Never a leading man, Peter Lorre is a cinema Legend. A Hungarian with an often imitated voice that’s verbal shorthand for deviants and dangerous weirdos. He exploded onto the screen as the baby-cheeked child murderer in M and eventually moved into such pantheon classics as Casablanca, The Maltese Falcon and Arsenic and Old Lace. In between, he went full freak in this underappreciated gem based on the classic story The Hands of Orlac where a concert pianist is given the hands of an executed killer. Peter Lorre is the doctor who performs the operation, and then develops a crazed desire for the wife. I first heard of this movie when I saw an image of Lorre in disguise. It’s one of the most insane and bizarre getups I’ve ever encountered, way beyond what I thought the 1930s would dare. The whole film is just short of nightmare poetry with startling lighting created by 2 D.P.s from a director who worked as a Camera Operator for Tod Browning, James Whale and F.W. Murnau.
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