The Hand
(1981) 104 min.
Rated: R
Country: USA
Director: Oliver Stone
Stars: Michael Caine, Andrea Marcovicci, Annie McEnroe
Links: IMDB | Wikipedia
Rating: ★★☆☆☆
An artist loses his hand which in turn goes on to gain a life of its own.
Synopsis:
Jon Lansdale (Caine) is a comic book artist who lives with his wife Anne (Marcovicci) and their daughter. He’s coming to the end of his comic, Mandro’s storyline.
Jon and Anne’s relationship is slightly strained. She has a desire to buy an apartment in New York.
While they are out for a drive with Anne driving they get into a bit of an argument over Anne’s desire to live in New York alone while she wants Jon to stay in Vermont. While she stubbornly decides to go to New York anyway she moves into a lane of oncoming traffic and through an complicated car accident no one is hurt except Jon gets his hand sliced off between two vehicles.
The hand is not found at the scene of the accident, though people, including Anne, look for it.
Jon stays in a hospital for a while and has to adjust to a life where his dominant hand is removed. It’s decided that another artist will complete the artwork for his comic as it draws to a close.
Jon has a difficult time transitioning. He’s given a prosthetic hand with a glove over it. At night he dreams of his hand crawling through the darkness. It’s as if he’s connected to it still. He wakes in cold sweats.
When Jon reviews the new comic boards he sees the story has been changed up a bit and gets extremely upset. Later he is in the office with the new artist, it’s discovered that the boards are marked up over the artwork. Afterwards he’s essentially fired from the job and his agent refuses to work with him again.
On Jon’s way home a street bum runs into him and Jon brushes him off. The bum is then strangled by a hand in an alley.
Jon gets a job working for a community college in California. He moves to a depressingly tiny classroom and small home for this job. Anne, meanwhile, is cooling off again about their relationship and wants to stay in New York and away from him.
One of his students notices him and is fond of him. Stella (McEnroe) comes over to Jon’s home and the two have sex. They continue this relationship of trysts. Meanwhile, Jon is talking to Brian, one of the other teachers at the small college. One day at Christmas he finds out that Brian is going with Stella to L.A. for two weeks.
Jon gets deeply upset and drives to Reno that night. Stella is shown being strangled by the hand while looking at a gift under Jon’s Christmas tree.
Brian gets upset and drunk since Stella never showed up for their time in L.A. She has been missing for a while and Brian asks Jon if he’s seen her. He admits they’d been seeing each other but claims he drove to Reno the last night she was seen. When they both leave the bar, Brian stops Jon’s car and accuses him of having something to do with her disappearance. As Brian sits in his car the hand strangles him and Jon drives off quickly.
Anne and their child visit Jon’s cabin for the Christmas holiday. Anne at first complains of a smell in the house, but forgets it. Jon notices her bags aren’t fully unpacked and accuses her of not intending to stay. Anne admits she’s seeing her yoga instructor but assures John that their daughter is okay with it and they’ll still be good friends.
Jon gets extremely upset about this news and decides to sleep in a cot downstairs. During the night he hears a breaking noise in the bedroom and rushes up to see the hand strangling Anne. He moves to take it off, but their daughter sees them and tells her father to stop hurting her mommy. Jon asks her to call the police.
Jon goes down to look for the hand and a battle happens where Jon fights the hand. In the end, the hand starts to choke him and he passes out.
The police arrive and Jon has his left hand around his neck. His wife is seriously injured and put into an emergency vehicle. Meanwhile, the town police ask to see the inside of Jon’s trunk as it seems a foul odor is coming from it. Jon reluctantly opens the trunk and inside are the bodies of Brian and Stella. They’ve been dead inside his house all this time.
We see Jon in a clinical testing room. He’s strapped to a chair with a female doctor asking him psychological questions. The doctor is trying to convince Jon that every single time he believes the hand did it, in reality it was himself. The hand was a scapegoat for Jon’s desire to kill these people. Jon focuses on her and she unstraps his right hand and shakes it firmly as a sign of trust. She asks him what he’s thinking about right at that moment. Jon has been studying the vent and he believes that the hand will kill the doctor too. That the hand hates her. The doctor corrects him and tells him “no, YOU hate me, Jon.” Soon, however, she is choked to death by a hand. Jon is loose, now freed from being strapped to the chair. The movie ends with his maniacal laughing and the audience is never really sure if it was a hand or Jon all along.
Review:
I think I can safely say that this film is watchable. There’s also an amount of camerawork and use of colors in this film that add to the value of the film overall. I can see how the film wishes to be deep and meaningful, but it also falters as a genuinely frightful film.
Michael Caine tries his best to earnestly scream and act in this film. It is a little on the hammy side, but it’s not as if one would go into this film expecting Shakespeare.
I think if you’re a fan of Oliver Stone’s work and you don’t mind a bit of schlocky B-movie fun, then this will definitely be something to entertain you. Is the monster real or is it an illusion? There have been other hand monster films before and surely this film will harken back to days when theaters were full of popcorn and double features.