Directed by Eric Red
Written by Eric Red, Norman Snider
Starring Jeff Fahey, Brad Dourif, Kim Delaney, Lindsay Duncan
Release Date August 2nd, 1991
Box Office $9.2 million
Body Parts stars Jeff Fahey, a golden boy of the low budget horror set in the 1990s, as a doctor trying to prove that death row inmates were capable of being reformed. Our protagonists ideals are put to the test after a car accident takes his arm and an experimental surgery grafts the arm of a former serial murderer onto the good doctor's body. The arm remains psychically linked to the supposedly dead murderer and begins to turn against its new host. That's the high concept premise of Body Parts and there really isn't much to it beyond that premise.
The disparate parts of the serial killer's body, his arms and legs, even his head, try to reassemble themselves. All the while, Fahey's doctor knows what is happening and is trying to stop the body parts from killing their new hosts, including an artist played by Brad Dourif who has become wildly more prolific and creative with his new arm and an average joe who got both of the killer's legs and can now play basketball for the first time. Both men are set to lose their new body parts unless our hero doctor can warn them about what is happening.
And that's the plot of Body Parts. There really isn't much to say about the plot. It's bizarre but presented in a fashion that mutes how bizarre it is. Director Eric Red doesn't treat this kind of science fiction notion of transplant surgery with any kind of special quality. He makes it seem downright mundane aside from the body horror surgical scars applied to the amputee arm. They went all out making the arm look grotesque for the few scenes we are able to see it. Beyond that however, Body Parts is desperately mediocre effort from a director who only kind of seems as if he knows what he's doing.
I will give you a for instance. Red directs a scene early in Body Parts where he wants to underline how normal and suburban the doctor is. So, he has the doctor enjoy a family breakfast with his wife and two kids and makes a big show of moving his camera through the halls of the house to the front door where the wife and children follow dad so they can send him off with a hug and kiss. It's all needless underlining of the point: he's a normal suburban dad. Except, it's not normal. Real families don't do this and if you saw this in real life you might suspect some kind of cult behavior occurring.
