The Whip Hand (1951)

Pretty good movie overall. First half was nothing special but it got better as it went along.

This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

This film was the product of two main thoughts; 1) "Lets make a film about Nazi fifth columnists...." and 2) " hang on, let's make the bad guys ex-Nazis who are now Communists instead..." and so a muddled, overly expensive film is born. It would have been bad enough if the second thought had been shortly after the first, but it wasn't; the film had to be re-shot in part, and it shows.This film isn't entirely without merit, but for me the story just doesn't make sense; leave alone the usual business where the bad guys insist on explaining their dark deeds in detail whilst not disposing of the good guys, or taking the opportunity to push the button etc (as seen in countless films ranging from 'The thirty-nine steps' to various Bond outings); here we are expected to believe that one of the main bad guys has comparatively recently been the subject of an exposé in a national magazine, but, er, this didn't immediately alert the bad guys when the writer turns up. Even though they knew all about it.Oh, and while we're at it, you might notice that the good guy gets hit on the head twice, but in exactly the same place each time. What are the chances of that...? Quite high if you are trying to cobble a film together without having to reshoot the whole thing, as it turns out....Just about worth watching if you have an interest in films of this type.

The man who directed and designed this film, William Cameron Menzies, was one of the great unheralded geniuses in the history of film. More than almost anyone he raised set and production design to the level of art; and his sets for the silent Fairbanks Thief Of Baghdad are still eye-popping. Menzies will probably be best-remembered as production designer of Gone With the Wind, a film he largely molded visually, and whose best scenes bear his unmistakable stamp. Alas, Menzies was never a good director, though his films are often interesting to look at. A good example is his 1953 Invaders From Mars. The Whip Hand, though, is just awful; dreadful script, poor acting, no pace; and it doesn't even have the Menzies 'look'. Yet as a period piece it is not without interest. It starts beautifully, in a studio-designed rustic setting (and the best set in the film); and then a rainstorm soaks a vacationing fisherman, who proceeds to go into the local town and ask for help in getting treatment for a head injury he sustained when he fell against a rock. The townfolk turn out to be even harder than the rock he hit his head against. They refuse to be more than perfunctorily friendly (with the exception of a superficially outgoing and jokey Raymond Burr), and are continually contradicting one another. It seems that there are strange doings on a lodge across the lake; and nocturnal visits to the lodge by the doctor, who doesn't want to talk about it. As things turn out, Communists have taken over this Minnesota town and turned it into a center for the study of germ warfare! This movie could have been so good. I was rooting for it all the way; hoping against hope that it would get its act together and finally work,--dramatically, logically, thespically. But it never did. The heavy hand of Howard Hughes had a good deal to do with ruining what slight chance this movie had of being good, as it was originally supposed to be about Nazis, and he decided, as studio chief, that he knew better, so he ordered much of the film re-shot to make the villains Russian agents instead. I'm surprised he didn't put Jane Russell in it as well. Lang, Hitchcock or even Siodmak might have worked wonders with the material. Menzies himself might have done better had his employer showed better taste and judgment. The movie's worth seeing if only for the spectacle of gifted people making asses of themselves both in front of and behind the camera, as there are flashes of real talent here and there.

I was 12 years old when I first learned of this film from reading John Baxters chapter on William Cameron Menzies in his ground breaking book "Science Fiction in The Cinema.' The plot concerning germ warfare and Baxters praise of the film made me want to see it. I later learned from other sources that this film was made from a finished film called THE MAN HE FOUND, about Adolph Hitler being alive and well and living the USA. RKO studio heads did not like the film and ordered a new story written and new footage shot that would use as much footage from THE MAN HE FOUND as possible. This made me want to see it even more. But for years this film eluded me. It never showed up on TV, never shown as part of a Menzies retrospective and never turned up officially on video. It then turned up in the early 1990's late one night on TNT, where I taped it and have watched several times since. While I found the film of some interest, I can certainly say Baxter over praised this film. Its not a bad cold war era espionage thriller, but other than the plot, its nothing special either. It is no doubt the least interesting of Menzies fantastic films that he both designed and directed. The court yard where infected guinea pigs wander around like zombies and Otto Waldis's lab are of some visual interest, but over all there isn't much of Menzies design genius evident. To comment on his direction is pointless, because Menzies was never a good director of actors. The reshooting and incorporating old scenes with the new scenes is done fairly well. I noticed where new scenes were inserted, but only because I was looking for them. Note that this film uses a lot of close ups. Otto Waldis as the former Nazi scientist, now working for Russian Communists is a bit hard to take. He praises his new adopted ideology. While its true Nazism and Communism have more in common then with western style democracy, most of the Nazi scientists who went to work for the Commies after the war did so more out of pragmatic and mercenary reasons than ideological ones.

Atrocious. The first 20 minutes or so are competent, establishing the normally reliable premise of a curious stranger stumbling upon a paranoid, hostile town. But "Bad Day At Black Rock" this isn't. At a certain point, the viewer develops the queasy feeling that the producers gave up and said "Oh to hell with it. We don't know what we're doing here. What do you say we just try to wrap things up and go bowling?" Bad performances abound, especially from "leading man" Elliott Reid (sort of a poor man's Farley Granger) who does everything except raise his eyebrow and stroke his chin whenever he puts together another piece of the puzzle. Whoever plays the pitiful old shopkeeper rather embarrassingly seems to break character a couple times. The only person who leaves any kind of favorable impression is Raymond Burr (playing a sleazy local). He hams it up entertainingly, undoubtedly aware of how awful the whole thing is.There is one incredibly weak exchange during a supposedly suspenseful chase towards the end. Reid and his cardboard love interest are trying to escape and he inquires "Are you wearing a watch?" She answers in the affirmative. His matter of fact reply? "Good." I half expected her to fire back with "Yes. Did you comb your hair?" At another point the love interest is in a reflective mode. "I can't believe my brother's a Communist" she states sadly. I want to say that Reid responds with "Yeah, tough break huh?" but it's hard to recall. I had lost a number of brain cells by that point.The last ten minutes of this sorry excuse for a motion picture have to be seen to be believed. Just goes to show that clunkers were indeed made back then as well. Then again it is quite unintentionally funny if one watches it in the right frame of mind.