The Beast with Five Fingers
During the golden age of Hollywood, one studio held the monopoly on horror films. That studio was Universal, who between the 1920s and the 1950s released a steady stream of films featuring some of the most popular and iconic monsters in movie history. Seeing the success Universal was having with their horror offerings, other studios would occasionally take a shot at trying to grab some of the horror going audience. Warner Brothers’ 1946 horror/mystery film “The Beast with Five Fingers” was that studio’s only attempt at anything in the horror genre during the entire 1940s. Headed by a cast that included Robert Alda, Andrea King, and Peter Lorre—in this last film for the studio—“The Beast with Five Fingers” is an adaptation of the short story of the same name by W.F. Harvey. I don’t know if there’s any real connection between “The Beast with Five Fingers” and “The Hands of Orlac,” but one can’t help but wonder if the latter inspired the former ever so slightly—both sto