THE HAND (1981)
Starring Michael Caine and Andrea Marcovicci
A remarkably lame movie coming from an Oscar-winning director like Oliver Stone. But then even some of the world's finest directors could never get how to make a real horror film. I'm not one to consider Stone's "Natural Born Killers" a horror movie either. It was more a lame-ass attempt by him to make a cult movie. It wasn't cult. It wasn't even good mainstream. It was shit.
This is pretty bad too, but it is at least better than "Natural Born Killers." It's genuine, legitimate schlock. Just not very good schlock. Caine plays a cartoonist who, during a freak accident, loses his hand! His cartooning career in tatters, he gets incredibly depressed and, as so often happens in horror films, becomes horribly resentful of those he love him. Naturally, the hand takes on a life of its own and starts killing everyone he hates.
We've seen the story told and retold a thousand times before, from "Forbidden Planet" to "Monkey Shines." There's not much to recommend here, but it is an interesting oddity as Stone's first-ever feature film.
This modern horror film features your usual limbs-transplanted-from-a-killer-turns-good-guy-into-psychopath plot, but is delivered with enough style by director Red to make it watchable. A criminal psychologist (Fahey) loses his arm in a freeway accident, only to wake up with a brand new one attached! Turns out he's the part of a sinister government experiment.
Of course, the arm has a will of its own. He hooks up with an artist (Brad Dourif of "Child's Play" fame) who apparently got the killer's other arm, and has been using the evil energy it generates to create grotesque paintings that sell quite well. The two then find out who got one of the killer's legs. The shit hits the fan when all three get together for a drink at a bar.
The flick has a low budget and it shows. There aren't any thrilling effects, but the acting is decent and the story, while slow, maintains enough tension and suspense to keep you watching Worth catching.
For all its flaws, it is at least better than Oliver Stone's dull horror pic "The Hand," which launched his career. But while Stone went onto bigger and better things, "Body Parts" director Red never did.
One of his more recent films was the awful "Bad Moon."
