ChikPapa Very disappointed :(

BlazeLime Strong and Moving!

Console best movie i've ever seen.

Plustown A lot of perfectly good film show their cards early, establish a unique premise and let the audience explore a topic at a leisurely pace, without much in terms of surprise. this film is not one of those films.

JohnHowardReid You can always rely on William Cameron Menzies for striking visuals and tingling atmosphere. This fascinating little movie, "The Whip Hand", proves to be no exception -- even though the final revelation is actually rather disappointing. Originally the film was made under the title The Man He Found, the "found man" being Adolf Hitler, not only living on but actually plotting postwar stratagems with the connivance of the citizenry of a small American town. But executive producer Howard Hughes thought that the Communists who were really active at the time not only presented a far greater menace than a vanquished Fascist, but would really intrigue American audiences. So the film was partly re-shot. As it happened Hughes's hunch was wrong. The film lost money, even on its comparatively modest (at least for a competitive "A" feature) negative cost of only $376,000. It could even be argued that the climax is hardly worth all the build-up, but nonetheless, when the movie is directed and designed by the brilliant William Cameron Menzies, as far as I am concerned, it rates as a must-see item on any account.

utgard14 Matt Corbin (Elliott Reid) is a magazine writer on a fishing trip in Winnoga, Minnesota. He discovers all the fish in the town's lake are dead and the locals are none too friendly. He starts nosing around and finds himself in the middle of a Communist plot to overthrow America with germ warfare. The original story for this had Nazis as the villains instead of Communists. But producer Howard Hughes felt Reds were more timely so the story was changed to Communists who used to be Nazis. Which is all kinds of hilarious if you think about it.Elliott Reid, a fine character actor I've seen in tons of stuff, is an atypical lead but does a solid job. His big romantic scene is a pretty big fail, though. Frank Darien is fun as the elderly general store owner who tries to help Reid. Carla Balenda, no doubt given the female lead by Hughes, offers a bland and forgettable turn here. I don't think she changed facial expressions more than twice. Raymond Burr plays one of the Commies. He's the most famous actor in the movie. The rest of the cast is made up of lesser-known but quality actors, some of which classic movie fans might recognize (Lurene Tuttle, for one). Perhaps the most pleasant surprise about this movie is that it's directed by William Cameron Menzies, legendary production designer whose directorial efforts include Things to Come and Invaders from Mars. Menzies gives this movie a stylish direction lacking in most other '50s Red Scare flicks. The movie looks like a film noir, not a political thriller. It's a beautiful-looking black & white movie. Whether you take the story seriously or not, I don't see how you can deny it's a well-crafted film of its type. It's a reasonably suspenseful thriller with some style and some neat creepy moments late in the film.

kapelusznik18 ****SPOILERS**** The movie "The Whip Hand" was to be about a Nazi spy ring in the US planning to use biological and chemical, or WMD's as their known now, to wipe out the entire US population. But with the war, WWII, over it was decided by producer Howard Hughes to change the format and substitute the Nazis as Commies or even better yet Nazis who converted to Communism making them twice as evil. We the audience get the drift of what's going on in the movie with a speech by some Communist big-shot in the Kremlin speaking in Russian, without any subtitles, about the plan the Commies have to destroy America that's to originate out of the sleepy little Minnesota ghost town of Winnoga.It's in Winnoga that our hero photojournalist Matt Corbin, Elliott Reid, is on vacation on a fishing trip and ends up getting his skull fractured while running for cover when a violent storm breaks out. Looking to get help Corbin runs into Dr.Edward Keller, Edgar Barrier, who together with his in house sister and part-time nurse Janet, Carla Balenda, treat his wound. It's not that long that Corbin decides to stay in town to check out the fishing which he finds out that the fish, or trout, have all died out from a mysterious virus some five years ago. It soon becomes apparent to Corbin that the Commies had landed and with their Nazi allies are planning to take over the United States by polluting it's water supply if nothing is done, by him, to stop them.****SPOILERS**** With Janet, despite her brother working for the Commie/Nazis, joining him in his fight for America's survival Corbin starts to uncover a secret underground hideout that the Communists and their Nazi allies are using in them experimenting their secret weapons. That's toe used to turn the entire population of the US into an army of mind numb Zombies and tips off the FBI & CIA as well as the local authorities where it is. The entire operation is run by fugitive Nazi now Communist fanatic Dr. Wilhelm Bucholtz,Otto Waldis, who with the help of his Nazi friends and paid off US immigration officials claimed to be a holocaust survivor. It's the crazed but brilliant Dr. Bucholtz who like the Japaneses kamikazes of WWII is ready and willing to die for his cause world wide Communism and has already created an army of Zombies, who walk around aimlessly bumping into each other, to achieve that evil goal. It's Corbin who later breaks into Bucholtz's underground bunker and with the help of his just created Zombies puts an end to his wild crazy and hair-brained dreams. P.S Check out a graying and very rotund Raymond Burr as Steve Loomis one of Dr. Bucholtz's evil henchmen.

jim riecken (youroldpaljim) I was 12 years old when I first learned of this film from reading John Baxters chapter on William Cameron Menzies in his ground breaking book "Science Fiction in The Cinema.' The plot concerning germ warfare and Baxters praise of the film made me want to see it. I later learned from other sources that this film was made from a finished film called THE MAN HE FOUND, about Adolph Hitler being alive and well and living the USA. RKO studio heads did not like the film and ordered a new story written and new footage shot that would use as much footage from THE MAN HE FOUND as possible. This made me want to see it even more. But for years this film eluded me. It never showed up on TV, never shown as part of a Menzies retrospective and never turned up officially on video. It then turned up in the early 1990's late one night on TNT, where I taped it and have watched several times since. While I found the film of some interest, I can certainly say Baxter over praised this film. Its not a bad cold war era espionage thriller, but other than the plot, its nothing special either. It is no doubt the least interesting of Menzies fantastic films that he both designed and directed. The court yard where infected guinea pigs wander around like zombies and Otto Waldis's lab are of some visual interest, but over all there isn't much of Menzies design genius evident. To comment on his direction is pointless, because Menzies was never a good director of actors. The reshooting and incorporating old scenes with the new scenes is done fairly well. I noticed where new scenes were inserted, but only because I was looking for them. Note that this film uses a lot of close ups. Otto Waldis as the former Nazi scientist, now working for Russian Communists is a bit hard to take. He praises his new adopted ideology. While its true Nazism and Communism have more in common then with western style democracy, most of the Nazi scientists who went to work for the Commies after the war did so more out of pragmatic and mercenary reasons than ideological ones.