The Devil's Hand (1961) — Triskaidekafiles

THE DEVIL’S HAND

WRITER: Screenplay by Jo Heims

DIRECTOR: William J. Hole, Hr.

STARRING: Linda Christian as Bianca Milan

Robert Alda as Rick Turner

Ariadna Welter as Donna Trent

Neil Hamilton as Francis Lamont

QUICK CUT: A man collects dolls and falls for a woman who intrdocues him to her strange group of friends.

THE MORGUE

Rick - A nice guy, in love with his gal, but he is easily led astray by a pretty face, and devil cultists.

Donna - Rick's long suffering girlfriend who wants him to settle down with her, and who is also ridiculously trusting, but she loves him.

Bianca - The woman seducing Rick away from Donna, a witch with the power of mind projection, and she looks like the cult's love totem. She's a seductress, she's scheming, she's clever.

Frank Lamont - The cult leader, and dollmaker, who loves playing the innocent and manipulating people to do his bidding.

TRISK ANALYSIS: Welcome back, Triskelions! November is here, and I am kicking off a month of reviews for a trio of movies that when I heard about them, all sounded vaguely similar, but because I am bad at this, will probably all turn out to have absolutely nothing in common! Let's see how this all goes and get things rolling with this obscure little 60s movie, The Devil's Hand!

The movie starts by introducing us to our lead, Rick, as he meets his girlfriend while on lunch break, and she nudges him about proposing. We learn this is something she's been doing for awhile now.

But he's been avoiding commitment, and one might argue it's because of the woman who visits him in spectral visions every night.

Rick goes for a walk after another visitation, and the movie does some noir style narration that it then proceeds to never use again.

But his late night constitutional leads him to a small shop, with a doll in the window that looks exactly like his dream woman.

The next day, he takes Donna to the shop, showing her the doll, and they go inside to speak to the owner. Francis Lamont calls Rick by name, and says they met when he came by with a photo of the woman, Bianca, to commission the doll being made.

Rick is, quite understandably! confused as shit. Donna just brushes it aside, saying there must be some logical explanation, maybe some friends playing a prank.

But then she spies on a shelf another doll, and this one looks exactly like Donna herself. She assumes this was ALL some elaborate ruse for Rick to surprise her with a gift.

Ah yes, a fine choice, I call that the Lamont Configuration

Francis explains that doll is NOT for sale, and Rick isn't interested in Bianca's doll, so they leave the store, and the toymaker will send the other along to its facesake.

Once they leave, Lamont heads into the back room, where there are curtains, an altar, and a man sitting there playing bongos. So, the normal back room of most shops.

As the unhappy couple leave, Donna is suddenly struck with a pain in her chest, and Rick hurries her to the hospital. This might be because Lamont just rammed a giant pin through her doll and stuck it to the wall of his shop like he's a voodoo priest.

I would now like to call this meeting of the Bongo and Doll Lovers Club to order.

The doctors admit Donna, she has some sudden heart condition, and she stays there to rest up. Rick heads to his apartment, and is once again visited by the ghost of girlfriends yet to come.

She tells him if he wants answers, all he has to do is bring her the doll, at the address on the back of the photograph.

Rick visits Donna in the hospital the following day, and before entering the room, he tosses something away. I *swear* he was smoking in the hospital. Ahh, the 60s.

He tells her about the latest vision, and how if he wants answers, he must go see her. Donna is hesitant, but understands, and sends him off with her cautious blessing.

So Rick goes back to Lamont's, and asks to see the name on the back of the reference photo for Donna's doll, hoping to get some insights.

But, Lamont says the owner collected the doll and photo earlier that day. But wait, hold on a second...

Since he can't do that, he collects Bianca's doll instead, and delivers it to her, discovering that much like Santa Claus and talking M&Ms, the woman of his literal dreams, does exist.

They have a few drinks and dinner, and Bianca explains she has the ability to project her mind, which she has been using to seduce Rick. We don't really know why, or how she picked Rick, or...anything really. Who needs plot details??

She offers to give Rick a demonstration, pulls out a doll that looks like him that she uses as a focus, and says she can bridge any distance between them.

Including the mere two feet between us now.

Rick watches as the captivating woman dances in front of him, then she taps him on the shoulder from behind. It's a solid enough demonstration, and pulled off very well for this sort of movie, and from the 60s.

And Rick's response says everything you need to know, and it's such a great line, "You're evil...but beautiful!" Rick knows he's gonna get burned, but can't turn away, like a moth drawn to flame.

But now it's time for Bianca to take Rick back to Lamont's and introduce him to the rest of the devil cult that worships Gamba, as they are about to sacrifice someone to him. ...Wait what?

I'm sorry, but this relationship is moving too fast for me.

There they go walking past the doll of Donna again!!

The sacrifice involves some rando being laid on a table, as a wheel of Damocles hangs over her. The wheel is spun, and when it comes down, one of the blades is revealed to be fake. It's a random chance, and Gamba has accepted the sacrifice, but spared her life. Gamba is pleased. Now get me a Gamba Juice.

Ah yes, a tale as old as time; boy dreams of girl, boy meets girl, girl takes boy home to join her devil worshipping cult.

But anyways, tonight's victim is spared, and then Lamont performs the rites to induct Rick into the group. I am just in awe with how quickly he signs up.

"Well gosh, I know we just met, and I've been here for all of five minutes, but sure, I'll join you devil worshipping human sacrificing folks! This is fine!"

