La mano che nutre la morte

"The Hand that Feeds the Dead" is blessed with an enticing title and the presence of cult icon Klaus Kinski, but it's basically nothing more than a cheap, uninspired and exploitative rehash of the French horror milestone "Eyes without a Face". That doesn't necessarily have to be a negative thing, because many decent and entertaining horror flicks are derivative of that same classic – for example Jess Franco's "The Awful Dr. Orloff" or the British sleeper "Circus of Horrors – but this is a prototypical example of a rip-off that doesn't contribute anything to the genre whatsoever. Kinski stars as Dr. Nijinski, former acolyte of the brilliant Professor/Baron Ivan Rassimov who allegedly stood on the verge of a tremendous surgical breakthrough before he got killed in an all-devastating fire. The same fire also heavily mutilated the beautiful face of Rassimov's daughter (who also happens to be Nijinski's lover) and that's why Nijinski now attempts to finalize Rassimov's experiments. The work requires for Nijinski to lure unsuspecting girls to the castle and for his hunchbacked slave to kidnap innocent victims from the nearby village. "The Hands that Feeds the Dead", like many of its supportive characters, appears to be in a constant comatose condition. The period decors and filming locations are definitely adequate, but the pacing is dreadfully slow and the events are painfully dull and predictable. Half of the film is sheer padding footage, varying from pointless lesbian sex to endlessly overlong footage of bubbly potions and flashy machinery inside a pathetic wannabe laboratory where supposedly the skin and facial transplants take place. Oddly enough, the actual transplants are simultaneously gross and boring. The make-up effects are repulsive, but the extreme close-ups of the skinless faces seem to last eternally. Klaus Kinski obviously also wasn't the least bit interested in this film, and gives away the most indifferent performance imaginable. Those incredibly overlong transplantation sequences, for instance, plainly don't even star him. With his ego and reputation, Kinski probably refused to waste his precious time shooting retarded footage like that, and thus all we ever see are the surgeon's hands and uniform.

Note: although not an actual character in the film, I assume that the chose to use the name Ivan Rassimov must be some sort of inside joke of the director, as Ivan Rassimov really was a respectable Italian cult/horror actor around that time and starred in, among others, "Jungle Holocaust", "Eaten Alive", "Spasmo", etc..

I watched Turkey version of this movie from a very old VHS cassette that was discovered, after the death of either Turkish co-producer or co-director, by a garbage collector in a pile of tapes and documents in front of his house. A second-hand bookseller pointed them to me.

The film was re-edited by co-director Yilmaz Duru and just 78 minutes. It seems that those other 9 minutes was very gory for the eyes of Turkish co-producer Tugra Film and they decided to chop that footage. There were neither "yanking the guts out of a dead puppy" by Kinski nor his "spending a lot of time running wild through the woods". He was more of a decent but passionate guy, anyway he was spooky.

There were some inconsistencies during the film, or better some long jumps in the narration. After the professor's henchman buries Daniel out somewhere in the garden, then all of a sudden in the next scene we see Daniel trying to free from sarcophagus in the cellar. And the film finishes right after Daniel runs out the manor through the woods and collapses crying on the grasses.

The film is also one of the attempts by the Turkish actor Ayhan Isik, who died relatively early and was very famous and loved in his home country, to expand abroad through European co-productions. Henchman Erol Tas was also among the popular Turkish supporting actors of his time, frequently portraying the villain.

This is another collaboration between crazed German actor Klaus Kinski, hack Italian director Sergio Garrone, and beautiful Dutch actress Katia Christine, and it is a marginal improvement over their other collaboration "Amanti di Mostro". The story is superficially similar to the other film. Once again, Kinski is a mad scientist married to Katia Christine, and once again he is carrying on the work of his late father-in-law (named "Ivan Rassimov" in this movie, which is perhaps an inside joke since Ivan Rassimov was a familiar character actor in Italian exploitation films during this era). But instead of Kinski turning himself into Mr. Hyde and attacking all the half-naked,local women, this movie has an "Eyes without a Face"-type plot where Kinski uses his Igor-like assistant to kidnap all the half-naked, local women in order to transplant their flesh onto his disfigured wife.

Sergio Garrone (to borrow a line from "Shock Cinema's" Steve Puchalski) probably couldn't successfully direct his own bowel movement, so it's impressive here that the direction at times approaches borderline competence (or maybe that should be credited to his Turkish co-director?). Kinski generally gave two kinds of performances in movies like this--scenery-gnawing or totally phoned-in. He definitely gnawed some serious scenery in "Amanti di Mostro", but here is performance is pretty much phoned-in (he also may have stormed off the set at some point because they seem to use a double for some of his scenes). If you're a fan of Katia Christine's acting, you'll enjoy this more than "Amanti" because she has much more screen time and essentially plays two different roles, one of which is deliciously evil. If you're more a fan of Katia Christine's body, however, you might prefer the other movie because she generally keeps her Victorian garments on here. There is as much nudity and even more gore than in "Amanti", but it all comes toward the end of the movie, by which time you may have already slipped into a boredom-induced coma.

Although the best thing about this might be the literal translation of the Italian title, "The Hand that Feeds Death", this was recently released on Region 1 DVD under the ho-hum title "Evil Face". I wouldn't really recommend this, but god knows I'VE seen worse movies.

Sergio Garrone tries to juice up the old gothic horror/mad scientist deal get up by adding gore and nudity, but still manages to bore the life out of me.

The whole deal is that Klaus Kinski is a scientist whose wife has been horrifically scarred in an accident that also claimed the life of her brilliant scientist father, Ivan Rassimov, who is a character called Ivan Rassimov and not the actor Ivan Rassimov. Kinski of course has one of those labs you get in old mansions that's full of bubbling flasks and electricity,and this is where he conducts his skin graft experiments, using local girls. I'm getting bored writing this review.

There's an Igor character running around the place, a couple of girls, one of which is searching for her missing sister, and some guy. Other things happen that you've seen a million times before but Garrone throws in a lesbian sequence, treachery, and Kinski talking to a toy doll but also pads things out with the girl going to the police over and over again, and the medical procedures taking forever. Does it matter if the film bored me? Would that deter others from watching it anyway? Some people love this film and think it's some sort of classic. Maybe instead of an opinion, a brief description of the film and where to find it would suffice. Or is it better to hear the opinion of someone whose watched hundreds of these rather than, say, Mark Kermode?

I don't know. There's another film called Lover of the Monster which was made using the same sets and the same actors. I'm going to watch that one, even though this one bored me, so I'm ignoring my own opinion too.

(1974) Evil Face/ La mano che nutre la morte/ The Hand That Feeds The Dead (In Italian with English subtitles) HORROR

Written and co-directed by Sergio Garrone that has married couple of Alex (Ayhan Isik) and Masha (Katia Christine) going on a honeymoon. Until their horse carriage flipped over, killing only the driver. They are then taken in and taken care of by the baron and doctor, Prof. Sergej Nijinski (Klaus Kinski). Living with them also includes a prostitute/ hostess, Katya (Marzia Damon) and an aspired novelist, Katiuscia (Carmen Silva) who is in search for her sister, she suspects that the doctor has something to do with it. And the doctor's wife, Tanja Nijinski whose face has been disfigured as a result of the fire that killed her father.