The Hand Movie
Storyline
TAGLINES
It lives. It crawls. And suddenly, it kills.
Nothing Will Prepare You For THE HAND.
Jon Lansdale is a comic book artist who loses his right hand in a car accident. The hand was not found at the scene of the accident, but it soon returns by itself to follow Jon around, and murder those who anger him.
| Michael Caine | Jonathan Lansdale |
| Andrea Marcovicci | Anne Lansdale |
| Annie McEnroe | Stella Roche |
| Bruce McGill | Brian Ferguson |
| Viveca Lindfors | Doctress |
| Rosemary Murphy | Karen Wagner |
| Mara Hobel | Lizzie Lansdale |
| Pat Corley | Sheriff |
| Nicholas Hormann | Bill Richamn |
| Ed Marshall | Doctor |
| Charles Fleischer | David Maddow |
| John Stinson | Therapist |
| Richard Altman | Hammond |
| Sparky Watt | Sergeant |
| Tracey Walter | Cop |
| Oliver Stone |
4.90 out of 10 (1581 votes)
Visitor Reviews
Caine is good, but the film is a bit of a mish-mash
posted on 09 Dec 2008The Hand is especially interesting on a curiosity level because it is directed by the great Oliver Stone. What was the man behind such masterpieces as Platoon and Born on the Fourth of July doing working on a horror opus like this? Who knows.Michael Caine is pretty good as a cartoonist who loses his hand in a freak car accident. Later, the severed hand comes to life and starts killing all the people who have ever wronged Caine. Or, is it that Caine is killing them himself, but hallucinating that the hand is the culprit?The scene in which Caine loses his hand is remarkable in many ways. The agony etched across his face as he staggers around bleeding is a great moment of acting. The special effects employed to show the hand getting sliced off is convincing and makes you want to turn away from the screen. However, in other aspects the film is a failure. The "twist" ending defies logic and undermines much of the careful explanatory detail that has gone before. The basic premise of a killer hand crawling around is also a bit too funny to take seriously, and anyway, wasn't it used before in The Beast With Five Fingers?This film is a mixed bag of good elements and bad elements. However, fans of Stone and Caine will undoubtedly want to give it a whirl.
A Classic In It's Own Right
posted on 22 Apr 2008This is a story of a comic book artist who looses his hand in an accident, which costs him his job and in turn helps ruin his marriage while in the meantime "his hand comes back to life and slowly begins to kill those around him who victimize him". Obviously if THAT were true it would be a pretty stupid movie and only good for laughs, and i fear that the reason it has such a low rating is firstly because people were EXPECTING something else from the movie and secondly, possibly they did not understand the point of it.It is a very well crafted and intense psychological study and I can't understand how some say the acting is poor because it is really quite decent. Now of course the idea of a hand roaming around killing people, even if it's a character's psychotic manifestation could be in part an object of humour, which to me does not hurt the movie but only allows it another level. I am always foremost extremely wary of whether a storyline is well crafted and actually makes sense. Oliver stone who brought us another such horror classic as "U Turn" (which if you have seen is full of intentional black humour)develops the story expertly well, and in terms of story credibility, where he did go a bit too far in "U Turn", he keeps this one well under control and the ending fits perfectly.I would even consider this movie up there with classics such as "Psycho" because honestly.... If you can accept the fact that a character is psychologically deranged and has a multiple personality disorder which makes him dress up as his mother and imagining that it is his mother who kills people, BUT he is still able to control this alter ego when it suits him and keep a sane and normal appearance to any passers by, then you should be able to accept a character who blacks out and imagines that his severed hand is killing the aggressors around him when he himself is in fact doing it. To sum it up, if you're into psychological thrillers, check it out. it might not be exactly what you expect but that itself doesn't make it a bad movie.
It's the ending that makes this movie.
posted on 11 Jan 2008I remember watching this movie soon after it came out and the special effects were not bad for the time period that it came out despite what people say. Remember, Star Wars had only been out a few years by this time. As far as the movie goes, Caine does quite well with his part and the plot is believable in the way Freddie Kruger is believable. If you've seen many "creature" movies, then this one could seem to be predictable and thus lose some of it's "boo" effect. Wait until the end and watch closely. If you've seen this movie you should know what I mean, if not then pay close attention. After seeing that final scene you suddenly realize that maybe all wasn't as it seemed. Go back through this movie and keep in mind that last scene. Suddenly the whole movie transcends the Freddie Kruger believable and becomes in fact quite plausible. It's like watching Star Wars Episode 4 after just watching Episode 3, it all takes on new meaning!
