When a movie has you begging for it to end not even half way through it's pure crap. We've all seen this movie and this characters millions of times, nothing new in it. Don't waste your time.

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

It’s sentimental, ridiculously long and only occasionally funny

Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

It's the summer of 1900 in Italy where crippled and retired concert pianist Victor Francen has a villa. Taking care of him is nurse Andrea King and hanging around is American tourist type Robert Alda, a guy who lives by his wits and is no better than he ought to be. Police inspector J. Carrol Naish bemusedly indulges Alda's penchant for fleecing tourists.Francen dies and his will causes consternation as everything is left to King. That's not good enough for Charles Dingle who married Francen's sister and Francen's closest blood relative John Alvin. But the guy who really goes off the deep end is Francen's secretary and companion Peter Lorre. There's a bit of a hint here that these two might have been an item. It would explain why Lorre is more than upset with being put out. There sure is a nice gay subtext to this plot.Soon afterward there's some one handed piano playing going on which Lorre hears and at least one murder. Francen's fingerprints are found in all kinds of interesting places after he died.The story could have used a bit of tightening up, but Lorre really carries the day playing his usual madman. This was Lorre's last Warner Brothers film and it certainly is his show.Could have been better though.

A wealthy wheelchair-bound pianist (Victor Francen) with a nasty temper is murdered. As the police investigate, more murders occur and soon suspicion falls on the unlikeliest of suspects: the pianist's severed hand!Stories involving disembodied hands that kill people have been around for a long time. I think this is the first such movie made with this theme and, for my money, it's the best. Robert Alda (father of Alan Alda) plays the slightly cynical hero of the film. He does fine except for the romantic stuff with lovely Andrea King. That part of the movie is weak but, to be fair, it almost always was in these types of films. The real stars are the wonderful character actors making up the rest of the cast. Peter Lorre, unsurprisingly, steals every scene with a gripping performance. Any movie with J. Carrol Naish in it is always worth checking out. Venerable Victor Francen does a fantastic job. Charles Dingle is hissable as only he could be. Wonderful atmospheric direction from Robert Florey with a nice screenplay by Curt Siodmak. One of the best horror movies of the '40s NOT made by Universal or RKO. Warner Bros. didn't make many horror movies back in the day but, judging by this film, maybe they should have. Definitely one you will want to see if you're a fan of horror/thriller films from the period.

I would recommend this film for the performances of the leads more than anything. Peter Lorre, Robert Alda and Andrea King all did very well with their parts. Lorre, as Hilary (personal assistant to disabled but famed pianist Francis Ingram, played by Victor Francen), was really tailor made for this type of film, playing a suspicious and even somewhat creepy character. Alda (as a sort of con artist named Conrad Ryder, whose relationship with Ingram I never really did understand) and King (as Ingram's personal nurse Julie) were both much better known for their television roles than for movies, but both did well with their parts.The story revolves around Ingram, his "friendships" (for lack of a better word) with the three aforementioned characters, and others who become suspicious when Ingram dies in an accident - his wheelchair having fallen down a staircase - and leaves his entire estate to Julie. In the midst of some concerns about the will, Ingram's only two living family members show up and challenge the will. The title then begins to make sense, as what is apparently Ingram's disembodied hand begins a murderous rampage.This worked fairly well as a suspense movie, but I wouldn't call it a "horror" movie. I never believed (well, perhaps I had a shade of doubt for a moment, but it didn't last long) that there was really a disembodied hand on the loose. Clearly, there was another explanation. We just had to wait for it to be revealed. It was a decent enough story. There was nothing spectacular about it, but it's certainly not a failure. It featured some pretty decent special effects (for the time) with the disembodied hand, but it made a huge mistake in the last scene, suddenly trying to be funny, which was out of keeping with the entire story up to that point and which actually left me a bit dry. I didn't see the need for that "humourous" ending - which wasn't that funny anyway, and which was entirely out of place. Still, it's a decent enough movie to watch. (5/10)

As one of my friends remarked while we were watching "Beast","I can't tell if I'm watching a good movie...or a bad one." That pretty much sums up this movie for me. Beautifully shot, nice moody sets and lighting, and strong performances from a cast playing mostly unlikeable characters following a drunkard's walk of a plot.Lorre, as usual, is simultaneously fascinating, pathetic, sinister and pitiful. Alda plays a "hero" who is something of a rogue and conman, comes off as "good" only when compared to the greedy heirs who show up after the rich guy dies...and yet the younger heir, though greedy and slimy, is somehow still likable and sympathetic. The nurse/heiress is a standard Barbie doll, cast against her will into the role of "gold-digger" who then decides to embrace it,and also hides important information from the police. And Naish plays a "commisario" with a light touch (almost comic relief,especially at the end) which doesn't quite mesh with the rest of the film. It's a polished, nuanced performance that makes me want to punch him in the face more than once.So the cast and characters make for an odd mix, and the plot starts out as a mystery, moves over into suspense for a bit, and then tries to jump the tracks into horror, only to pull back and tell the audience, "Nah, just kidding" in the last 10 minutes. Siodmak,a fine writer,just couldn't quite make his material cohere in this particular instance.But the film is worth seeing, if only for Lorre's performance and the special effects for the "hand",which work very well in the context of the film.