If you were chained to something and time was running short. And yet in movies, if a guy is chained up and is desperate to get loose, then swish: hand gone! Notable examples are Hannibal, Saw (ok, thats his foot) and an episode of CSI:NY in which a victim bites off his hand to escape. Whats wrong with cutting off your thumb first? See if the cuffs slide off then? If not, lose the pinky. Bound to come off now. But no, I gotta cut the whole thing off at the wrist! Jesus. Any other examples of needless self-amputation? Or is there anything wrong with my thumb-lopping suggestion?
Boondock Saintsgot it right: simply brute-force the handcuff over the hand. Undoubtedly hurts like hell, scrapes a lot of the skin off and may take a few weeks to heal, but I doubt that anything would be permanently damaged.
Looking at my own hand, it seems to me that if I squeeze the base of my thumb towards the other edge, my hand is barely wider than my wrist, so unless the handcuff was tight enough to hamper the blood flow, it ought to slide off without much damage. But maybe I have unusually small hands, I’m not sure.
I would try and leave the thumb, as your hand would probably be almost useless without it. I’d rather lose the pinky and ring finger and keep the thumb. Would it be possible to take the finger off all the way down to the wrist, though? That might be the only issue.
A three finger claw hand would probably be just as functional, and might look kind of neat.
Three fingers is the minimum amount you need to have a functioning grabbing/gripping unit (able to hold something steady without wobbling) so yeah, that would work.
As far as looks go, Nightcrawler still gets the chicks now and then. (except in the Ultimate Universe where he…nevermind.)
Mad Max
Mad Max And possibly Oedipus: not strictly an amputation, but he could have just worn a bag over his head the rest of his life.
Mad Max. And possibly Oedipus: not strictly an amputation, but he could have just worn a bag over his head the rest of his life.
Mad Max ends with Max putting Johnny the Boy into a situation where it was amputate or die. As I recall, Johnny died.
The premise was used, almost identically, in the comic book series Watchmen. Also, in the novel West of Eden by Harry Harrison:
two tethered characters (by a chain and iron collars) are seperated when one is killed and beheaded
I recall one movie which ended with two guys out in the desert. One shoots the other, listens to his dying words, etc, but then the dying guy manages as his final act to handcuff himself to his killer’s ankle, with the implication that the killer will now be fatally trapped in the desert as well. I didn’t understand it. Even if the killer didn’t have a knife handy to amputate the dead-guy’s hand, I can easily imagine stomping his hand until the bones were pulverized, allowing the killer to pull the cuff free.
Heh, I just noticed who started this thread.
Actually, it was die anyway. There was not nearly enough time to sever the leg for Johnny, so he was dewad anyway.
There was a similar story on HBO’s Tales From the Crypt featuring Kyle MacLachlan as a killer being taken to the prison where he faces the death penalty. He is handcuffed to a deputy and the deputy swallows the only key.
Isn’t that also the last scene of Erich von Stroheim’s Greed?
It wouldn’t work for me, at least, because my hands are very bony and the bones are not in the least flexible. They’re not large by any means, but I have a 6 inch wrist and my hands widen out to 8 or 9". I’d have to cut all the way down to the wrist anyway, so why not cut to the wrist? But you’re right, better to lose a finger than the whole hand.
[Fierce Creatures]The *whole * hand?[/FQ]
Sorry about the double post, but that’s around. 6" inches around for the wrist, 8 for the hand.
Well, I wouldf if it offended me. Jesus said so. 
Mmmm… Sacrilicious
How is that so horrifying? So now you have the condemned man and deputy together at the prison. Couldn’t the other guards just saw off the cuffs, or, if they have time, just wait for the person who swallowed the key to pass it?
And now, the rest of the story…
[spoiler]Well, as the story progresses, the deputy dies of a heart attack (and he’s quite hefty). All Kyle wants to do is get across the border to Mexico. Now he has to carry the dead deputy with him. He is unable to find any way to cut the cuffs off. All this time a vulture is following the two with a hungry interest.
Realizing he can’t contiune to carry the deputy up a small hill of boulders (over which lies Mexico and freedom), Kyle comes up with the bright idea to take the deputy’s badge, sharpen it, and cut off the deupty hand. Kyle is delirious from the heat and ends up chopping off his own hand. He freaks out and falls off the top of the boulders and lands on a rock, breaking his spine, but not killing him. The vulture see his chance and lands on the rock next to Kyle and plucks his eyes out. The camera pulls back amid Kyle’s agonizing screams.[/spoiler]
I’ve heard of bad aim, but that’s just ridiculous.
Yeah, I’ve pretty much decided never to watch this.
There’s always Sam Ash, but *nothing * he ever does is unnecessary. swoon
Mr. Blue Sky, I was soooo happy reading that story… and then I figgered out it was just a movie, not something that actually happened.
Kyle Maclachlan is, uh, not my favorite actor. In fact, he’s not my favorite anything.
In fact, we have rules against saying what I would say if we didn’t have rules against it. :eek:
And hey, sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do.