Hand of Death Part 25 - Jackson's Back

My review was written in March 1989 after watching the movie on Academy video cassette.

This British horror spoof (going direct to video Stateside) is on target with its script's satirical barbs, but is not well realized as a feature. Gore content of unrated version marks it for a specialty audience.

Filmmakers Anders Palm and Mark Cutforth are poking fun at the endless string of imitative Yank shriekers such as "Friday the 13th" and "Halloween" series that substitute cliches for creativity.

Antihero Gregory Cox wear a Jason-esque goalie's mask and is given to slaughtering people in gruesome fashion until he meets kindly but kinky blind girl Fiona Evans. She befriends him and beds him, even getting him to remove his mask, revealing a hideously deformed (but subpar makeup effects) face.

In striving for black humor, pic gets bogged down in some silliness, tastelessness and pretentious writing. Reflexive material as folks recognize he hero "from his movies" is overdone, climaxing with him aghast at a theater marquee hawking the 26th film in the series. Yucky gore doesn't sit well with what is basically an intellectual exercise.

Well "many years ago" we used to rent cheap movies every Tuesday as they were about 10 Dkr (2 us dollars) each. We saw a lot of bad movies and some brilliant ones. One of them was Unmasked. Or "Hand of death" as it was called here. Took me ages to find it under the real title. It is so bad that it is kind of fun. When he ends up with that blind girl and is pretty upset with her "sexual preferences".. but has no problem with killing people.. had us in stitches.

This "movie" is perfect for killing some time with a few friends and some beer..

I've seen way, way, WAY too many B-Movies. I've seen all kinds: Gore films with the worst production values ever, so-bad-they're-good films shot on home videos, and films where the entire film crew was probably on some mind-altering substance during the entire production. However, no film can compare to this film. It's not that the director is throwing a bunch of random weird moments at you. No, not at all -- there aren't a lot of things going on in this movie, in particular. But what IS here is just so completely left-field in the way they handled it. I guess it's hard to describe without you actually seeing the film, but imagine combining your Hugh Grant romance movie with Bloodsucking Freaks or something, and you will probably get an idea of what this is about.

Case in point, the movie opens with the GORIEST OPENING DEATH SCENE EVER! The killer rips a guy's face off and then punches through his chest and takes out his heart! This scene just shocked me to no end, and I kept rewinding it to make sure I just witnessed what I thought I witnessed. So, already, 4 minutes or so into the movie, I just witnessed the goriest opening death scene in history, and I'd like to think that the creators of this film would take this element even further in the movie. Well, that doesn't really happen. You see, the killer then proceeds to kill people in less gory ways... and... then the film spends about 40 minutes detailing his love life with a blind woman.

And the love life with the blind woman involves a man who sort of resembles the Toxic Avenger wearing "sexy clothes" like silk red boxers and stuff and making really awkward love to the blind woman. Then, they walk on the beach and discuss life. THEN, just when you forgot that this is a horror movie, more killing! And the killing's kind of pick back up (it's almost as if they used all their budget on the first scene and didn't have any money left to do any more killing for a few weeks, so they just spent those weeks filming the love scenes crap), and the last killing is by far one of the most mean-spirited things I've ever seen (spoilers, if you care): The killer slits his blind girlfriend's throat for no apparent reason right after she says "I love you" and then she screams, "NO, NO, NOOOOOOO." It's quite mean. Quite. (no more spoilers)

The back of the box says that this is supposed to be a spoof, but -- besides the fact that the main killer, "Jackson", is wearing a hockey mask and the title has a "part 25" in it -- you couldn't really tell that from the movie. Probably the weirdest film ever.

This is an entertaining movie. I didn't "get it" til the end, though. Maybe I was just tired. It deals with how serial killers from slasher movies can't even stop killing or ever die no matter what and how boring that kind of life must be. And his name is Jackson, like Jason. Very clever. But I thought it was worth watching and there are some really funny parts. The person who mentioned it was like Toxic Avenger was very right. I'm surprised Troma hasn't picked this up. I didn't quite understand the whole father figure dude. What did he have to do with the movie and why was he a bum? I liked the blind woman, she was pretty cool. I never thought about how blind people don't have to turn on lights... hmmmm

I rented this movie a while ago and I really liked it. To my surprise I saw a copy for sale and bought yesterday. Just watched it and well, I was super disappointed. It was totally cut missing most of the gore, male/female frontal nudity and violence. I was so mad.

+Stay away from the box that says rated R+

Anyway, the movie is funny and you gotta love the clothes these people wear. The accents somethings get to you, but other than that it is a lot of fun to watch.

This is sort of a Friday the 13th comedy. The killer even wears a hockey mask!