The Hand (1981) Orion/Horror RT: 106 minutes Rated R (language, some graphic violence, nudity, sexual content) Director: Oliver Stone Screenplay: Oliver Stone Music: James Horner Cinematography: King Baggot Release date: April 24, 1981 (US) Cast: Michael Caine, Andrea Marcovicci, Annie McEnroe, Bruce McGill, Viveca Lindfors, Rosemary Murphy, Mara Hobel, Pat Corley, Charles Fleischer, Tracey Walter. Box Office: $2.4M (US)
Rating: *** ½
When The Hand was first released in April ’81, audiences ignored it and critics didn’t like it. It could be because it wasn’t the movie they were expecting. To be honest, it wasn’t what I expected either. It looks like one of those cheesy horror flicks where somebody’s body part comes back to life and attacks everything in its path. You know what I’m talking about. There must have been dozens of those movies shown on the Saturday afternoon creature double features on your local UHF stations.
Well, The Hand is most definitely not one of those movies. It’s actually a psychological horror film about Jonathan Lansdale (Caine, Sleuth), a comic strip artist who loses his right hand in a freak car accident caused by his wife (Marcovicci, The Stuff) while they are arguing about the possibility of a brief separation. They move to New York with their young daughter (Hobel, Mommie Dearest) and a new artist (Fleischer, Night Shift) is hired to take over Jonathan’s strip.
It’s obvious Jonathan is starting to lose it. He thinks he sees his severed hand following him. After he flips out about the direction the new artist is taking his creation, he and his wife separate. Jonathan accepts a teaching job at a small community college in California. Even though he’s in a new environment, he’s still convinced his lost hand is following him. He suffers a complete breakdown after a brief affair with one of his students (McEnroe, Howling II) goes bad and his wife reveals she has a boyfriend and will not be spending Christmas with him.
Probably not too many young people have heard of The Hand. It’s not a film that gets discussed a lot. I remember when it came out. I wanted to see it (big surprise), but the parental R-rated movie block prevented me from feasting my eyes on it. I didn’t get a look at it until ’87 when it aired on cable one uneventful Saturday night. I didn’t care for it at the time. That changed when I rewatched it several years later. Now I like it. It’s a smart horror-thriller, perhaps too smart for audiences expecting something more simplistic. Stone plays with the viewers’ minds by making them ask if any of it is real or is it just in the mind of the disturbed protagonist.
I won’t reveal the end, but I will say Orion missed a golden marketing opportunity here. Remember the marketing strategy of Happy Birthday to Me? On the poster, it clearly states “No one will be seated during the last ten minutes.” They should have done something similar with The Hand. It has the kind of ending that deserves to be a shock. I would definitely say the lackluster marketing contributed to the movie’s failure.
The Hand is one of the few movies in which Caine portrays a mentally disturbed person who may or may not be a villain. He turns in a great performance, but why shouldn’t he? He’s an extraordinarily gifted actor who does justice to any role he takes on. He even did a good job in Jaws: The Revenge, a rotten sequel that didn’t deserve an actor of his caliber. Marcovicci does a fine job as the wife who doesn’t know how to react to their new circumstances. However, the real MVP is Oliver Stone making his directorial debut. It’s solid work and a preview of the greatness yet to come in films like Platoon, The Doors, JFK and Natural Born Killers. You can see some of his signature moves here like the movie switching from color to black and white when something awful is about to happen.
I’ll grant it’s a little bit funny seeing a hand moving around by itself and murdering people. You usually only see something like that in schlock horror movies like Demonoid which came out around the same time. But The Hand is hardly what you’d call schlock. It has a brain and the ability to toy with the minds of those watching it. It’s what some would call a “mind f***”. It’s easy to understand why audiences didn’t flock to this one back then, but I think it’s high time it’s discovered and discussed as the unique horror film it is.
