Majorthebys Charming and brutal

AshUnow This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

Sammy-Jo Cervantes There are moments that feel comical, some horrific, and some downright inspiring but the tonal shifts hardly matter as the end results come to a film that's perfect for this time.

Ortiz Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.

Scott LeBrun Other reviews here indicate that the pilfered film footage in this "effort" by schlockmeister Jerry Warren comes from legitimately *good* Chilean movies, but you wouldn't know it from Warrens' bungling. He manages to make this assemblage of footage pretty dull and uninteresting. It still has some appeal for people channel surfing in the wee hours of the morning, and is not without atmosphere. "Curse of the Stone Hand" only really comes to life in scenes where the legendary John Carradine, one of Warrens' repertory players (and seemingly a man who could never say no to *any* script), appears. (However, that's because of Carradines' grandiose screen presence, not because of anything Warren does.)The first tale is an adaptation of Robert Louis Stevensons' "The Suicide Club", in which a young man, desperate to rid himself of debts, enters a club where he thinks he can gamble his way to good fortune. The second story is derived from the 1945 feature "The House is Empty", regaling us with the experience of two brothers tormented by an older sibling. Warren attempts to tie all of this together with his "stone hand" nonsense, which has something to do with a curse on the residents of a house, and removes the dialogue from his source material in favour of narration.Even at only 68 minutes, this is a little tough to get through. In compressing / editing the footage from the two Chilean features, Warren and company rob them of their effectiveness. There's still the entertainment value from the revelations provided, in any event. If you're a Carradine fan, you may feel let down from only seeing him in the brief additional scenes. Another of Warrens' regulars, Katherine Victor, also appears here.At the very least, seeing this exercise in dullness may motivate one to see the Chilean films in their proper context.Four out of 10.

mlraymond I saw this film once, on the late, late show, when I was in high school. The only part that stays with me is an interesting segment that suddenly makes the previously dull movie come to life, when a group of men are holding a meeting of some kind. I remember exclaiming out loud, " Wait a minute, this is Robert Louis Stevenson's story The Suicide Club!" It was the only part of the movie that actually made any sense, and held my interest, as it was based on a strong literary source, and professionally acted and directed, in contrast with the typical Jerry Warren goofiness of the rest of the picture.My impression of Jerry Warren is that his movies were just one slight step above the level of Ed Wood's productions. The hilarious sequence in Invasion of the Animal People, where a psychiatrist solemnly questions Katherine Victor about the argument that led to her daughter leaving the house in a snit, and later encountering a UFO, is like something you'd see on Saturday Night Live, along with the bit where the police surgeon demonstrates to his colleagues the structure of the inner ear, using a Halloween prop skull.

Michael_Elliott Curse of the Stone Hand (1964) BOMB (out of 4) Here's another history lesson for you fine folks, this time we take another look at the incredible hack Jerry Warren who really is the worst director ever. What Mr. Warren would do is buy foreign movies, cut them in half, hire John Carradine to film a couple new scenes and then add narration over the foreign elements of the film. Warren would then release these films as something "new" but they always turned out horrible and that's no different here. A mysterious stone hand is causing people to kill themselves but who cares? The "stone hand" only shows up twice and really doesn't play a part in the film. Warren took a Mexican film and another one from Chile to edit together and on their own both films appear to be quite good but with 2/3rds of them edited out there's really nothing this film is good for.

todmichel For a long time, the true origins of this pitiful travesty of a film were unknown; it was rumored that two Mexican films were used as the basis of the Jerry Warren "work" - but in fact CURSE OF THE STONE HAND is composed (apart of the Warren-filmed horrendous sequences with Carradine, Katherine Victor, etc.) of two EXCELLENT (in their original form of course) Chilean movies of 1945, both directed by exiled Argentinian directors. The segment known as "House of Gloom" is made of one-third of LA CASA ESTA VACIA, directed by Carlos Schlieper, and the other segment, "The Suicide Club, is equally one-third of LA DAMA DE LA MUERTE, directed by Carlos Hugo Christensen. Both directors were highly talented men, and as you can imagine their works are totally destroyed by the Jerry Warren ineptitude. Another Christensen movie, LA BALANDRA ISABEL LLEGO ESTA TARDE (1949) was also "cannibalized" by Warren, and released under the title "The Violent and the Damned". If you can, AVOID AT ALL COSTS any Jerry Warren travesty (you can eventually watch his OWN films, such as "Teenage Zombies" or "Frankenstein Island"...) and try to see the original foreign movies destroyed by this man...