The Whip Hand (1951).
IMDb meta-data is runtime of 1 hour and 22 minutes, rated 6.0 by 596 cinematizens.
Genre: Sp Fy, not Sy Fy. Species: Paranoia, Red.
Verdict: Zippy.
In Lake Wobegon the Reds are on the beds, not under them. Adopting the approach of capitalism, the Reds have bought everything in town and set up a germ warfare laboratory. All the paperwork is in order. Taxes are paid. Zoning laws obeyed.
Believe it or not, one of the Reds is Perry Mason before he went to law school and got all self-righteous. Too bad because he made a marvellous villain. And he had competition in this picture because there is a string of villains from mouth-breathing grunters to oily salesmen to a blond adonis who whittles with a very big knife.
Into this Village of the Reds one rainy night an intrepid newsman stumbles after clonking his head, and he seeks medical treatment for his split infinitive. The town doctor applied a Band-Aid and tries to send Newsie on this way, but the good-looking sister who peeled the Band-Aid is fly-paper, and the plot thickens.
We knew from the get-go there were Reds about, but somehow after four years of residence Sister has not got it. No, she is not blind or stupid but a helpless creature of the scriptwriter who made her that way. She and the Newsie set out to foil the numerous and well organised bad guys and don’t do very well when they rely on Olive (‘We be Texicans’) Carey.
But thanks to a footnote citation to his earlier work, Newsie calls in the FBI cavalry who arrive in time to hear the mad scientist’s speech at the end before he gets his just reward from some of his experimental victims. Seeing these cripples whack him with canes, crutches, braces, and walkers made me dream.
Scifist 2.0 lists it but I am not sure what the Sy Fy element is. Germ warfare? An intelligent Newsie? The imperceptive sister? Anyway that entry is why I sought it out and watched it.
A quibble or two, or I do not get the title and I did not hear it used in the film. Maybe this intel missed the opening seconds of my attention span.
It is offbeat and moves at a good pace. I know there were post-production changes that led to a lot of re-shooting to please the then-master of RKO, and maybe some pages of the script got lost that explained the title.
It opens with sledge hammer subtlety in Moscow with a scene in Russian without subtitles where a uniformed man rattles on in front of huge wall map of the USA and points at Minnesota in a meaningful way. Get it? Is he tuning in to Garrison Keillor?
By the way such a long scene with neither subtitles nor an explanatory voiceover was daring for a B movie audience.
On the subject of subtitles, it has been an article of faith in the Hollywood since the advent of talkies that subtitles are unacceptable to a mainstream audience. Hence the frequent use of voiceovers. ‘Article of faith,’ because there is no evidence.