The Devil's Hand (The Mads)

Film Year:  1961

Genre:  Thriller

Director:  William J. Hole Jr.

Starring:  Robert Alda, Linda Christian, Ariadna Welter, Neil Hamilton, Gere Craft

Special Guest:  Dave Hill

The Movie

The Devil's Hand is the story of Robert Alda having dreams of the lovely Linda Christian, which amount to just imagery of her dancing around in a nighty.  So, of course, he wants to tap that.  Making his dreams even weirder is that he sees a doll resembling the mystery woman in the window of a doll shop, and the doll shop owner (played by Neil Hamilton of TV's Batman) informs Alda that he was the one who ordered it made.  Alda has no recollection of this, but soon he meets the woman of his dreams in real life.  She turns out to be a witch member of a voodoo devil worshiping cult, which the doll shop is a front for.  As Alda falls madly for her spell, he becomes intertwined in the satanic rituals.

Mystery Science Theater 3000 fans might be interested in knowing that The Devil's Hand was a movie that was quickly made for a double feature, in which its co-feature was Bloodlust, which is a film that feels similarly in how it has an engaging premise that it hasn't quite thought out that well.  Apparently The Devil's Hand was shot very fast as the very young distributor Crown International Pictures had little money (Bloodlust and The Devil's Hand were among its first films) and wanted the movie done and making revenue as soon as possible.  Crown was so short on cash that they wound up stiffing some of the actors on their paychecks, including lead actresses and sisters in real life Linda Christian and Ariadna Welter.

It comes as no surprise that the film was filmed in a hurry.  It feels padded to reach a bare minimum for feature film length while actual moments where the plot actually moves are few and far between as the film seemingly contemplates where it should take this nonsense next.  It all too often decides to do something that might seem cool in concept but lackluster in execution, such as a wheel of blades where some are real and some are paper and spinning it to decree that survivors are chosen as true believers of their cause.  This idea falls flat as all the blades look fake and when one strikes it's hard to tell if you're supposed to react to it as if someone got killed or not until the movie tells you.

Credit where credit is due, The Devil's Hand has half an idea here that could make a pretty solid movie.  It doesn't even need to change its cast even, as everyone plays their roles fine with special marks to the sisterly-duo-playing-romantic-rivals Christian and Welter, who I enjoyed in the film quite a lot.  Christian in particular is an excellent femme fatale villain.  There are things here that are promising, such as playing with the voodoo dolls for various effects on characters which make for some effective sequences.  One of the cooler ones involves Neil Hamilton using a doll to have a man wreck his car and then he lights the doll on fire to set it ablaze.  The Devil's Hand never lives up to its best moments, which is too bad because it makes me want to like it.

The Riff

In the pre-show to The Devil's Hand, Frank claimed that while watching it he thought there was no way this movie would work for them.  My response:  Frank, dude, I love ya but you pushed to get Red Zone Cuba on MST3K.  The Devil's Hand is child's play by comparison.  At any rate, the movie was already featured by RiffTrax over a decade ago and had already proven itself to be good fodder, so I don't really see a reason to be apprehensive about this movie.  But Frank had eventually seen the light and admitted it seemed like a "classic Mystery Science Theater type of movie," which it is.  There are some light Leech Woman or Violent Years vibes that this movie gives off, and it does work about as well as its double feature partner Bloodlust (which is one of my favorite MST episodes ever).

And like RiffTrax, the Mads do pretty well with the film.  In fact, they seem to be vibing with RiffTrax pretty hard here because they hit a good number of the same jokes that the other riffing project put forth.  I doubt that the Mads had seen the RiffTrax version because they never really acknowledge its existence throughout the stream (and they likely didn't know that the movie was featured on RiffTrax), so I'm inclined to believe this is all a coincidence.  But if you have the RiffTrax version in your head, the Mads version does seem a bit like an echo.  They mock things like the voodoo bongo player only knowing one tune, the logic of the voodoo doll witchcraft, and even acknowledge the name "William J. Hole Jr."

But there is a bit of fresh material to keep us occupied.  Trace constantly questions the pronunciation of "Gamba" as they tend to switch throughout the film.  Frank is feeling fairly political (which, if you've seen his Twitter, is par for the course for Frank) taking a ton of shots at political figures like Melina Trump and Lauren Boebert.  In addition to that, there are even a few current references that will likely not age well, including Frank referencing the "Feather in My Cap" puzzle that stumped contestants on Wheel of Fortune a few weeks ago.  Trace also gets topical in his own way by making a killer joke about a Dick Van Dyke commercial he, Frank, Chris, and guest Dave Hill were discussing in the pre-show, which I'm sure was an improv line (and Frank's laughter at it is infectious).  But my favorite line of the entire thing:

"You have Proven yourself well!"

"Now put on your bunny costume and start serving cocktails!"

As mentioned above, our Q&A guest tonight is Dave Hill, a musician who actually came up with the intro theme to these Mads shows.  He's a less witty commentator than most of the guests the Mads have on, but he's fun and interesting.  He gets a few questions geared toward him about music, including live performances he loved and he also tours us through a bunch of guitars he owns.  The Mads answer a question about uncomfortable costumes, where Frank trash talks his hand-me-down chauffeur uniform that was originally worn by Josh Weinstein and they both reminisce about a death trap prop which involved Trace putting his head in a saxophone.  Current media talk asks what everyone is watching on TV, to which Trace gushes about Peacemaker, Frank talks about Euphoria, and Dave Hill looks forward to Tokyo Vice.  One question that fizzles is a question about films that are poorly received that everyone enjoyed, which turns into Frank talking about how traditional film criticism is becoming archaic to a degree.  The only person who really answers the question is Chris who uses the time to say that he enjoyed the new Texas Chainsaw Massacre on Netflix (I disagree, so far it's the worst movie I've seen this year and a new low for its franchise), claiming Wonder Woman 1984 got better reviews despite being worse (also disagree, I had fun with that one).  Nothing immediately springs to mind for me (Uncharted or Death on the Nile maybe, but I don't feel all that passionately about either), though I might go the safe route and say critics were unjustly harsh on Godzilla:  King of the Monsters, which is the weakest MonsterVerse movie but a ton of fun.  Similarly, I thought The Meg was a monster movie blast, but it got pretty smoked when it was released.  But if we're on the subject of serial killer movies, Halloween Kills is both better than it's reputation and a far better watch than the bullshit overrated 2018 film.

While this riff tends to fly a bit too close for comfort to the RiffTrax version than I think most will be comfortable with, personally I appreciate the vibe of the Mads show a little more.  It's a bit lighter and breezier (and not just because they cut ten minutes out of the movie), while RiffTrax tended to be a bit harder and meaner.  The downside with the Mads version is that the more topical riffs will tend to age it harshly as time goes on.  Both are pretty good, mind you, and they're both similar experiences.  It's a case of "pick your poison" that is hard to give a wrong answer to.

Good