A few months
after Warner Brothers released The
Strange Case of Dr Rx, they gave audiences a better murder-mystery
programmer with The Hidden Hand
(1942), aided by dense Agatha
Christie-style plotting and an elaborate game being played by its protagonist
that lets the viewer in on the fun from the start. The 1934 stage play source Invitation to a Murder by Rufus King
hints at the playful tone intended, and under director Benjamin Stoloff the
workmanlike cast facilitate the step-by-step machinations without any distractingly
bad performances cluttering its path.
Indeed, the
film creates a good showcase for the eerie screen persona of Milton Parsons, a busy
character actor of cadaverous build, eccentric manner and a beguilingly soothing
voice reminiscent of Boris Karloff. Here, he plays escaped convict John
Channing who returns to the family home assisted in his break-out by his sister
Lorinda (Cecil Cunningham) who wants him to help her in a ruthless plan to test
her avaricious relatives. She knows the unfeeling bunch are circling for her
inheritance, so she has John pose as her butler while setting off a chain of
events designed to have them cross and double-cross each other under her remote
puppetry.
The two greedy
couples are Walter and Rita (Roland Drew and Julie Bishop) plus Horace and
Estelle (Tom Stevenson and Ruth Ford). Coincidentally, Ford was herself
embroiled in a real-life familial inheritance squabble over the estate of her
wealthy mother-in-law. By the time of her own death at 98 in 2009, Ford had
amassed a personal wealth of ten million dollars and bequeathed the whole estate
to her butler, snubbing her daughter and grand-children.
To balance
the unapologetic avarice within her family, there is the goodness of Mary Winfield,
Lorinda’s secretary, whom she intends to make her beneficiary, owing to her selfless
loyalty and being the daughter of a past almost-husband of Lorinda. Mary’s similarly
virtuous fiancĂ© is also Lorinda’s attorney Peter Thorne played by Craig Stevens
who later achieved TV fame as private eye Peter
Gunn. Together they embody almost the only wholesome characters in the
film, other than Willie Best’s chauffeur Eustis, another in his dispiriting
gallery of cowardly comic relief subservient black employees, last seen in my
review of The Strange Case of Dr Rx.
Eustis may also be on hand to represent an everyman fear reaction to the
murders and menace since the grasping family members are too greedy to ever be
scared by the unfolding horror.
To crank up
the greed incentive amongst her clan, Lorinda drops in various clues and
temptations. John leaves a paper on the stairs to be found by their Chinese
cook Mallo (Kam Tong) describing the combination of the clock hands needed to release
the key to a treasure chest Lorinda has secreted in the house. She also enlists
her corrupt doctor nephew Lawrence (Frank Wilcox) to drug her with a suspended
animation serum and provide a full burial ceremony before reviving her with an
antidote, in return for a quarter of her estate. Having wound up the mechanism,
Lorinda’s macabre mind relishes the impending feeding frenzy: “You know, it gives
me a thrill to know I’m going to die tonight”. The thread of Channing insanity
clearly doesn’t just run through the male line.
Along the
way to Lorinda’s staged death, she fakes nearly becoming victim to a falling
plant-pot and has her beloved raven Mr Poe poisoned (a little name-check for
writer Edgar Allen Poe’s titular haunting bird). After she is apparently killed
the same way, Lawrence opts to let his aunt stay dead since he benefits anyway,
not realising she was testing him as well. The crafty matriarch seems to have
considered every eventuality – except for John’s coveting of Mary. “So lovely,
so delicate, so dainty” he drools.
A recorded
disc of Lorinda reading out her will allocation then causes the relatives to
form an uneasy alliance in pursuit of the remaining quarter of her inheritance.
The pacing increases and a body count is entertainingly racked up: the nurse is
strangled by John and Mallo becomes the first victim of a trap-door activated
by the clock combination that sends each one plummeting into the flowing river
under the house. The bulldog-faced cops arrive as Lorinda emerges not only as a
frighteningly effective planner but also a capable murderess in person,
shooting her traitorous nephew in cold blood. She is undone though by the
weakness of her genuine care for Mary, which forces her to reveal she is still
alive when Mary almost triggers the trap-door to her own doom. It’s hard to
argue with her defence to the cops that “…all I did was rid the world of a few
abnormals”, even though she is evidently a pretty lethal one herself.
The Hidden Hand is a spirited B-movie of undemanding
fun that wears its scheming silliness with confidence.
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