The Devil's Hand

The Devil's Hand
Directed by William J. Hole Jr.
Produced by Alvin K. Bubis
Rex Carlton
Written by Jo Heims (screenplay)
Starring Robert Alda
Linda Christian
Ariadna Welter
Neil Hamilton
Gere Craft
Music by Allyn Ferguson
Michael Terr
Cinematography Meredith M. Nicholson
Edited by Howard Epstein
Distributed by Crown International Pictures
Release date
  • 1961 (1961)
Running time
 71 minutes
Country United States
Language English

The Devil's Hand (aka Witchcraft, The Naked Goddess, Devil's Doll and Live to Love) is an independently-produced, American black-and-white horror film. It was produced by Alvin K, Bublis and directed by William J. Hole Jr. The film was made in 1959 by Rex Carlton Productions but not distributed by Crown International Pictures until 1961. It deals with the activities of Los Angelenos who are members of a cult that worships Gamba, the Great Devil God.

Plot

Rick Turner (Robert Alda) has a problem. He can't sleep, awakening night after night to see visions of a beautiful woman in a negligee, dancing in the clouds. The visions disturb him. One night he gets up, dresses, goes walking and is drawn to a doll shop. In the window he sees a doll that is the exact image of the woman in his visions. He takes his girlfriend Donna Trent (Ariadna Welter) there the next day. To his surprise the doll shop owner, Frank Lamont (Neil Hamilton), not only knows his name but insists that he ordered the doll, a likeness of Bianca Milan (Linda Christian), a woman Rick has never met.

Donna finds a doll that looks just like her. Frank refuses to sell it, though, saying that the likeness is only coincidental. As Rick and Donna leave the shop, he takes it into his oddly-decorated back room - curtains, floor lamps, cushions, open-flame lamps, an altar, a statute of the Buddha - and stabs the Donna doll with a long pin. Donna immediately collapses in pain. Rick takes her to the hospital. A doctor (Roy Wright) tells him that she's had a "spasm of the heart" and needs complete bed rest.

Rick has another vision of Bianca. He goes to the hospital to visit Donna and says he's going to get the Bianca doll and deliver it to her "to get this thing off my back." Rick returns to the doll shop and Frank hands over the Bianca doll, now saying that Rick paid for it in advance. Still perplexed, Rick goes to Bianca's luxurious apartment and is immediately entranced by her beauty. She explains that his visions are a "simple process of thought projection or thought transference," which she learned as a member of the cult of Gamba, the Great Devil God. She insists that Rick accompany her, right then, to a cult meeting so he can be inducted. The meeting is held in the oddly-decorated room at the doll shop, for Frank is the High Executioner of the Gamba cult.

At the ceremony, the cultists, most of whom are white and clad in middleclass business dress, sit on the cushions, swaying to the beat of bongo drums played by a black man. The woman of the only black couple in the cult dances. Bianca explains that the ceremony is a human sacrifice. The subject is laid on the altar and, on the ceiling, a wheel with knives on it is spun. As it lowers, Gamba decides if the sacrifice will live or die. Frank goes behind the lectern and steps on a foot pedal, making it unclear whether he or Gamba controls the wheel. The knife blade that strikes the sacrifice is rubber. She survives unhurt. A man in the cult covertly snaps a photo of the event.

Rick immediately joins the cult, and with Bianca always by his side, his luck changes, Having earlier quit his job, he now finds himself winning bets on horse races and making a killing on the stock market. But Donna sends him a note. She's still in the hospital and wonders why she hasn't seen him in weeks.

That night, a drunken blonde cultist (Jeanne Carmen) stops Rick on the sidewalk. They go up to his apartment, where she talks about wanting to leave the cult. Rick throws her out for speaking badly of it. When he tells Bianca at the doll shop that he's met a disloyal member of the cult, Frank and the blonde walk into the room and Rick realizes that she was sent to test him. He is now accepted as a full member of the Gamba cult.

In the doll shop, Rick spots the Donna doll, pinned to the wall through the heart, but he can't remove the pin without being seen. Instead, he goes to the hospital and tells Donna that she'll be completely cured at midnight that night. As he leaves, Donna's new nurse, Mary (Gere Craft), a cultist, is working at a desk by Donna's door.