THE HAND (Oliver Stone, 1981) **
posted on 19 Sep 2007Nobody can ever accuse Michael Caine of not having had a fascinating career. His incredibly prolific filmography (132 appearances and counting in just over 50 years) is littered with high highs (a handful of all-time classics and 2 Academy Awards) and low lows (actually, from quite early on in his career to, unsurprisingly, the present day). Still, the latter bunch are, for all their glaring faults, hardly unwatchable and, at times, fairly tolerable and this rare horror item is certainly among his more interesting failures.Apart from its horror elements and the chance to watch another Michael Caine stinker (although, as it turns out, Jon Voight and Christopher Walken had both previously turned down the lead role), the film's main draw nowadays is watching an early (though not the first) directorial stint from Oliver Stone (he even has an amusing unbilled cameo as an ill-fated tramp) and, most intriguingly, within an exploitation genre from which he has distanced himself completely since then. As I mentioned earlier, the film ends up being less the disastrous embarrassment I had anticipated and more a watchable (if hardly original) horror flick which moves rather slowly but has has the occasional effective shock moment to satiate genre fans. In fact, Stone infuses the film with a modicum of style including subjective shots from the marauding hand's point of view, delirious dream sequences often shot in monochrome and, most incredibly, an utterly grisly freak car accident sequence (with fake blood galore) early on in the film in which cartoonist Caine loses his drawing hand and which sets the narrative in motion.The thing is that, while it starts well enough, the film is soon bogged down by repetitive marital squabbles between an increasingly unhinged Caine and his free-spirited wife Andrea Marcovicci. Besides, Caine's stump is not exactly the greatest and, when all is said and done, we have been here once too often and I only need to point out the other more notable cinematic examples of "the walking hand" - THE HANDS OF ORLAC (1924), MAD LOVE (1935) THE BEAST WITH FIVE FINGERS (1946), THE EXTERMINATING ANGEL (1962), DR. TERROR'S HOUSE OF HORRORS (1965) and ...AND NOW THE SCREAMING STARTS! (1973) - for this film's relative redundance to become apparent. Still, that such an old-fashioned concept was revived at this point in time and by these film-makers is extraordinary in itself but, even if they did try to bring it up-to-date with the addition of gore and sleaze, I can't say I was too surprised by the twist ending which - while not making a great deal of sense and somewhat dispelling the strong similarities with Michael Caine's previous role in another imitative (but much more successful) slasher, DRESSED TO KILL (1980), which had previously been to the fore - provided Hollywood veteran Viveca Lindfors with a very brief but notable cameo as Caine's no-nonsense shrink.
I think it is illegal to have two surprise endings.
posted on 02 Aug 2007Not that the endings are much of a surprise, it is just the movie sets up one thing only to tear it down in the end, and then it tears down what just happened and sets up what the movie was trying to establish in the first place. I know that doesn't make sense, but if you saw it you may get what I am trying to say. This movie stars Michael Caine as a comic book artist.
He ends up getting into a wreck, well actually he and his wife just avoid a wreck, but he gets his hand chopped off. He goes through some depression because his hand is not found and can't be reattached. He ends up getting an artificial hand which lets him to some things, but not things that take a little touch (like draw the comic he does). He tries teaching a class, but he is still depressed about losing his hand and not being able to draw.
