The Whip Hand
Director: William Cameron Menzies
Year:
1951
Rating: 5.0
Here is another Red scaremonger film full of angst
and paranoia produced by RKO and Howard Hughes who made a few of these. I
guess it took one paranoiac to know another. Initially, this was going to
be about Nazi's but Hughes changed them to Commies after the film had already
begun shooting (thus the German accents) - I guess he hated them more. The
film is directed by William Cameron Menzies, best known as an art director
but who dabbled as a director at times - none of his directed films are very
well-known with one exception. A film that scared the hell out of me as a
child. That made me nervous around my parents for days. One of the great
paranoia films of all time - Invaders from Mars in which aliens are able
to take over the minds of humans who appear almost normal but not quite.
That was made in 1953 but in a sense they could almost be inter-changeable.
Because this film would have worked just as well if they were aliens instead
of Communists. And Invaders from Mars could have almost substituted Americans
taken over by aliens for brainwashed Americans.
It is full of actors I have never heard of except for one very familiar face
playing a villain - something he almost always did back in those days - the
very large and menacing Raymond Burr in gnarly grizzled gray hair. Matt (Elliot
Reid) is fishing on vacation when he slips and cuts open his head. He goes
to the nearest town of Winnoga, an old rustic town with a small goods stores
and a plain hotel run by the friendly folksy Loomis (Burr). The doctor fixes
him up and he meets his sister (Carla Balenda) and plans on leaving the town
the next day. But he is a reporter and something about the town just strikes
him as off. Where did everyone go, why did all the trout die, why is the
large house out of town guarded by men with guns, why is he followed everywhere,
why does the sister tell him to leave as soon as he can. His reporter antennae
goes up and he digs deeper and finds a plot to . . . destroy America by the
Commies!
Quite low budget and very slow to get going but once it does it provides
a few tense moments. The acting from the two main leads is wooden and the
male lead is more than a bit irritating throughout. At one point he tells
them what he suspects is going on and I thought, well that wasn't very smart.
And it wasn't.
