Le mani dell'assassino

I remember seeing this late at night in the mid sixties on Chiller theater and it really creeped me out so I was anxious to check it out again when it showed up at the public domain bargain bin section. It doesn't really hold up that well but I can see a why it stuck in my mind in a few well shot and staged scenes.

Of the four filmed versions of The Hands Of Orlac (Four and a half if you count sections of Oliver Stones flop The Hand) this one comes in at dead last. It's not awful but it doesn't hold a candle to in inventiveness and weirdness of the Peter Lorre Version Mad Love and it doesn't have the silliness and fast pace of the Mel Ferrer ,Christopher Lee Version The Hands Of Orlac. As noted by others this doesn't credit orlac at all . Although there are marked difference between all of the versions it doesn't take a genius to figure where the story came from even though it ends differently.

I liked the opening and the scenes at the carnival and of course nurse Irish McCalla (Sheena, Queen Of The Jungle)isn't hard to look at. Juvenile actor Barry Gordon is sympathetic without being annoying like many child actors and Paul Lukather (who still works) has enough bravado to carry him through the long winded and stilted episodes of prose.

If you're a horror completist and don't expect much or if you're into B-movie noir you might give this a glance otherwise stick to the Karl Freund version Mad Love. You can't beat Peter Lorre on a tirade anyway.

Virtuoso pianist, Vernon Paris (James Noah) is about to taste the rewards of his hard work, when disaster strikes! An automobile accident leaves Paris' hands mangled beyond repair. Thankfully, gifted surgeon, Dr. Gil Harding (Paul Lukather) decides to try a new procedure to replace Paris' hands with a donor pair. All that is known about the provider of the transplanted mitts is that he was a murder victim.

The operation is a success, and Vernon's recovery goes amazingly well, at least physically. Since no one told him that his hands were lost, Paris was under the assumption that he'd only "broken" them. The truth comes as a bit of a shock. Then, just as he's trying, without much luck, to adjust to his new hands, something else occurs. Something strange and maniacal! Several deaths soon follow. Just who was the previous "owner" of these hands?

HANDS OF A STRANGER is a solid, though quite melodramatic thriller, playing much like a TV hospital serial of its day, mixed with a little of THE TWILIGHT ZONE. Noah is convincing in his role, balancing between self-pitying jackass and homicidal madman.

BEST PARTS: #1- Vernon's visit to the home of the cabby he blames for his condition. #2- The carnival scene. #3- The fittingly fateful finale.

Co-stars the beautiful Irish McCalla (SHE DEMONS) as Holly. Also, watch for a young sally Kellerman in a scene-stealing part!...

Hands of a Stranger (1962)

** (out of 4)

Low-budget remake of THE HANDS OF ORLAC from the one and only Allied Artists. As in the numerous earlier versions, a concert pianist (James Stapleton) loses his hands in a car wreck so a doctor (Paul Lukather) gives him the hands of someone else. Soon the pianist begins to lose his mind and goes around killing several people. Is it the new hands or is something else going on? HANDS OF A STRANGER really doesn't improve on any of the earlier versions of this story and in the end the film is just way too talky and doesn't feature enough energy or excitement. For a horror film from 1962 I was a little surprised to see how much it was lacking in regards to the horror elements. The death scenes are all rather tame and there were a few times where you couldn't even tell that he killed the people until later in the film when it was mentioned that they were dead. The biggest problem, however, is the fact that there's just way too much talking going on and it just makes the film drag along to a point where you just grow tired of everything going on. The performances are also all over the place but I thought Lukather and Stapleton were good in their parts. The one thing I did like is how the film never really made it clear if the hands were doing the killing or if it was the actual person just mentally unstable from not being a concert pianist anymore. Still, with such better films out there it's hard to recommend this to anyone other than those who want to see every version.

A talky script and some overacting in key scenes doesn't help put the viewer in the right frame of mind to enjoy this oft told story of hands that are sewn onto a pianist after he loses use of his hands in an accident.

Nobody in the cast has any "name" value and I see that in many of these reviews people are confusing the leading male characters by crediting the wrong names of the actors.

For clarification, it's James Stapleton who plays the pianist with a sensitive but expressionless face. His looks are reminiscent of Hurd Hatfield's in "The Picture of Dorian Gray" who also kept a mask-like facial expression. The doctor is played with slightly more animation by Paul Lukather and has a more sympathetic role. The victimized Stapleton resents the doctor's surgery to the extent that he becomes arrogant and spiteful enough to emerge a killer.

Some of the B&W photography is in the film noir category but everyone is let down by an uninspired script and less than polished direction.

A world famous pianist loses his hands as the result of a car crash, and is then given the hands of a killer in an audacious medical transplant. This event has a dark psychological effect on him.

Hands of a Stranger is a little too talky for its own good. The story itself might be a well-worn one but there's no excuse for the serious lack of action here. An 'evil hands' film really needs to cut back on the chat and deliver more schlock. There are occasional memorable moments such as the scene where the pianist visits the home of the taxi driver responsible for the crash that maimed him but in the main such sequences are in short supply. The lead character Vernon is also a somewhat hard character to get behind. His ingratitude for the surgery that prevented him from being without hands marks him out as a somewhat arrogant and unsympathetic individual.

One reasonably interesting aspect of the film is that its quite ambiguous for a movie of this type, in that it is never really made certain that the hands are inherently evil or not. It seems to me that the surgery merely effects the natural dexterity that Vernon had, and as a result makes him unable to play piano, leading to psychological breakdown. In this sense Hands of a Stranger is quite interesting. But its poor pacing and lack of action mean that it is not enough to save it from being a bit of a clunker.