Hand of Death (also known as Five Fingers of Death) is a low-budget 1962 American horror film directed by Gene Nelson, and written and produced by Eugene Ling. The film stars John Agar, Paula Raymond, Stephen Dunne and Roy Gordon. The narrative follows a scientist who develops a military nerve gas. After accidentally exposing himself to it, he not only turns into a grotesque monster, but anyone who touches him dies. The scientist goes on the run but is killed by police before a curative serum can be tried on him.
It was Nelson's directorial debut and the first film produced by Ling.
Plot
Scientist Alex Marsh has invented a powerful paralytic-hypnotic nerve gas for the military that he has been testing on sheep in the Mojave Desert. The local mailman blunders into the test site and is overcome but recovers without ill effect. A confident Alex rushes to the home of Dr. Frederick Ramsey, his mentor, to tell him about it. Alex's girlfriend Carol Wilson and his colleague Tom Holland are also there. Alex designed the gas as a way to eliminate casualties at war by placing those exposed to it in a trance-like state for a certain amount of time, at which time the exposed are compliant to any commands given to them. Although Carol feels the project is both dangerous and immoral, Alex continues his testing, vowing not to stop until he has found a way to eliminate the loss of life in war.
While working in the lab, Alex accidentally spills a liquefied version of the nerve gas and, in a hast to clean it up, accidentally gets some of it on his hands. The next day, Alex awakens to discover his extremities have darkened, and have become irritating and painful. When his assistant Carlos touches him, Carlos withers away and dies. Panicking, Alex sets the lab afire to cover Carlos's death and heads to Ramsey's. When Alex stops as a gas station, the attendant dies after touching him, causing Alex to flee in horror.
Arriving at Ramsey's house, Alex begs him to find an antidote, which Ramsey eventually agrees to do with the help of Tom. After the first attempted cure has no effect, a desperate Alex consumes the vial of serum Ramsey was working on. Instead of curing his condition like Alex had hoped, the serum mutates him further, bloating and darkening his body until he is unrecognizable. Horrified by his monstrous appearance, Alex accidentally kills Ramsey and flees. Attempting to cover his now deformed features with a trench coat and a fedora, Alex tries to hail a cab but the driver is unable to understand his muffled speech, and when the cabbie tries to get Alex out of the cab he is killed after touching him and Alex flees in the cab. He later falls asleep on the beach in a deserted area where a small boy playing on the rocks almost discovers him accidentally.
Alex later abandons the cab and stumbles toward Tom's house, where Carol is staying. Breaking into the house Alex attempts to speak to a terrified Carol, but can only scrawl a note in shaky handwriting that simply reads "TOM SERUM HELP."
The police soon arrive and Alex flees to the beach, where he is surrounded by the armed police. Although Carol pleas for Alex to surrender, the mutated scientist whose mind has become warped lunges towards them and is promptly gunned down in the surf.
Cast
Production
Screenplay writer Harry Spalding said that 20th Century Fox initially refused the project but passed it on to Robert L. Lippert's Associated Productions, which had made low budget movies for them in the past. Ling was assigned to write the script for Hand of Death because Maury Dexter, a producer/director himself, said that Lippert "owed him a favor." According to Dexter, they could not find an experienced director for the film because the script was so bad. Nelson had acted in the past and was keen to direct, so Lippert gave him the job. Shooting took seven days.
Filming took place in Malibu and Santa Monica. Raymond said in an interview that "shortly after completing" Hand of Death, she had a serious car crash which severed her nose and resulted in multiple plastic surgeries. At the time of interview, she said she had never seen the film.
The working titles of Hand of Death were Five Fingers of Death and The Death Walker. The film was shot in black-and-white CinemaScope with a widescreen aspect ratio of 2.35:1.
Theatrical posters for the film were headlined "He Experimented in HORROR!", "No One Dared Come Too Close" and "DOOM Was Always In His GRASP!"