Unless you go by the name of Dr Jekyll, you don’t want to become a guinea pig for your own scientific experiments. Niftily done, memorable opening and finale, minimum expenditure on special effects ensures the shock value is limited until it counts as our hero/villain goes on accidental rampage.
In an echo of Village of the Damned (1960), a mailman, drawing up in front of some gates, falls to the ground. The camera pulls back revealing some senseless sheep. Two guys in Hazchem suits rush out of a building which turns out to be a laboratory. It’s not even a top secret lab although it’s buried in the desert. Dr Alex Marsh (John Agar) is supposed to be engaged on harmless experiments on cacti. Instead, he’s stumbled upon a nerve gas with military potential.
Our mailman and the sheep aren’t dead only unconscious so, through happenstance, Marsh has successfully conducted both animal and human tests, such results an improvement on what went before when the subjects died.
Marsh can’t wait to tell boss Dr Ramsay (Roy Gordon) and his girlfriend Carol (Paula Raymond) the good news. All scientists are mad scientists given the right circumstances. So Marsh has gone from anodyne to dangerous. In Army hands, the nerve gas can not only immobilize the enemy but when they wake up they are under hypnotic influence and will do what the victors tell them thus nullifying the risk of rebellion.
James Bond villains would be queuing at his door. Leaving Ramsay to drum up financial support from legitimate sources, Marsh returns to the lab to further develop the prototype, except too much leaks out and he’s not as immune to its effects as he originally believed. And beyond being cursed by a nightmare, it doesn’t look, initially, as if Marsh is in danger. Just everyone else. Touch him and you’re fried.
While he doesn’t mean to kill anyone, nonetheless heading for the morgue are a colleague and a gas pump attendant. He hides out in Ramsay’s house where serums are concocted to cure him. They fail. Marsh moves from not wanting to hurt anybody to threatening violence. And it’s soon clear he’s not at all immune. Contemporary audiences might enjoy the transformation as he turns into a cross between Hulk and The Thing from The Fantastic Four, with the addition of the kind of raincoat for which Columbo later expressed a preference and Frank Sinatra’s hat.
And you might be giggling at the look except that strange things begin to happen. You pity him. He’s not some monster lurching around terrorizing the populace. He’s lurching all right but in the kind of bent-over fashion where you think he’s going to topple over any minute. He turns up at Carol’s beach house but so do the cops. He heads towards the water but when he turns back at Carol’s call the police interpret that as threat and shoot him dead.
There are some other nice touches, reaction shots from the supporting cast, some sparkling bit parts, a small child who is within seconds of touching him out of curiosity, and an incentive for his other colleague Tom (Stephen Dunne) to win over Carol should he fail to come up with the serum.
John Agar (The St Valentine’s Day Massacre, 1967) was never going to get within a mile of an Oscar but his playing of the monster triggers pity. Paula Raymond (The Flight That Disappeared, 1961) adds some depth to a thankless role.
Directed by Gene Nelson (Kissin’ Cousins, 1964) from a screenplay by producer Eugene Ling in his final work.
I came at this with one big advantage. I hadn’t seen the poster so I had no idea what the monster looked like. Which is just as well because otherwise I might have not bothered.
Tight, short, occasionally clever, surprisingly moving.
The Magnificent 60s 
You mention Ben Grimm’s the Thing. Indeed, it’s hard not to believe the look of the monster here was inspired by those early issues of the Fantastic Four, which had premiered the year earlier. The early Thing, before his features hardened to more of a rock-like texture, looked almost exactly like the monster here. Grimm even on the street wore a raincoat and low brim hat in an effort to avoid the stares of others. It’s nearly a perfect depiction, except that the monster has coal black skin and Grimm’s was famously orange.
This film was for many, many years believed to be lost. When it finally popped up, I eagerly watched it. I grew up a Monster Kid and watching a vintage monster movie I hadn’t seen before was a big deal. I have to admit I was largely unimpressed, as the film is neither good nor bad enough to really make itself memorable. On the other hand, comedian Joe Besser, who I’ve always loathed, dies a brutal death in the movie. For that alone I’ll always reserve Hands of Death a bit of fondness.
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I wasn’t familiar with the original comic series so I was comparing it to the new iteration. either way it seems a rip-off.
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