Luis Bu-uel spent two years in Hollywood, from 1944-1946. During this period, he provided ideas for the horror film The Beast with Five Fingers with Peter Lorre. "The producer entrusted Bu-uel with the sequence of the hallucinating dream; but it was rejected from the script as being too strong. However in the final shooting Florey retained some of Bu-uel's original images alongside the others. What might have been just a routine horror picture attracted the attention of observant French critics who were unaware of Bu-uel's collaboration on the film. In particular the Surrealist group acclaimed it...particularly for the sequence-certainly Bu-uel's-of the severed hand which approaches Lorre in his office, menacing him and forcing him to certain acts. Although vaguely recalling The Hands of Orlac, this hand goes much further than the Expressionist film, and becomes a hallucinatory and onanistic Surrealist vision..." (Francisco Aranda, Luis Bu-uel: A Critical Biography).