Rick returns to the doll shop shortly before midnight and removes the pin. But before he can leave, he hears Frank arriving. Rick flees into the cult room and out through the back door. Frank doesn't know who has been there, but he finds a note on the floor, accidentally dropped by the man with the hidden camera, a reporter who has infiltrated the cult.

Donna completely recovers and is discharged from the hospital. Mary calls Bianca to report the sudden turn of events. When Rick arrives at Bianca's apartment, she tells him that they have to attend an emergency meeting of the cult at 10:30 that night. During the meeting, Frank says that one of them is an "intruder" and will die at midnight, then adjourns the meeting until 12:30 am. At the stroke of midnight, Frank grabs the reporter's doll and jams a pin through its head. The reporter, who's driving, immediately screams and clutches his forehead. His car plunges down a hillside and as Frank burns the doll in an open lamp, the car wreckage bursts into flame.

Bianca discovers that the Donna doll has been tampered with and suspects Rick. At the 12:30 meeting, Frank announces that Rick's loyalty is to be tested, and Donna is brought in as a sacrifice. Frank makes Rick spin the wheel, but as it drops, Rick pulls Donna off the altar, saving her life. A fight breaks out. Frank is killed when the wheel falls on him. The room goes up in flames. Rick and Donna escape. Bianca picks up her doll. Everyone else apparently dies.

With fire department sirens wailing, Rick and Donna, a romantic pair again, drive away. "That's the end to it," says Rick. Then Bianca, once again among the clouds, smiles and says, "That's what he thinks!" and the film ends.

Cast

Production

The producer of the film is listed in the opening credits as Alvin K. Bublis. Jack Miles was the executive producer. Rick Newberry, Pierre Groleau, Harris Gilbert, and Dave Harney are all listed as associate producers.[1]

Rex Carlton Productions began work on The Devil's Hand in mid-January 1959, but the movie didn't have its premiere in San Diego, California until 13 September 1961.[2] The film was released on a double-bill with Bloodlust![3] Filming locations included McArthur Park, the storefront used as the doll shop at 2534 West 7th Street, and a building at 5907 West Pico Boulevard used as Belmont Hospital, all in Los Angeles.[4] The movie opened in Mexico on 12 December 1962 and was also released in Venezuela and West Germany.[5]

Production information is scant. Linda Christian said in an interview, "The picture was shot really quickly. They were having financial problems and wanted to get it in the can." She also said, "I don't think everybody got paid. They owed us quite a bit of money. My sister, Ariadna [Welter] was also in the film ... she said later, 'Never again!' to doing a film in America."[6] By the time The Devil's Hand came out, Welter had been in 21 films made in her and her sister's native Mexico.[7]

Soundtrack

The 45 rpm single "Theme from 'The Devil's Hand,'" performed by Baker Harris and the Knightmares, was released on the Chess Records label in July 1961.[8] The song was composed by Allyn Ferguson and Michael Terr.[9] It was not one of the top 100 songs of the year, however.[10]

Reception

The few critics who reviewed The Devil's Hand when it was released panned it. Margaret Harford of The Los Angeles Times called it a "sub-standard horror feature" and wrote that "the plot is absurd and performed in dead earnest." She also wrote that "Miss Christian is certainly an eye-opening lass wearing a flimsy negligee; in fact, she models several flimsy negligees, At no time, however, is she quite as transparent as the plot."[3]

BoxOffice magazine's anonymous reviewer said the film was a "tale of woe not to be dismissed lightly by those audience components known to acclaim and accolade all-out stress on the indelicate in man." The reviewer continued, "the production's overall effect is one of ponderous detail as all concerned strive excessively for gruesomeness" and concluded that "the audience should be regulated to adult participation."[11] The magazine's "Exploitip" for exhibitors to drum up business was to "invite a local woman to sit at a special post-midnight screening, appropriately covered by press, radio and TV."[12]

The actors don't seem to have been happy with the movie, either. In the Christian interview, she said, "I liked my part. It was rather glamorous, but I was disappointed when the script was made into a film because it was so superficial. They changed the emphasis from magic and witchcraft to devil worship."[6] Bryan Senn later noted that "according to co-star Ariadna Welter, Robert Alda 'wasn't too pleased with the results' of this picture." And he agreed with The Los Angeles Times assessment of the physical appearance of Christian, writing that the "only real point of interest in this threadbare obscurity lay in the astounding beauty of its star, Linda Christian ...."[13]

