falls helplessly into a deep depression. 

The body count is up to seven from Boone’s pin-pushing spree. In an epiphany, he decides that if black pins give him the power of death, white pins might give him the power of life. He replaces all of the black pins with white pins. He discovers that certain graves have been dug but no casket in the plots. If you believe in this preposterous scheme, the climactic finish may spoil it. Hokum has an equally powerful force over people. I should mention that Bickel’s character is nuts.

Note: Some cinematography effects are artistically well done by Gately. The map causes much distress for Boone and near the climax appears to glow, consuming  Boone. At one point, after being struck by Bikel, an overhead light swings back and forth casting light and shadows across the pins in the map creating a dizzying optical illusion. Another has Boone’s silhouette superimposed on the map as an animated graphic illustration, eliciting an out-of-body experience for him. Watching this film may have the same effect.