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Captivating movie !

best movie i've ever seen.

Absolutely the worst movie.

It's a feast for the eyes. But what really makes this dramedy work is the acting.

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.

****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.

THE WHIP HAND, an interesting curio of a film that's very much of its era, tells the story of a small rural town in the American South which finds itself at the mercy of a band of merciless Communists who'll do anything in their power to keep their plans for germ warfare a secret. Yes, welcome to the world of '50s paranoia and McCarthyist witch-hunts, where the ordinary-looking guy next door just might be a closet pinko.The guy helming this little B-movie is William Camercon Menzies, responsible for the equally paranoia-laden INVADERS FROM MARS. And THE WHIP HAND turns out to be an entertaining little movie, one which thrives on building a sense of mistrust throughout as the crusading reporter hero gradually becomes aware of a sinister plot in darkest Minnesota. Cuddly bad guy Raymond Burr (REAR WINDOW), a go-to guy for '50s villainy, is inevitably one of the bad guys behind it all.THE WHIP HAND is watchable and features an unfamiliar cast doing their best with the lines they're given. Sure, it's very much dated these days, but the same dating makes it interesting as a product of its era. The bad guys are far more interesting than the good, especially the well-defined characters like the pervy guy with the flat leather cap or the creepy gamekeeper. The decision to change said bad guys from Nazis to Communists at the last moment makes it all feel a little muddled, but it's certainly not a bad film and rewarding to those with an interest in film as a medium for social commentary.

I first saw this film in 1952 and have seen several times since. It's one of those movies I always get a kick out of. Critics are right to argue that the plot has a couple of rather large holes. They are not right in denouncing it as McCarthyist propaganda. These deep leftist thinkers need to be reminded that the release of the Venona Papers largely vindicate McCarthy investigations. Sneering leftists also need reminding of the amount of communist aggression that the West was facing. For example, the communists insurgencies in Greece and Malaya, both backed by the Soviets. Then there was the takeover of Eastern Europe followed by imprisonment, torture and execution of opponents. Let us also not forget the 1948 Berlin Blockade, the Korean War, the Berlin uprising in 1953 and the 1956 Hungarian uprising that the Soviets ruthlessly crushed.The Cold War was far from being cold and was the creation of an aggressive Soviet Union. Before any more mal-educated leftists decide to start sneering at this movie maybe they will tell us why they choose to ignore the 100,000,000, people that communist regimes murdered. (The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression, Harvard University Press,1999). Read this book and you might start thinking that this movie wasn't too far out after all.