Meanwhile, his lost hand has seemingly come to have a life of its own, and for some reason it wants to kill. Could have been a good movie, but they turn stuff around here and there to try and surprise the audience and it ends up really deflating the whole movie.
interesting concept,but the movie is not interesting
posted on 31 Jan 2007this movie kinda reminded me of the classic short story The Monkey's Paw,only it isn't as good.it's too long for one thing,and too slow.the concept is interesting,but to me the execution of it goes wrong somewhere.i did find it interesting that Oliver Stone wrote the screenplay and directed the movie.there is nothing political about the movie.this doesn't mean the movie is good of course,but it is an interesting aside,nonetheless.Michael Caine is the lead,and and does an OK job,but the material is not really compelling or even mildly interesting.i watched it for awhile and got bored,so i started talking on the phone with a friend while i continued watching halfheartedly.having said all that,i don't think it is an awful movie,it's just not very interesting.by the way,this movie is part of the Twisted terror Collection,and is also contained in the box set(along with five other titles)of the same name.anyway,my vote for the hand is a 4/10
Horror film that tries to be more and fails
posted on 15 Sep 2006The Hand is a very poor film. It is not, like some poor films, suffering from inept direction, low budget and untalented actors-instead, what we have here is a very Sidomak "is it supernatural or is it in the protaganist's head?". Unfortunately, this film's poor script, glacier pacing, unlikable characters make the whole Sidomak concept fail. Also, as a movie made in the early 80's, "The Hand" did not have to operate on the sort of restrictions that made Sidomak adopt his "is it or isn't" plots in the first place. Also, this idea was very tired, tv-movie material by the eighties (or by the end of the forties, for that matter). This film suffers, I feel, from similar problems that plague horror films made by "serious" filmmaker's-they just can't accept that they're making a simple genre picture, and instead try to elevate it with a bunch of "psychological" horror. I'm not saying one can't make a meaningful horror film (look no further than Night of the Living Dead for a horror film with a message)but that too often a "serious" filmmaker will f-up a horror flik with his condescending attitude towards the genre. "The Hand" is one example of this.
Drama and horror don't mix.
posted on 03 Sep 2006The mix of drama and horror is unusually and unfortunately it doesn't work.Actually I think that the movie would have been quite good if it had just been an horror movie but for some strange reason there is more drama than horror in this movie and the drama elements are far from interesting or original. A shame.Still it is a worthy early effort from the now famous director Oliver Stone. The movie has it's moments and it's nice to see some of the style that Oliver Stone also used in his later better known movies, in a way that makes it a must see for the Oliver Stone fans.Far from good but also far from bad. Only recommendable for the Stone fans.5/10
"You don't cut the balls off Superman." I actually quite liked it.
posted on 06 Apr 2006The Hand starts in sunny Vermont where Mandro comic book artist John Lansdale (Michael Caine) lives with his wife Anne (Andrea Marcovicci) & young daughter Lizzy (Mara Hobel), while driving along arguing about moving to New York for the winter John's right hand is severed in a freak car accident. John's hand is never found & he has to learn to cope with a prosthetic hand from now on, the accident has a big effect on John's life as he can't draw anymore & has to accept a lowly teaching job in a small town called Sarahville in California which means he has to separate from Anne who then has an affair while John is away. As things go from bad to worse John gets the feeling that his severed right hand has a mind of it's own & is single-handedly (ha!)killing people around him who have angered him...Written & directed by Oliver Stone this psychological horror thriller with a touch of drama has a pretty bad reputation but I have to say I quite liked it, it's certainly not a film that will appeal to a general audience but I think there's enough here to keep one interested throughout it's 100 odd minute duration. The script was based on a novel called 'The Lizard's Tail' by Marc Brandell & centers a tale of psychological drama about a man losing his sanity & failing to adjust after a life changing accident around the old horror cliché of the living disembodied hand used to good effect (or not depending on your opinion) in such films as The Beast with Five Fingers (1947), The Crawling Hand (1963) & Dr. Terror's House of Horrors (1964) amongst other's & I thought the concept, plot & way the story progresses was pretty good. The character's are good & I was interested in them, it's nice to see proper people in a horror film rather than