The Whip Hand Reviews

Another of Howard Hughes' anti-communist propaganda films, this was originally made as THE MAN HE FOUND and concerned Adolf Hitler, alive and well and plotting away in the secure confines of a small town in the postwar US. After the production was wrapped, cut, and ready for release, Hughes opted for communist bogeymen instead of Hitler, so it was back to the storyboards, and only a workmanlike effort by Menzies made this a decent picture despite the decrepit material. Reid, a vacationing journalist, gets a cold reception from the inhabitants of a tiny burg, provoking his curiosity and leading him to uncover a communist plot to use the town as a base for germ warfare against the US. Considering that they remade almost the entire film, the cost was kept low at $376,000, but little of that investment was returned at the box office.