Other more contemporary reviewers have also had little good to say about The Devil's Hand. Phil Hardy said it was "cheaply made" and noted that it "compares distinctly unfavourably" with Hole's The Ghost of Dragstrip Hollow (1959), a film Hardy described as "an inane, virtually plotless mixture of haunted houses, hot-rodders and rock'n'roll".[14] Senn criticized the characterization, saying that the film "offers no depth of character anywhere, ignoring whatever tortured reasons caused these people to seek out this 'devil-god of evil.' (None of the bland characters seem as if they've lost their soul - they don't appear interesting enough to have even had one in the first place - and the coven comes across as nothing more than a rather silly and dull after-hours club)."[15] Bill Warren, reviewing a different film, referred in passing to The Devil's Hand as, "as boring a film as I've seen."[16]

Television Release

The Devil's Hand went to television little more than a year after its theatrical release, being sold in October 1963 by Westhampton Features, a part of Desilu, as part of a 41-title package.[17] Clips from the film were later used in the "Witches" episode of the 26-episode TV program 100 Years of Horror, which first aired on 20 March 1997.[18][19]

Home Release

The Devil's Hand has long been available for home viewing. VCI Home Video released the movie in the USA on VHS in 1997, and it got its first domestic release on DVD by Alpha Video Distributors in 2004. The first release outside the USA was by World Editora in Brazil in 2005. In 2009, GoDigital Media released it in "world-wide all-media" form, and Elea Media released it on DVD in Germany in 2016. Other companies have released it on DVD as well.[20] The DVDs Shiver & Shudder Show in 2002 and The Crown Jewels: America's Oldest Indie Film Company in 2016 both used clips from the movie.[18]

References

  1. ↑ Mill Creek Entertainment, Drive-In Cult Classics 8 Movie Collection, Vol. 2. 2005
  2. ↑ "Filming Locations". American Film Institute.
  3. 1 2 Harford, Margaret (12 January 1962). ""Horror Film Stars Some Old Friends"". The Los Angeles Times. p. A8.
  4. ↑ "Filming Locations". IMDb.com.
  5. ↑ "Release Information". IMDb.com.
  6. 1 2 Parla, Paul; Mitchell, Charles P. (2000). Screen Sirens Scream! Interviews with 20 Actresses from Science Fiction, Horror, Film Noir and Mystery Movies, 1930s to 1960s. McFarland & Co. Inc. p. 42. ISBN 0786407018.
  7. ↑ "Arianda Welter Filmography". IMDb.com.
  8. ↑ "Theme from The Devil's Hand". 45cat.com.
  9. ↑ "Theme from 'The Devil's Hand'". Soundtrack.net.
  10. ↑ "Billboard Hot 100 - 1961". Billboard.com.
  11. ↑ "Review of The Devil's Hand". Boxoffice,com.
  12. ↑ "Review of The Devil's Hand". Boxoffice.com.
  13. ↑ Senn, Bryan (2007). A Year of Fear: A Day-to-Day Guide to 366 Horror Films. Jefferson NC: McFarland & Co. Inc. p. 118. ISBN 9780786431960.
  14. ↑ Hardy, ed., Phil (1986). The Encyclopedia of Horror Movies. NY: Harper & Row. pp. 118, 119. ISBN 0060550503.
  15. ↑ Senn, Bryan (2007). A Year of Fear: A Day-to-Day Guide to 366 Horror Films. Jefferson NC: McFarland & Co. Inc. p. 71. ISBN 9780786431960.
  16. ↑ Warren, Bill (2010). Keep Watching the Skies! American Science Fiction Movies of the Fifties, the 21st Century Edition. Jefferson NC: McFarland & Co. Inc. p. 134. ISBN 9781476666181.
  17. ↑ Heffernan, Kevin (2004). Ghouls, Gimmicks, and Gold: Horror Films and the American Movie Business 1963-1968. Durham NC: Duke University Press. p. 237. ISBN 0822385554.
  18. 1 2 "Movie Connections". IMDb.com.
  19. ↑ "Complete Episode List". The TV Data Base.
  20. ↑ "Company Credits". IMDb.com.
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