A Hand To Hold review

By Mark Young

A Hand To Hold is a new horror short, courtesy of director Phillip Clyde-Smith and writer/executive producer Eliza Power. Following on from its appearance at the Dead Centre Film Festival in June, it finds its way to the Six Feet Under Horror Fest. Something that drew me to this was that Jimmy Tarbuck, at the ripe old age of 86 was making his first appearance in a horror film. 

And this has quite the synopsis: a recently deceased husband refuses to relinquish his hold (quite literally) on his wife, maintaining the same iron grip on her as a dead man as he did whilst alive. A taster of what this man was all about can be seen in the first minute and a half, when faced with not being able to complete a game in which ‘I always beat you’ is repeated over and over again. It wears its black humour on its sleeve, the early moments where Moira suddenly finds herself gripped and her daughter suggesting pile cream as a possible lubricant is something else. As you might expect, it escalates in a truly unique way, from the Doctor suggesting breaking the bones in Moira’s hand to flatten it out, to the appearance of a chainsaw it suddenly becomes something far more than the good Doctor expected. I cannot tell you anymore about this without spoiling it for you, and that I don’t want to do. 

The thing about short films, is that they have to do an incredible amount of work in a short space of time and it’s something that isn’t lost on those involved here. It whips along at a cracking pace and at first, I was watching just for Jimmy Tarbuck to see what role he would play and got caught up in it. , In all honesty, he’s not on screen for that long and it’s not what you would say is a meaty role but it’s not something that is a million miles away from a role he would have done during his light entertainment hey-day. A shout has to go out to Frank Bourke who plays the Doctor, he’s brilliant in this, as is the cast in general with Moira (Frances Barber) filling her role with a mixture of contempt and sadness for the (not)so dearly departed. By rights this should go down a storm wherever it plays on the festival circuit, its blackly humorous but played with a straight bat. If you get the chance to catch this anywhere, do so.