THE BEAST WITH FIVE FINGERS (1946)

A disembodied hand keeps popping up in a creepy mansion peopled with unlikeable characters. This movie plays out like an overlong Twilight Zone episode rather than a full-blooded horror movie, but it *is* a different kind of film for its era. The mix of characters is potentially interesting, but only Peter Lorre really brings the film to life. At the center of the story is Victor Francen, a pianist with a paralyzed arm who lives in an Italian town; he's cared for by pretty nurse Andrea King, with whom he's fallen in love. She, however, has the hots for the disreputable con man Robert Alda, who has gotten into Francen's good graces by writing one-handed arrangements of music so he can continue playing the piano. Lorre is Francen's creepy secretary, who spends his free time perusing a library full of occult books. King wants to leave with Alda, but Lorre rats her out to Francen, who then tries to strangle Lorre. That night, Francen dies in an accidental fall and some shifty relatives descend, trying to grab the house from King (the legal heir) and the books from Lorre. Soon it's discovered that the corpse's hand has been severed; hand sightings, eerie music, and a death follow. The scenes of the hand are quite good, except for the unfortunate coincidence that it looks rather like the Thing in The Addams Family TV series, which caused me to chuckle a few times. There are two trick "punch-line" endings. [TCM]