THE DEVIL'S HAND is a cheap witchcraft thriller from 1961 which comes across as a sedate and non-contentious TV movie. The story is about a man who falls in love with a mysterious woman, only to discover that he's unwillingly joined a coven of Satanists in the meantime. Don't you just hate it when that happens? The film is slow and rather tame for modern viewers, with a handful of ritual scenes dotted throughout which remind one a little of the lame Hammer chiller THE WITCHES. The acting is just as restrained as the horror elements of the narrative and other than a few fun moments involving voodoo dolls there's little to remember about this one.

William J.Hole Jr. directs this very low-budget satanic flick from Crown International Pictures. Rick Turner(Robert Alda)is haunted nightly by visions of a seductive beautiful woman dancing. Rick is drawn to a doll shop where he finds a doll that resembles the woman trying to seduce him. He later returns to the shop with his fiancée Donna(Arianda Welter)to get the doll. On the shelf is a doll that looks exactly like Donna. The shop owner Frank Lamont(Neil Hamilton)gives Rick the one doll that he is anxious to deliver. Lamont will not let the couple leave with the doll resembling Donna; because it is actually a voodoo doll that he uses to cause her crippling pain. Rick makes his delivery to Bianca Milan(Linda Christian), the dancing seductress in his dreams. She will have her way with Rick and convinces him to join a coven of devil worshipers that actually wants his fiancée Donna as a human sacrifice. Rounding out the cast: Gertrude Astor, Julie Scott and Gere Craft.

Followers of my reviews do know that I have problems with science-fiction and horror made in the fifties and sixties. Mostly there's nothing going on, I admit, there are a few exceptions but still, most of them use cheap effects and are really outdated. A thing we can't say from for example the Universal Horrors. But sometimes I do come across horrors made in that era. The reason is simple, I collect also grindhouse and drive-in flicks and let this one be available in a grindhouse box. Although it doesn't contain any nudity and not a blink of blood I still enjoyed it. It's about a man Rick Turner (Robert Alda) who's engaged to Donna Trent(Ariadna Welter) but is seeing a beautiful woman Bianca Milan (Linda Christian) in his dreams. By mysterious encounters he's visiting a doll shop. A few strange things happen and without knowing he sees the doll that looks like his woman in his dream. He goes searching for her in real life finds her and is introduced to a cult.From there on you can easily know what will happen towards the end but by clocking in at 71 minutes it's over before you know it. The acting is sometimes a bit exaggerated, a thing so typical for films from that era. Linda Christian really looks gorgeous in her nightgown and they tried to add a bit of romantic pieces. It's also funny to see that smoking was a hot thing in bed and in fact everywhere. For such an old flick the sound was rather okay as did the editing and the way it was filmed. But it shows because the director William J. Hole Jr. did move on to Peyton Place (1968-1969)and The Bionic Women (1976) as director.Above average for a flick from that time and even as it isn't that wellknown it's worth picking up. And the last 10 seconds I had a big laugh, just see it...Gore 0/5 Nudity 0/5 Effects 0,5/5 Story 2/5 Comedy 0/5

I'm truly dismay when I read raving reviews about garbage like this. I don't have in my English vocabulary any word low enough to qualify this product.Starting with that awful musical tune that opens the picture that seems to last forever, the very basic typeface used for the titles until the first "vision" of Alda in bed when he sees a woman dancing alone under a moonlight effect dressed in a flowing deshabillé... and apparently floating in midair someplace in Alda's room, I said "until" because that was the scene where I switched off this... movie.My patience ended there.I don't have the will power or the time to watch this kind of junk.