Guilty Hands

Guilty Hands (1931)

Genres - Drama  |   Sub-Genres - Crime Thriller  |   Release Date - Aug 22, 1931 (USA - Unknown), Aug 22, 1931 (USA)  |   Run Time - 71 min.  |   Countries - United States  |   MPAA Rating - NR
  • AllMovie Rating
    6
  • User Ratings (0)
  • Your Rating

Share on

Review by Hans J. Wollstein

It is hard not to like good old Lionel Barrymore in Guilty Hands, even if he is a cold-blooded killer who is quite ready to use his office of district attorney to frame poor Kay Francis. But the victim -- Alan Mowbray of all people -- is such a cad, such a debaucher of young women in general, and Lionel's daughter Madge Evans in particular, that he thoroughly deserved to be done away with. Barrymore made it look like a suicide at first, awarding himself a most ingenious alibi, but when that didn't work, Miss Francis proved the perfect suspect. If one can get past the casting of Mowbray (whose humorous eccentrics are rather better remembered) as the lecher, Guilty Hands is a rather pleasing little potboiler that deserves more recognition than it has enjoyed in later years. William Bakewell, Polly Moran, and C. Aubrey Smith are also in the serviceable cast, but this remains a Lionel Barrymore tour de force, released soon after his Academy Award-winning performance in A Free Soul (1931), in which he also essayed a doomed attorney.