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Greetings, and welcome to VIEWING THE CLASSICS. Here you'll find capsule reviews of vintage movies from the early days of cinema through the 1970s, with a special emphasis on sci-fi, horror, and mystery movies. Be sure to check out the Pages links, where you can find a Film Index of all my reviews, links to the reviews organized by cast members, directors, and other contributors, and links to my reviews of the films of talented young director Joshua Kennedy.

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Tuesday, January 17, 2017

The Devil's Hand (1961)

Starring Linda Christian, Robert Alda, Ariadna Welter, Neil Hamilton, Gere Craft
Directed by William J. Hole, Jr.
(actor & director credits courtesy IMDB.com)

After being haunted in his dreams by images of a beautiful woman, a man finally tracks her down and agrees to join an evil cult in order to possess her.

I really enjoy this film- it doesn't have a large enough budget to show the supernatural powers the cult and Hamilton, as its leader, possesses, on the level of a movie like Night Of The Demon, but Hamilton and Christian in their performances really sell us on the influence of the cult.  Meredith Nicholson provides some excellent photography, and jazz musician Allyn Ferguson collaborated with Michael Terr on adding unique scoring to the cult's rituals.  It's fun seeing Hamilton, five years before becoming known for the noble Commissioner Gordon in the Batman TV series, giving life to such an evil character.  Intriguingly, the love triangle at the center of the film involves Christian and Welter, who per IMDB, were real-life sisters, although they don't have any meaningful scenes together.

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