THE DEVIL'S HAND

Rick Turner has a problem. He awakens night after night seeing visions of a woman in a negligee dancing in the clouds. The visions disturb him. One night he gets up, goes walking and is drawn to a doll shop. In the window he sees a doll that is the exact image of the woman in his visions. He takes his girlfriend Donna Trent there the next day. To his surprise the doll shop owner, Frank Lamont, not only knows his name but insists that he ordered the doll, a likeness of Bianca Milan, whom Rick has never met.

Donna spots a doll that looks just like her. Frank refuses to sell it. As Rick and Donna leave, Frank takes the doll into his back room with curtains, open-flame lamps, an altar, a statue of the Buddha. He stabs the doll with a long pin. Donna collapses in pain. Rick takes her to hospital, where a doctor tells him that she has had a "spasm of the heart" and needs complete bed rest.

Rick has another vision of Bianca. He tells Donna that he is going to deliver the Bianca doll to Bianca "to get this thing off my back." When Rick returns to the doll shop, Frank hands over the doll, insisting that Rick had paid for it in advance. Perplexed, Rick goes to Bianca's luxurious apartment and is entranced by her beauty. They become lovers that night. Bianca explains that his visions are a "simple process of thought projection or thought transference," which she learned as a member of the cult of Gamba, the Great Devil God. She makes Rick accompany her right then to a cult meeting so that he can be inducted. The meeting is held in the back room at the doll shop, for Frank is the High Executioner of the Gamba cult.

At the meeting, Bianca explains that a human sacrifice ceremony is to be held. A young woman is laid on the altar; above her a wheel studded with knives is spun. As it lowers, Gamba decides if the sacrifice lives or dies. Frank goes behind the lectern and steps on a foot pedal, making it unclear whether he or Gamba controls the wheel. The knife blade that strikes the sacrifice is rubber. She survives unhurt. A man in the cult covertly snaps a photo of the event.

Later, at the doll shop, Rick spots the Donna doll, pinned to the wall through the heart, but he cannot remove the pin without being seen. He goes to the hospital and tells Donna that she will be completely cured at midnight that night.

Donna is in fact cured at midnight and discharged. Mary, a cultist and nurse at the hospital, calls Bianca to report this turn of events. When Rick arrives at Bianca's apartment, she tells him that they must attend an emergency meeting of the cult at 10:30 that night. During the meeting, Frank says that one of them is an "intruder" and will die at midnight, then adjourns until 12:30 am. At the stroke of midnight, Frank grabs the doll of the man who took the photo - an undercover reporter - and jams a pin through its head. The reporter, who is driving, screams and clutches his forehead. His car plunges down a hillside and as Frank burns the doll, the wreckage bursts into flame.

At the 12:30 meeting, Frank announces that Rick's loyalty is now to be tested, and Donna is brought in as a sacrifice. Frank makes Rick spin the wheel, but as it drops, Rick pulls Donna to safety. A fight breaks out. The wheel falls on Frank, killing him. The room catches fire. Rick and Donna escape. Bianca picks up her doll. Everyone else apparently dies.

With fire department sirens wailing, Rick and Donna, a romantic pair again, drive away. "That's the end to it," says Rick. Then Bianca, once again among the clouds, gets in the last word, smiling and saying, "That's what he thinks!"

At midnight, the cult's High Executioner pins a doll representing an undercover reporter, leading to his death. The film concludes with the cult’s activities persisting, leaving Rick and Donna still under the cult's shadow.

The Devil’s Hand ends with the cult’s dark power undiminished and the protagonists unable to fully escape its reach. The ritualistic use of voodoo dolls to determine fate cements the inescapable influence Gamba’s cult has over its followers and outsiders alike, emphasizing a sense of lingering menace and unresolved danger.