The Thing - Gene außer Kontrolle

The son of a domineering, and conniving widow (Elke Sommer), whose henchman lover is some kind of Nazi doctor (Oliver Reed), tries to recreate his father's gene experiments. The son loses his arm after getting it caught in a door during an intense argument with them and in an act of desperation tries the formula he's managed to concoct so far on himself. Instead of growing back a normal arm, he grows a sort of tentacled monster arm that can detach, crawl off and kill. He runs away from his mother and befriends a bunch of homeless people who take him in (Garrett Morris's character among them). His mother and her brutal accomplice follow him to get the formula. For B-movie fans, this is a pretty awesome treat. My biggest complaint is that they made this a tragedy with a heroes and not a feel-good revenge movie. I got sick of seeing the hero constantly being stepped on and acting like an idiot. He's got an army and a brain but doesn't seem to know how to use either. I realize that wanting a happy ending is my own personal preference. Others will enjoy it regardless. The effects are cheesy but fun, and the acting is well done on every one's part except for the main character, unfortunately. Sommer and Reed are deliciously wicked. The sets are great and the whole production was well done, in my opinion. If it weren't for the main character's acting and the way the script treated him, I would rate this much higher. In many ways, this reminded me of Idle Hands, which I enjoyed a little more. Definitely recommended for any B-movie lover who likes a cheesy, gooey mess of sci-fi and horror.

"When scientific madness gets the upper hand... and arm!" Young but somewhat crazy scientist Harrison Harrison (yes, you read that right) is experimenting with human limb regeneration. When he loses his right arm in an accident he injects it with a plasma, a new arm does indeed grow but it is part reptilian, it can detach itself and has a mind of its own ("Part lizard, part psycho, part me" Harry says). This film reminded me of the likes of "Basket Case" (1982), "Brain Damage" (1988) and "Re-Animator" (1985), only they are classics and "Severed Ties" most definitely is not. Made by Fangoria Films, unfortunately their skill at producing horror magazines did not translate to making movies, this is a horror comedy that overall is a disappointment. Oliver Reed stars as some kind of Nazi and is Harry's reluctant step dad. He is one of my favourite actors, sadly the 1980's and 90's saw him appear in plenty of bad movies. This is far from being the worst but even so it rates as one of the poorer movies on his filmography. Elke Sommer plays Harry's mother, she was still looking great at 50 plus but I'm afraid here her acting doesn't match her looks. The plot does have a few eccentric characters,Stripes (Garret Morris) being one of the better ones, but it's not enough to make this a riveting watch. At least the special effects, courtesy of KNB, are good. There's not a great deal of gore, apart from a man having his face ripped off and a woman having a finger sawn off, I had hoped for more. This appears to be a little known movie, I have it on VHS but to the best of my knowledge it has never had a disc release. A blu-ray release would certainly make it look better, maybe one day it will happen and peoples' generally low opinions of it may improve. This movie had good ingredients but sadly the end product was disappointing,

My review was written in September 1991 after watching the movie at a Times Square screening room.

Lip-smacking performances by Oliver Reed and Elke Sommer lift the horror film "Severed Ties" above the pack of low-budget shockers. Columbia TriStar Home Video should have good results with this third entry from Fangoria's film unit.

Tongue-in-cheek effort has Sommer as an extremely possessive mother who has her son Billy Morrissette imprisoned to work on perfecting the gene-bonding regeneration experiments left unfinished by her late husband.

Morrissette comes up with the solution, but it's imperfect, resulting in a severed arm that becomes a lizard-like creature with a life of its own.

Film fits into the grotesque horror genre dominated by Frank Henenlotter ("Basket Case"). Combo of grotesque gore effects and over-the-top acting is a winning one.

Oliver Reed as Sommer's partner in evil, planning to exp;loit the son's formula, is a superior villain and Morrissette delivers as the young antihero.

If you like Brain Dead, or The Return of the living dead movies you're in for a ride. This one although a bit light on the gore part features a funny cast and a, although silly, interesting plot. The director and/or writers of this were not aiming for an Oscar by any means. They just wanted to give a funny gore fest, and I for one, appreciate their effort. BTW, the girl that plays the mute girl... Is so freakingly amazing hot... Too bad She hasn't been in anything besides this movie. Does anybody know if there's a DVD version of this film? And if thats the case... Would you happen to know where I could get It? Or maybe Download it, I don't know.. Help me out guys. I am looking for the unedited version if possible.

Take a Barker concept ("Body Politic") & mix it with a dash of latter-day Herbert West - the results would in all probability resemble this dumb gore movie. Perhaps seasoned veterans (in this case Sommer & Reed) need a trash backdrop such as this to really let loose - and do they ever! The kind of film, that if your attention wavered (or you needed to go to the toilet...) , by the time you "came back", you'd swear you're watching a collection of out-takes from SOCIETY, BRIDE OF RE-ANIMATOR & RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD PART 3 (apologies to Brian Yuzna). What the hell; Sommer is GREAT (a performance that would make Tim Curry look like a master of understatement), Johnny Legend's voice would seem more at home in a DeathMetal outfit - even some bargain-basement Freud thrown in for those of an academic bent. Unfortunate proof that a sincere love of horror movies doesn't automatically = superior product; probably a project that should have been produced by those who actively hate the genre in order to gain a degree of perspective.