Curse of the Stone Hand

1965 "WHAT LURID SECRET -- LIED BEYOND THAT HIDDEN DOOR!"
3| 1h7m| en| More Info
Released: 03 March 1965 Released
Producted By: Chilefilms
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Budget: 0
Revenue: 0
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Synopsis

A house by the sea has stood vacant for many years, after misfortune befell several owners, which an artist painting the house explains to a passergy. A cross-editing of principal material from two Chilean films, LA CASA ESTA VACIA and LA DAMA DE LA MUERTE, with the addition of new American-made footage, to create a single story.

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Reviews

AniInterview Sorry, this movie sucks
FeistyUpper If you don't like this, we can't be friends.
Chirphymium It's entirely possible that sending the audience out feeling lousy was intentional
Arianna Moses Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.
mark.waltz Two obscure Spanish language films have been shoved together with newly cheap film footage to try and create a new movie. The 40's footage of two movies from Chile look expensive but dated compared to the cheap new film added featuring John Carradine. Attempts to tie the two films together are unsuccessful and the the result is boring. With American International successfully producing modern frights on a budget, this looks like paper machete to their Styrofoam like sets that could be torn down and put back together to resemble whatever location castle the writers chose to set the story in. The first story us a loose re-telling of The Suicide Club, the second a weak attempt to create thrills for what appeared to be original. Carradine narrates both tales in what appears to be the only new footage with bad dubbing covering up the obvious Spanish by the original actors. This appears to have been barely released at all, although I did locate a few pictures of actual posters and lobby cards. At least there is a nice title sequence that reminded me of Charles Addams drawings. Not really horror, this barely has any chills and any attempts to create a proper Gothic setting are destroyed by the obvious theft of two long forgotten films.
Scott LeBrun Other reviews here indicate that the pilfered film footage in this "effort" by schlockmeister Jerry Warren comes from legitimately *good* Chilean movies, but you wouldn't know it from Warrens' bungling. He manages to make this assemblage of footage pretty dull and uninteresting. It still has some appeal for people channel surfing in the wee hours of the morning, and is not without atmosphere. "Curse of the Stone Hand" only really comes to life in scenes where the legendary John Carradine, one of Warrens' repertory players (and seemingly a man who could never say no to *any* script), appears. (However, that's because of Carradines' grandiose screen presence, not because of anything Warren does.)The first tale is an adaptation of Robert Louis Stevensons' "The Suicide Club", in which a young man, desperate to rid himself of debts, enters a club where he thinks he can gamble his way to good fortune. The second story is derived from the 1945 feature "The House is Empty", regaling us with the experience of two brothers tormented by an older sibling. Warren attempts to tie all of this together with his "stone hand" nonsense, which has something to do with a curse on the residents of a house, and removes the dialogue from his source material in favour of narration.Even at only 68 minutes, this is a little tough to get through. In compressing / editing the footage from the two Chilean features, Warren and company rob them of their effectiveness. There's still the entertainment value from the revelations provided, in any event. If you're a Carradine fan, you may feel let down from only seeing him in the brief additional scenes. Another of Warrens' regulars, Katherine Victor, also appears here.At the very least, seeing this exercise in dullness may motivate one to see the Chilean films in their proper context.Four out of 10.
mlraymond I saw this film once, on the late, late show, when I was in high school. The only part that stays with me is an interesting segment that suddenly makes the previously dull movie come to life, when a group of men are holding a meeting of some kind. I remember exclaiming out loud, " Wait a minute, this is Robert Louis Stevenson's story The Suicide Club!" It was the only part of the movie that actually made any sense, and held my interest, as it was based on a strong literary source, and professionally acted and directed, in contrast with the typical Jerry Warren goofiness of the rest of the picture.My impression of Jerry Warren is that his movies were just one slight step above the level of Ed Wood's productions. The hilarious sequence in Invasion of the Animal People, where a psychiatrist solemnly questions Katherine Victor about the argument that led to her daughter leaving the house in a snit, and later encountering a UFO, is like something you'd see on Saturday Night Live, along with the bit where the police surgeon demonstrates to his colleagues the structure of the inner ear, using a Halloween prop skull.
todmichel For a long time, the true origins of this pitiful travesty of a film were unknown; it was rumored that two Mexican films were used as the basis of the Jerry Warren "work" - but in fact CURSE OF THE STONE HAND is composed (apart of the Warren-filmed horrendous sequences with Carradine, Katherine Victor, etc.) of two EXCELLENT (in their original form of course) Chilean movies of 1945, both directed by exiled Argentinian directors. The segment known as "House of Gloom" is made of one-third of LA CASA ESTA VACIA, directed by Carlos Schlieper, and the other segment, "The Suicide Club, is equally one-third of LA DAMA DE LA MUERTE, directed by Carlos Hugo Christensen. Both directors were highly talented men, and as you can imagine their works are totally destroyed by the Jerry Warren ineptitude. Another Christensen movie, LA BALANDRA ISABEL LLEGO ESTA TARDE (1949) was also "cannibalized" by Warren, and released under the title "The Violent and the Damned". If you can, AVOID AT ALL COSTS any Jerry Warren travesty (you can eventually watch his OWN films, such as "Teenage Zombies" or "Frankenstein Island"...) and try to see the original foreign movies destroyed by this man...