On H List of Movie Reviews

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The Hand (1981)

Rate: 8
Viewed: 10/19

Hand
10/19: Many great directors had done a horror movie before going on to do important pictures: Michael Curtiz (Mystery of the Wax Museum), Francis Ford Coppola (Dementia 13), Brian De Palma (Sisters), Steven Spielberg (Jaws), James Cameron (Piranha II: The Spawning), and Ridley Scott (Alien).

Now, Oliver Stone can be added to the list for The Hand, his second ever feature film. To be fair, I don't view it as a horror movie but a psychological thriller. He'll grace himself on the silver screen by playing a bum.

If not for Michael Caine, there's a good chance the movie would have been derivative. Yet he's the one who kept me engaged because of his great character work. Due to the success of Dressed to Kill, Michael Caine was eager to do another suspense-thriller movie, but more importantly, he needed to make a down payment for a new garage he was having built for his house.

Jon Lansdale's marriage was already dead before he lost his hand (how it happened is the best scene of the film, mind you). It's his most prized possession for the moneymaking ability to produce a "who cares?" comic strip. Once the hand is gone, slowly goes his sanity. In a way, it reminds me of the children from The Brood by acting out his true feelings. The cut-off lizard part is an excellent metaphor.

If there's anything I dislike, it's the limb getting too much attention as an attempt to turn The Hand into a schlock horror movie. It's not necessary because Michael Caine's virtuoso acting is more than enough to make the plot work. Yet the rest of the cast looks uninspired.

Speaking of Jon Lansdale's hand, he's fitted with a mechanical replacement. At one point, he was cooking dinner and decided to use his hand to handle the beef patty before making a mess of it. All I could think of is: "How the fuck is he going to clean it up and pick the itty-bitty gunk out of the metal? What's he going to do...soak the metal in water?"

All in all, Michael Caine proves in The Hand that it can sometimes take a great actor to save an otherwise run-of-the-mill film.