THE HIDDEN HAND
US, 1942, 63 minutes, Black-and-white.
Craig Stevens, Elizabeth Fraser, Julie Bishop, Willie Best, Frank Wilcox, Cecil Cunningham, Ruth Ford, Milton Parsons.
Directed by Ben Stolloff.
A routine supporting feature of 1942 with some mention of enlistments as America became involved in World War II.
The film is a variation on the haunted house and people arriving to listen to a reading of the will. However, there are some more twists which make it a touch more interesting.
At the beginning, an intense looking character escapes from an asylum, shrewdly getting a lift home in the boot of the police car. He meets his sister, a determined woman, wealthy, who wants to give most of her money to her secretary (and the screenplay seems to indicate that she might be the daughter, the old woman having had an engagement with the girl’s father). There are several nephews and their wives and a district nurse.
Lorinda Channing (Cecil Cunningham quite a dominating presence) has organised her brother to act as a butler and then to get rid of the claimants. There is a new cook who has been paid off to poison some of the food. There is also the typical bug-eyed African- American servant, this time Willie Best, who has to do the being-frightened routine quite a number of times.
The claimants all arrive, so does the secretary who has had a holiday, all expenses paid by Lorinda. The mad brother does his performance as the butler. The plan is that Lorinda will take a potion that renders her lifeless for some time then take the antidote, wanting people to show their true colours after her death. However, the doctor is ambitious and supplies the potion but does not apply the antidote.
There are various deaths, bodies disappearing, a wheel on the wall which opens a trapdoor into the water below – and Lorinda reappears, her having taken the antidote herself. In fact, while the brother does kill off one or two characters, she has been doing the murders herself. But, she becomes a victim to the wheel on the wall and falls to her death.
Fortunately, a young lawyer is also present, in love with the secretary, so happy ending – although it does leave Willie Best turning the wheel, the trapdoor opening, and his hanging on for dear life!