faceless teenagers & while the pace isn't the quickest it develops it's story to the point where the events actually matter & have some significance to the audience. I also liked the way Stone gives the film a certain ambiguity & mystery, it's not clear until the end whether John's severed hand is responsible or whether it's John himself committing the murders during his blackouts. Having said that The Hand is not perfect, it's undeniably silly, who did that car belong to that rolled down the diff on fire & why was that scene even in the film in the first place & I really thought the ending was poor too.The film has a nice clean look about it, it looks a bit dated with a very static camera but it's well made. There's not much gore here but there is one half decent money shot here as John gets his hand severed & we see his bloody stump spurting blood everywhere. The severed hand effects are variable & to be honest not that good although I suspect they look better than any modern equivalent CGI effects would. While not overly scary the film does have a few creepy moments here & there & at least it does try to create a bit of an atmosphere although the bizarre scene when a cat decides to literally jump through a window for no apparent reason is unintentionally funny. There's some nudity as well if that sort of thing interests you as the local slut gets her breast's out within five minutes of meeting Caine, I wish I had that effect on women...Filmed in California The Hand has good production values & looks nice enough. The acting is pretty good even if Michael Caine goes a little over the top at times, apparently he took the role after Jon Voight, Christopher Walken & Dustin Hoffman turned the part down & Caine has also said in interviews the only reason he made The Hand was to earn the money to pay for a new garage he was having built at the time! Fair enough I suppose but was rolling around on the floor fighting your own severed hand really worth it?The Hand is a film that I feel like I shouldn't have liked but I did like it & even if I would find it hard to recommend it to one & all I think anyone interested in psychological horror could do a lot worse & watching Michael Caine overact as he wrestles with his own severed hand (& lose) is fun too. If nothing else The Hand teaches us one very important thing, never put your hand out of a car window while your wife is driving otherwise it'll end in tears...
The Hand, now on DVD, for all you masochists
posted on 11 Oct 2005Actually, I had never seen "The Hand" before and wasn't quite sure what to expect, but it probably wasn't this. I guess I was thinking it would be something along the lines of the cheesy "Crawling Hand" movie from the early 60's and actually, it's not too far from it, just with better production values (I think) and color photography. Michael Caine plays a sort-of famous cartoonist, who is more than happy to live at his New England home & do his thing, but his wife dreams of other, more new-age things she'd like to do and begs him to move back to New York City. While driving one day, there's a nasty accident in which Caine loses his drawing hand and has to learn to live all over again, and he ends up taking a teaching job in California when he can't continue on with his cartooning. His new-age wife has other ideas though & she's determined to do what she wants no matter what Caine says. So Caine takes to "interludes" with his students, from his class, and as more stress builds up there seems to be attacks taking place from Caine's severed hand, which was never found after the accident. How did it get to California? Thumb a ride? At any rate, one begins to wonder if it's the severed hand doing all the dirty work, or if it's something to do with Caine's new prosthetic GI Joe Kung-Fu grip hand. At any rate, things eventually come to a head with the new girlfriend, the wife, the kid, the job, the hand, etc, which all leads to a rather creepy ending. This isn't terrible, but it's not the best horror film I've ever seen. Probably one of the scariest aspects of it is Caine's hairstyle, which at many times during this movie resembles a fright wig. 6 out of 10.
Hand job
posted on 08 Oct 2005Being an actor must be hard sometimes. I would think that someone as good as Michael Caine would not have to take jobs like this. It really is beneath him.He lost his hand and the hand has a mind of its own - or does it? It may act separate from it's owner, but apparently it's owner is directing it. It was creepy and violent, but just didn't grab me. :-) I remember Viveca Lindfors from Stargate. She was interesting as the psychiatrist, but that was five minutes. Andrea Marcovicci, who played Caine's wife was just flat. Nothing there.The only thing that was really interesting was the action with Annie McEnroe. I have not seen here before so I'll have to check out Howling II.I would imagine that Oliver Stone and Michael Caine would like to erase this one from their resumes.
An early Oliver Stone - minus the conspiracy nonsense.