Then we get a montage of Rick's fortunes changing, and there's some slow corruption here that genuinely works, but this is being done in reverse. You lure him in with good stuff THEN spring the darkness on him after he can't say no. BUT YOU STARTED WITH DEVIL CULT.

Or at least show Rick's dark side justifying him leaping at this. But, that would make him far less of a sympathetic character.

So we eventually come up to Lamont deciding it is time for Rick to be hit with the 'loyalty test'. He runs into one of the cultists, drunk as a skunk, and he takes her home to help her sober up.

The woman wishes she could get her soul back, and Rick acts shocked, they made an agreement! He won't turn her in...will he?? And yes. Yes he wil.

Rick sends her on her way, and with Bianca heads to Lamont's shop, and that's when he finds out this was his final test of loyalty. Oh if only the movie didn't tell us this five minutes ago, it would have been an effective moment.

But he FINALLY takes notice of the doll of his girlfriend STABBED TO THE WALL right in front of him.

Rick's about to pull the pin, but he hears the others returning. He and Bianca leave, and go their separate ways.

Up until this point, he has not visited Donna since joining the cult, but now he has to go see her, and she has yet to get any better.

And of course it's hilarious that this is the straw that broke the cultist's back. "Whoa whoa whoa, I am down for killing people, and praying to NotSatan, but you will NOT stab my girlfriend's likeness to the wall! That is going too far!"

And I hope y'all read that in Jimmy Stewart's voice.

Bianca and Frank decide it's time to get rid of Donna, but fortunately for her, Rick sneaks into the store and moves the pin so instead of going through the doll, it's the old trick of stabbing a sword under your armpit, so the cultists will be none the wiser.

Lamont arrives to the store to pick up a few things, and Rick ducks into the lair. He tries to find a place to hide, causes a ruckus, and rips down some curtains to find the backdoor. Yeah, that won't arouse suspicion.

Fortunately, there's been a squirrely cult member whom we will later learn is a reporter trying to bust the cult, and he left some notes behind, taking suspicion off Rick. This is a woefully underdeveloped plot, that could really have been something in another movie.

Naturally, Donna's rapid recovery does not go unnoticed though, and Lamont summons a meeting of the cult for their next sacrifice. Gosh, I wonder who it could be.

This is where we get the only real payoff of the journalist though, as we have a tense moment where Lamont goes on about how there is a traitor among us, and Rick thinks it's him. Again, if this was more built up, it would feel more threatening, or if they hadn't already tipped their hand.

Anyways, the meeting breaks up to reconvene at midnight where all shall be revealed because one of them will not be there.

In the meantime, Lamont stabs the journalist's doll, and makes him crash his car. Look, if your red herring doesn't even have a NAME, it kinda fails immediately.

No sir, I didn't catch you playing with your dolls again.

So the group breaks up once AGAIN after the reveal, but Lamont keeps the journo's sponsor for membership behind, because he too is responsible. And he finally drops the red herring's name here, so there's that.

He shows the sponsor the notes he found, and says how they're not very flattering. YOU ARE A DEVIL CULT WHO SACRIFICES PEOPLE. And then he is presumably killed off screen.

Donna leaves the hospital, the cultists are immediately informed since they planned on killing her, and upon their next meeting, gasp surprise they bring out Donna to lay under the wheel of Damocles.

Rick is brought up to spin the wheel to randomise the sword, sweating thinking that now he knows if she dies, it will be by his indirect hand.

He tries to foist some of the blame onto Bianca, and blurts out this is no choice, they're all MURDERERS! How could you betray me?? I TRUSTED YOU, DEVIL CULTISTS!!

A fight breaks out, one of the braziers of flames gets knocked over, and the entire place goes up in smoke, including the dolls. Oh, and Frank falls victim to his own wheel of death when he gets pushed under it.

Rick grabs Donna and they both run out, and ride off into the sunrise to live happily ever after, as everyone else burns. But Bianca lives on.

TRISK ASSESSMENT

Video: Oof. Even by the standards of these 50 packs, this is a bit rough. The brightness shifts, there are weird jumps, and it gets real soft at times. I saw this is available online in a few places, and they looked a little better, at least.

Audio: It's all right, but feels a bit weak at times. But nothing is unintelligible.

Sound Bite: "You're evil...but beautiful!"

Body Count: It takes a looong time, and even though most of them are in flames at the very end, I can't argue with percentage.

1 - 56! minutes in, and the undercover reporter is voodoo'd off the road.

2 - Lindell's sponsor is supposedly killed next.

3 - Frank gets stabbed by his own wheel

4 - Most of the cult goes up in flames, most likely.

Best Corpse: Frank got what was coming to him

Blood Type - F: There's really no blood at all here. The only notable 'effect' is the dolls, which are prevalent and are well enough done.

Drink Up! every time they play the bongos.

Movie Review: I know I ragged on this movie a lot, and I'll come back around to it, but I do geuinely love the ideas here. This is a solid plot, they just go about it in some not so great ways. At only 70 minutes, there was definitely room to expand on stuff, as I said a few times. And the whole "Welp, guess I'm a Satanist now!" is absurdly sudden. But it's well shot, the performances are nice, it just needed a lot more meat on the bones. Three out of five creepy dolls.

Entertainment Value: There's not a lot going on to really be amused by, but the again, instant sign up to a devil cult is a blast, and watching Rick just shrug and go with it is genuinely great. It's got that 60s charm and camp all rolled up in one, and it's all right on that level. Three out of five Gamba juices.