The Hand (1981)

The comic book writer and cartoonist Jonathan "Jon" Lansdale (Michael Caine) is the creator of the successful hero "Mandro" and lives with his wife Anne Lansdale (Andrea Marcovicci) and their daughter Lizzie in the countryside. Anne wants to move to New York and has an argument with Jon while driving on the road. She distracts with an impatient driver and has a car accident with a truck where Jon loses his right hand. The hand is not found and Jon needs to use prosthesis. They move to New York and his editor Karen Wagner (Rosemary Murphy) offers another cartoonist to proceed with "Mandro". However Jon is not happy with the modifications introduced in his character by the new cartoonist and Karen let him go.Without money, Jon moves to California to teach in a college while Anne and Lizzie stay in New York for a few more months. Jon has a love affair with his student Stella Roche (Annie McEnroe) and he feels attracted by her. However when his colleague Brian Ferguson (Bruce McGill) tells that Stella is an easy woman, Jon does not want to see her. However, his severed hand kills Stella and when Brian tells that he is going to the police to report that Stella is missing, his hand also kills him. Meanwhile Anne and Lizzie come to his house to spend Christmas with him. Soon he learns that Anne is betraying him and that she intends to go to Los Angeles with Lizzie. Out of the blue, his hand tries to strangle Anne and Jon follows it. Is it possible that the hand does exist to kill whoever anger him?"The Hand" is an early film directed by Oliver Stone with a creepy story. The plot is developed in slow pace and the mystery remains until the last scene when the viewer finally understands what happened. Michael Caine has a great performance as usual and the movie is intriguing and engaging. My vote is seven.Title (Brazil): "A Mão" ("The Hand")

Comic book artist Jon Lansdale is involved in a car accident where he loses his right hand . Trying to adjust to life without his hand Lansdale becomes more and more obsessed and feels he is descending in to insanity and feels he's being stalked by his severed hand . Is this delusion or has his severed hand taken on a life of its own ? This is an early directorial effort from Oliver Stone . The fact that Stone constantly states that SALVADOR was his directorial debut should tell you something about THE HAND . It should also be pointed out that that Stone's first preference for Lansdale was Jon Voight , then Dustin Hoffman then Christopher Walken then finally Michael Caine who in this part of his career was in total slumming it for the money mode and apparently did the film to pay for his new garage . It's very noticeable in the early part of the film Caine hasn't bothered to learn his lines and is obviously reading from cue cards . Caine's performance does improve later in the film but there's no way it could have got any worse than his early scenes The other flaw with the film is its pompous dead pan tone . This is THE BEAST WITH FIVE FINGERS territory a film that is something of a camp classic and camp is not an adjective you can use to describe THE HAND . It constantly touches upon serious themes such as disability , insanity and marital pressure and these themes contrast badly with a premise that is rather daft and everyone associated with the movie has been better prior and after THE HAND

So, you're a highly strung cartoonist (sort of Jack Nicholson's illustrator alter-ego of "The Shining") experiencing marital problems when you lose your drawing hand in a freak road accident. From there, your life spirals out of control, as your former appendage takes on an existence of its own, prowling the country-side, defacing your artwork and strangling your bedfellows. You'd go mad - who wouldn't? Michael Caine certainly did, but it's whether his altered state occurred before or after he agreed to make this picture, that is really in question. Sure, it's dark, haunting, there's a grim atmosphere and some gruesome violence, but it never manages to escape the absurd premise.Caine is at his unhinged best, while Marcovicci as his Shelley Duvall, takes flight into the arms of a co-worker, as his odd behaviour turns strangely obsessive. He seems to maintain a psycho-somatic link to his phantom grip, but is he really able to control its actions? That's the sixty-four dollar question that we never really learn, although there's more than a hundred minutes in which to watch it all unravel - the movie that is (it only takes Caine one scene to reach maximum lunacy).Capable supporting cast (McEnroe, McGill, Corley, Lindfors and Murphy) restore some mental equilibrium and the music and cinematography also help create a sense of psychological nightmare in spite of the credibility weaknesses. Had director Stone not been so explicit and only 'played his hand' (so to speak) by implication, this could almost have succeeded. But just when the cast and dialogue seem to have achieved maturity, out pops the crawling, decomposing throwback to the Addams family, with its vice-like mind grip on Caine's cognisance, and an equally taut clasp around a victim's throat. Sordid revision of "The Beast With Five Fingers" is testament only to the longevity of Caine's career, in spite of the plethora of abominable pictures he made in the eighties, of which "The Hand" is exhibit A.

"But who's the other one??""Its the Roache girl" says cop Tracey Walter......."Stella" ....aahh JOHN (off hand)How the man said "Its the Roache Girl" with a straight face.Obviously the cartoonist killed everyone but the end the hand killed the doctor.The hand obviously was a figment of his own imagination that he used to control his own victims that had wronged him in the past. But the real twist was when the Hand came back to kill the doctor. Obviously he did not control the hand because HE TOLD the doctor that there was indeed a hand behind her. And she did not believe him.