posted on 11 Sep 2005So was it the hand or was it him? Or better put: was it his old severed hand or his still-attached loyal hand? Or better even: was it his right or his left hand? We are left (pun, oh pun) in the dark about this. Has Caine gone insane or did the hand do the killing? Wow. What a dilemma. Oliver Stone certainly knows how to pose the relevant questions. Was it all a conspiracy by his old hand to screw up its old master? Conspiracy. Sounds familiar. Stone's early effort is bland, unimaginative, badly directed even. Visually it's unsophisticated, and most of the characters are either unrealistic, clichéd or boring. The film isn't boring, but it's not exactly exciting either. If Caine weren't in it I would have most likely not watched it. This killer-hand idea ranks right up (or down) there with the killer lepus, killer shrews, killer bees, and killer rats of the movie world. A very absurd thing in the movie was the fact that they couldn't find his severed hand on the scene of the accident. His wife and a couple of cops were searching for it, yet they couldn't find it. (And we know that the hand didn't scurry away immediately.) Yet when Caine later on visits the site, he actually manages to find his ring; Caine finds his comparatively tiny ring, but a couple of people (professionals) can't find an entire hand. The scene where one of Caine's students very matter-of-factly offers her body to him is a pure male fantasy. Stone is privately a major skirt-chaser, so this scene must have been dear to his heart.An early effort from the Marxist Oliver Stone. Quite a simple movie, before he developed his fetish for complex – not to mention idiotic – conspiracy theories.
Stone tries his 'hand' at horror
posted on 09 Aug 2005An early Oliver Stone directed film. The Hand does well with atmospheric settings, an essential part of any horror story. There's the beautiful country lakeside home, a New York loft and a rain drenched Northern California town.The horror level won't blow you out of the room however. It's more of a story of dark, suspicious moods and egos presented with intelligent scripted dialogue by a first rate cast. Mara Hobel, playing the young daughter, even does well with little furtive glances, dead pan stares and pert smiles.A master touch is the final scene between a thoroughly exhausted and shattered Caine and the Viveca Lindfors 'there are no such things as ghosts' psychiatrist. The final freeze frame of Caine rising up with a look of gloating madness is brilliant.
Liked the psychological demons of Michael Caine
posted on 20 May 2005As a psychological thriller this actually works. In large part because of Michael Caine. As a B movie about a killer hand or a schizo cartoonist it features Olive Stone's tortured man, driven to ruin by a woman, whose lack of self-knowledge and unchecked rage propel him to violence. I kind of agree with another reviewer's disappointment at the ending not wrapping it up, but The Hand is enough of a thing that I feel neither way about the end. Stone's vitriol for women, a characterization many have stuck on throughout his career, is very apparent here. Caine as Johnathan Lansdale is comfortable in his beautiful country home, crafting a semi-popular syndicated cartoon. But his yogic wife Anne (Andrea Marcovicci) wants to do something with her life and demands a move to NYC. This ends up undoing him, but not before he struggles with having his writing/drawing hand severed. Without saying more, I'd recommend this for Caine's gradual unraveling, an engrossing trip into The Mind and even a good Oliver Stone cameo.
Decent enough
posted on 17 May 2005I don't know if I was in a rare forgiving frame of mind but The Hand actually worked for me.It doesn't go very deep in the psychological department and just about every average viewer can spot the twist but then the end just throws everything out the window and leaves the audience shouting; What the ****! But it's well acted, especially by Caine who completely earns viewer's sympathy. Writer/director Oliver Stone effortlessly builds up suspense and atmosphere and some scenes here do work really well. Technical aspects are surprisingly well handled and make up effects are gruesome and well done.While The Hand won't go down as a cinematic masterpiece, it's a solid thriller nonetheless.
as a fan of Caine's and a (usually) fan of Stone's it's suffice to say this is crap
posted on 12 Mar 2005The Hand is a psychological horror film, at least that's what it touts itself to be on the video box. It's mostly just a lot of heavy-handed pseudo-thrills meant to give chills and shocks when really it just creates some redundancy. We're given the tragedy of a character, Joe Lansdale, who loses his hand in a rather freak accident while his wife is driving the car, and he can't seem to find the bloody thing in a field. He gets a metal replacement put on ala the Terminator, but does the old hand left for the bugs in the field have its own mind? Or is Joe just controlling the thing and going after all of the people (i.e. his own wife, his mistress, his mistress's actual f***-buddy, etc)? The real intentions aren't made totally clear, this despite Oliver Stone's attempts at creating a sense of the dangerous and paranoid with Caine's character. And Michael Caine, he does try his best, he really does, going for every scene with the kind of dedication and (trying to search for) truth of the matter even as the script tries to undercut him with below-par dialog. Maybe Stone wasn't really equipped for this material anyway, that in his defense (if possible) he was a hired gun- based more possibly on his first film Seizure, a horror film, than any clout he got from his first Oscar- and whatever skills he brought weren't put into a style that really made things work.Indeed, now that we have a movie like Raimi's Evil Dead 2: Dead By Dawn, we see how cheesy a killer-hand flick really is and how it would be simply better off as unintentional comedy. There's a couple of scenes were we see the potential for something over the top, like when the black cat jumps up on the desk and inexplicably crashes through the window (!) or just the image of that lizard's tale flapping about which the original book from the movie has its name. But none of the characters are much convincing, and the tendencies that are weakest that Stone tends towards which are, frankly, beating-you-over-the-head things with direction and writing, are put way up front here. It's been said, by the man himself, that Stone was on coke for a period in the early 80s prior to writing Scarface. Maybe some of that rubbed off the wrong way here? Bottom line, whatever's meant to be scary is downright lame, and its just crappy film-making that battles with an actor of Caine's caliber who does try and make it interesting. He does, actually, which may be the only real longevity this has. If you're at all a Stone fan, as I am (up to a point) it's a disappointing Psycho variation, and for his haters it's just more fuel for the fire.
