Attack of the Hands!

Cafe Society
1

For some reason – probably because it’s easy to do, technically, the movies have an obsession with attacking disembodied hands. Eyes are overall scarier, but all and Eye can do is look at you (“The Crawling Eye” really had alien octopus-like things. The eyes were just gross – it was the tentacles and the intense cold that killed you). But a hand can choke you.

Nevertheless, the idea is silly. Hands can’t move very fast, can’t sense you, and, even if they did manage to get to your throat, don’t have the leverage they need without an arm.

Yet they keep at it. Here are a few Attacking Hand movies:

the Beast with Five Fingers – disembodied pianist’s hand kills people in Italy. Stars Peter Lorre, who had to deal with murderous non amputated pianist’s hands in Mad Love

Attack of the Saucer creatures – the alien Hand has its own attacjed eyeball, so it can see. It also can inject you with ethanol to stunm you and to discredit yo with the authorities.

the Crawling Hand – dead astronaut Hand from exploded spacecraft goes on unexplained murderous rampage, corrupting a young guy into helping him.

Dr. Terror’s House of Horrors – in one segment of this anthology movie, the hand of a suicided artist takes on a harsh critic of the artist’s work, eventually involving him in an auto accident that leaves him blind. I can just see a sequel in which the crtic’s eyes go after the hand – “An Eye for a Hand, A Hand for an Eye”

The Hand – directed by Oliver Stone before he did Platoon or The Doors or JFK, harking back to his bad-movie past. Fill in your conspiracy joke here. Michael Caine plays an artist who loses a hand in an auto accident (what is it with artists and auto accidents? Maybe he should’ve found a Critic). The Hand inexplicably comes after him. It zips along with supernatural speed that can’t be explained.

The Evil Dead II – Ash’s Hand comes after him, and becomes the first Disembodied Hand in cinema history to Give Someone the Finger.

The Addams Family and Addams Family Values – thing, much more animated than in the TV series (or Charles Addams; original cartoons) “walks” on its fingers, which makes more sense than any other means of locomotion. It’s also upbeat and not out to kill or maim anyone, which is a nice change.

The Thing with Five Fingers – not a movie, but a parody of movies (especially The Beast with Five Fingers) that was actually an ad for a camera. Featured a light-hearted Disembodied Hand that took pictures of people. All with one hand, see?

There are the "attached-handfs-of-a-killer-transplanted movies like Mad Love and [The Hands of Orlac*, but that’s a whole different genre.

Any others?

  • It didn’t help me that my piano teacher, when I was a kid, was named Orlac…

…

2

Red Dwarf had a hysterical “crawling hand” bit in one episode, and a man fighting (and eventually severing) his demon-possessed right hand (which attacks its owner by smashing plates over his head) is a major element in the classic Evil Dead.

3

There was a story on the old Night Gallery series called “The Hand of Borges Weems” or something like that. Or at least I thought there was, I looked on the episode guide but didn’t find it. I remember it scaring the heck out of me as a kid. Really, a disembodied hand should be pretty funny, but I had nightmares about it for weeks.

4

According to this page on Jabootu

http://www.jabootu.com/vcmayohone.htm

, the movie Demonoid 9which I haven’t seen) has a Killer Hand. I’ll have to rent it.

And, as I think about it, the hand of The Thing gets cut off in the 1951 Christian Nyby version and stays alive, although it doesn’t go running around and killing people (although it does have several “monster seeds” in it)
The parts of the Killer Robot in Hardware reassemble themselves, but the Hand doesn’t go off by itself on a killer spree (just like the Iron Giant reassembles himself, although the hand doesn’t really do anything on its own).

5

There’s the truly awful Body Parts, where the transplanted arm from a murderer controls the actions of our hero.

6

Just a quick note – there are two different versions of “The Hands of Orlac”. Three if you count “Mad love”, which used that as an alternate title. There was a silent version Jabootu doesn’t report.

At the end of Frankenhooker (itself pretty much a remake of The Head That Wouldn’t Die) there’s an attack by renegade female body parts (more interesting and sexier than the pinheaded whatsit in THTWD). I don’t recall if a hand was among the parts, but at least one probably was.

7

Idle Hands! Lazy pot-smoker’s hand becomes possessed by the devil and goes on a killing spree.

Highly underrated movie.

8

nitpick Cal , the name of one of the films on your list is actually Invasion of the Saucermen nitpick

I remember seeing a movie on 42nd Street (back in the sleaze days) called Demonoid . All I can remember about it was this possessed hand that possessed a series of victims, each of which would cut off the hand so it could move to the next victim. Pretty cheesy, IIRC.

9

Slipping into the realm of anime, Vampire Hunter D featured a disembodied hand at one point, as I recall. The title character’s hand either was severed from his arm or voluntarily separated from him to feed. It had a work-around for the leverage problems, though–it had a great big fang-filled mouth in its palm.

I understand it even had spoken lines in a later movie, though I haven’t seen it.

10

Not a movie, but there’s Thomas Burke’s classic mystery story “The Hands of Mr. Ottermole.” The IMDB indicates it was once an episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents and the story is still considered one of the greatest in the genre.

11

What, no love for Buffy? OK, it was a Mummy’s Hand, but she was attacked repeatedly (and humorously) by a disembodied hand in “Life Serial”.

12

On the flip side, there’s Czech video artist Jan Svankmajer’s 1989 claymation short, “Darkness/Light/Darkness,” in which a hand gradually reassembles its entire body, piece by piece, as they come a-knockin’ on its door.