The Hand (1981)
Directed by Oliver Stone
Written by Oliver Stone
Starring Michael Caine, Bruce McGill
Release Date April 24th, 1981
Published August 2nd, 2023
The Hand is a truly bizarre idea. Writer-Director Oliver Stone, directing only his second feature, sets out to have us be genuinely afraid that a severed hand might be killing people. Forgetting the fact that watching people wrestle with a severed hand that they are holding to their throat is a very, very funny visual, Stone is deathly serious in how he presents The Hand. Eschewing the 60s B-Movie, Drive-In aesthetic more suited to this idea, Stone seems to think that he can convince us that a severed hand is a frightening monster on par with the greats of MGM's murderer's row.
Stone is undermined in his effort by his choice of star. Michael Caine may be an all time beloved actor but when he's in a bad movie, he gets into the bad vibe. Caine has famously said of The Hand that the film helped put a new garage on his home. That about sums up Caine's level of commitment to this silly, silly movie that only the writer-director seems to think is genuinely scary. Caine hams it up in the role of cartoonist, Jon Lansdale.
The contempt with which Caine discusses his character's profession is unintentionally hilarious. The idea is that he's become wildly successful and famous for writing a manly superhero character. But when Caine tries to defend the integrity of his creation, his art, he sounds as if he were mocking the very concept of comic strips all together. There is simply nothing about the actor Michael Caine that screams comic strip auteur. It's easy to sense that Caine simply doesn't care about this back story, it's what he's been asked to deliver and he's doing it.
The plot of The Hand centers on an accident in which our cartoonist protagonist loses his hand. The hand is cut clean off and then simply vanishes from the field where it most certainly had landed. The hand then begins a reign of terror that begins with menacing the family cat and graduates to a legit body count. The question hovering over all of the action of The Hand however is: Is the hand killing people or is it all in Jon Lansdale's mind?
Find my full length review at Horror.Media
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