L'uomo senza mano

Each film by and with Harry Piel never fails to amaze me about the attraction he and his adventure films once had to the German audiences. Take this one for example. In a highly illogical string of events Piel plays a ladies charmer though he misses the needed natural charm and with his 20's silent movies make-up he looks like a phantom. He endlessly fights a very innocent looking tiger - it is definitely very tame, watch closely to see how true this fight is - until the tiger finally really gets mad: who the hell is Harry Piel to disturb my peace?

A big fight on the station with no connection to the story is very poorly staged and executed; in the average Hollywood Z-grade serial this would have been done much better. The story takes place in Lisbon, but the soundtrack has a song with lyrics that sounded very Spanish to me. There is one good idea in this film though: the fight between the two cars; for a few minutes the film is worth watching.

The simplest of directorial skills is not known to Piel; the film stumbles from one scene to the next. Every action scene takes too long. Cast is wooden and boring, though I had some unintentional laughs with Alexander Grolling who acts like a gorilla with a serious speech impediment (he is from Scotland Yard). Cinematography is better than usual, but somehow the stock material looks better than the shot material. Editing was done with a plow-share.

What an adventure film needs is tongue-in-cheek and lots of humour to make it acceptable and entertaining. One could overlook Piel's clumsy film making if his films would contain these elements. But he was a man devoid of any humour and took things very seriously, principally himself (he probably would have sued me for this review).