The Beast With Five Fingers (1946)**

 The Beast With Five Fingers (1946) is just such a treat to me because Peter Lorre is so unyielding in those creepy vibes. Okay, so I dedicated some years back on the blog to Lorre ( Lorre), and this film was a special double feature with "Mad Love", a film I love to revist in Octobers, doing so earlier this year. Lorre and a disembodied hand going to war is a sight to see. Alda and King courting when King's boss, the wealthy pianist who obsesses over her is drugged and crashed out of his wheelchair down his big mansion stairwell, leaves his estate to her, and Naish's Inspector determining who was responsible for Francen's demise do get plenty of the film's attention, but Lorre's descent into madness absolutely smokes. He's the clear reason this film would find itself into a horror fan's viewing schedule I figure. How Lorre approaches King, pulling out a knife, that obvious intention to act on a murderous impulse unless persuaded otherwise. His voice, the way his English out of his native German tailors the dialogue with this slow, deliberate, very concentrated style fits all the theatrics. You threaten to take his library books (plenty dealing with astrology and life and death) away from him, you get plenty of Lorre lifting that voice and nearly coming unglued. The gradual approach towards King when he feels he must murder her out of fear of his own self-preservation. His seeing the hand that is essentially his guilty conscience (along with a ruse he actually created, not realizing the piano concerto trap he built would actually speed up his own descent), the special effects specifically as a torture of his psyche and how he shows us his breakdown is such hilarious hysteria. Granted, the hysterics perhaps will be considered high camp. Naish as the very animated Italian detective in the small, superstitious village outside the castle estate doesn't skimp on the personality, though. Between the two of them, not even counting Alda as a charismatic con artist who sells American tourists fake artifacts and romances King, the nurse of the deceased, the film is just so much fun. To me at least. And hopefully you would feel the same.