Hands of a Stranger (1962)

The plot is very standard here. If you have seen The Beast With Five Fingers, The Hands of Orloff/Mad Love, or even the Michael Cain vehicle, The Hand, you know what this is about: guy gets new hands sewn onto his wrists, gets an itch to go out and strangle pe0oople . (This is a twist on the Eyes Of A Murderer concept, which may be reviewed other places. One difference: these are not necessarily the hands of a murderer being grafted onto the gifted pianist's wrists, in fact we never do learn whose hands these were -- but murder ensues nonetheless. So the question is: why watch this? For me, the interest was with the young actor (denied lead billing) and the men's incredibly greasy hairdos. Leaving hair for another day, we have James Stapleton who reminded me of a young Ray Liotta, but (as another reviewer perceptively noted) was directed as Hurd Hatfield. Too bad. One or two Liotta humorless laughs and we would have had an Academy performance. Such is the danger of being born between two film concepts, Hatfield and Liotta. Let this be a warning to would-be thespians: is now your time? Or should you go back to that comfortable barista job? (James Stapleton changed his stage name to James Noah. He got work for years, but not much and I think, given the proper role, could have been dynamite.)

After losing his hands in a tragic accident, a gifted pianist finds that the surgically replaced hands he now has take a murderous life of their own and must try to stop them from acting out the deadly urges.This here turned out to be pretty much a fun and enjoyable effort. A lot of what makes this one so much fun is brought along by the film's central point of a lot more focus on the hands and how they're getting comfortable following the accident. Since they're far more crucial to the film's plot rather than any other side-quality, the fact that this is able to put more focus on that through the long arguing done before and after the actual surgery as well as the procedures afterward testing how they've come along since. It's all nicely handled here until it turns over it's murderous qualities in the second half. This is an enjoyable affair as this gives us plenty of good scenes including the meeting with his girlfriend in her apartment and the young son of his driver when he stops in to meet with him. The finale here is also fun where it has more creepy qualities than expected, starting with the carnival altercations of people using their hands that eat at him before his playing the game and resulting freak-out in the area, and the stalking of his girlfriend in the theater which includes a fine brawl mixed in here. These here are all enough to make this one enjoyable enough to hold out nicely over the few small flaws here. The biggest problem here is the film's uneven pacing where this one is pretty front- loaded with the bland talking scenes and saves the action for the end. While there's still some focus on the surgeon and his radical experiment here, the fact that this comes in the form of the over-the-top speeches and throwing around how unethical the action procedure is that there's really no time to get this one going on with the hands' ineffectual nature by showing it in action. A lot of that is how this one seems to spiral between being a serious horror effort and more campy material rather than bringing on any kind of display of powers during the examination scenes makes this one lose some steam along the way. As well, there's the rather underwhelming finale does it no favors either with a simple, matter-of-factly occurrence that takes place off-screen for the most part which really causes this to lower the impact of the action. Otherwise, this one was quite entertaining.Today's Rating-PG: Violence

"Hands of a Stranger" is a version of the same story told in Peter Lorre's 1930's classic "Mad Love" (and also in "The Hands of Orlac, but I haven't seen that one yet), only the visual flair and suspenseful atmosphere of that film have been removed here and replaced with nothing but … melodramatic speeches! Every character in this film, whether he or she plays a leading part or just a supportive one, simply looooooooooooves to speech. Even the simplest "yes" or "no" questions are answered with incredibly overlong, tedious, irritating and besides-the-point nagging and driveling. Needless to say this badly affects the amusement factor as well as the pacing, and "Hands of the Stranger" indeed quickly became one of the dullest & laughably pretentious thrillers I had the displeasure of watching recently. The story opens with a random guy getting shot by anonymous men from a driving car. The identity of this man, the reasons why he must die and – equally important – who killed him are all questions that unprofessionally remain open throughout the entire movie. All we learn about him is that he has strong and beautiful hands. Whenever someone informs about his identity or background, the standard response is that the investigation isn't finished yet. Nevertheless, the span of the story is approximately 4 to 5 months, so imagine how slow the CSI departments worked back in the 1960's. Anyway, the hands of the mysteriously assassinated stranger's hands are amputated and sewn on to the arms of an acclaimed pianist who lost his in a terrible car accident. Define irony; the guy walks out of an accident without a single scratch on his body yet his hands are entirely mangled and unrecognizable. He, Vernon Paris, subsequently has to learn to accept his new hands but instead of that the force him to kill. At least that's the explanation given in the film, but I'm convinced the script exclusively suggest that his mind went berserk. "Hands of a Stranger" is a nearly unendurably stupid film with very few aspects that are worth mentioning. Personally, I counted two remotely interesting sequences, namely one when Paris confronts the cab driver responsible for the accident and another one set at a carnival. The rest of the film is miserably boring, with endless lame dialogs, implausible characters (the Doctor looks like a rock star and the cop acts like a stand-up comedian), a total shortage of horrific moments, hideous photography, uninspired directing and just plain retarded plot twists.

It is nowhere mentioned in the credits but this movie is a retread of the classic horror tale "The Hands of Orlac",so memorably filmed in 1935 as "Mad Love",and done competently in 1961 under the original title. It sticks in my craw that nobody associated with this awful version has the common decency to acknowledge the source material and the rancid odour of plagiarism hangs over the whole sorry enterprise. The plot is a direct steal from the Maurice Renard source novel-a gifted pianist loses his hands in an automobile accident,and the hands of a brutish criminal are grafted on as replacements.The pianist then finds himself driven to acts of violence ,with his flighty girl friend and the driver who caused the accident his particular targets.Eventually he turns on the surgeon who performed the operation.Poorly acted ,and with a dull script and harsh ,flat lighting that makes the whole thing look like a cheap TV show this is best forgotten.Track down the 1935 film with the great Peter Lorre ,or keep an eye out for the Mel Ferrer version of 1961 but trouble yourself not with this excresence.