Under-appreciated Psychological Thriller
posted on 25 Feb 2005I watched this movie twice recently, and thought that it was excellent. Great, in fact.This early Oliver Stone film is quite good in that you really have to be "sharp" to "get it". Although on the surface, this movie seems to be almost a 'slasher' movie, it is not. It is much, much more. Might be a little too heady for some to grasp, but that makes it no less great.I think the performance by Mr. Caine was superb. I could really feel his emotions at times. He certainly reached way inside of himself in this role. In my opinion, the best performance I have seen by him.This is definitely one of those 'more than meets the eye' type of movies. If you watch it, and don't get it, watch it again.I would recommend this film to fans of Psychological Thrillers, Horror, Mystery, Crime Drama, and cult film fans.I can't believe this has a cumulative rating of only 4.7. I give 'The Hand' 8 out of 10. A GREAT Horror Psychological Thriller.
CREEPY!
posted on 13 Feb 2005Losing a hand in a car accident is one thing anyone will never get over with. Losing your mind is forever! This movie will make anyone's skin crawl.....(DID I SAY CRAWL?) What a knee-slapper, a whack on the back, a slap in the face,... (UH-OH!) WHERE'S MY HAND? (AAAAAAAHHHHHHHH!!!!!)This horror movie is a combination of creepy, silly, and questionably unbelievable! Michael Caine plays a maimed cartoonist who descends into madness after the loss of hand, and then no one finds the hand afterwards. Somehow, the spirit of his hand remains in his mind, and seemingly drives him into the breaking point. Then in one scene one of his students takes advantage of him, which was no surprise to me. But the true ending of the movie would be a true horror ending when the severed hand really shows and the counselors should be ignored completely. Severed limbs are creepy the earlier ones show be taken advantage of just don't look over your shoulder for a creepy, crawly, hand. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!!!! 2 OUT OF 5 STARS!
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Oliver Stone should keep his HANDS off the horror genre
posted on 11 Jan 2009All the overenthusiastic movie-junkies who claim that Oliver Stone is a genius and a undeniable master in cinema should watch this early failure and reconsider. Sure, films like Platoon and JFK (which he directed) and titles like Midnight Express and Scarface (which he wrote) speak to the imagination, but this grotesque and rather nasty horror film is completely uninspired and silly. Actually, it's just a plain rip-off from the classic suspense film `The Beast With Five Fingers' starring the legendary Peter Lorre. ***Small Spoilers***Michael Caine plays an entangled cartoonist who loses his hand in an accident. His lost hand comes to life again and seems to start a killing spree…Is that true, or is our cartoonist just hallucinating and suffering from a twisted, murderous pressure himself ?? ***End Spoilers*** The acting performances of the entire cast are far below standards, especially Annie McEnroe…I don't know where Stone found her, but she sure can't act her way out of this...even though it's a rather simple role. Overall, the whole movie contains exactly ONE scene that is worth mentioning and that is the accident sequence in which Caine loses his hand. Not much, is it? Oliver Stone might be a master in certain fields but, when it comes to horror, he surely needs a helping hand… NEXT!