La mano che nutre la morte

You don't hear much about them anymore, but from the 50's, to fairly recent times, Facial Transplant horror films were a thriving sub-genre.

Beginning with "La Yeux Sans Visage" (eyes without a face/Horror Chamber Of Dr. Faustus) by Georges Franju, these continued onward with "Awful Dr, Orloff" by Jess Franco (who has made quite a few, including one of the most recent, "Faceless"), "Double Face" by Riccardo Freda, "The Devil's Commandment", and "The Hand That Feeds The Dead". "THTFTD" was unknown to me at first viewing, but this is one of the great facial transplant movies. Klaus Kinski is in fine form as our "mad scientist", attempting to correct a past mistake. The laboratory he uses is also one of the best ever, just eye-popping. Very obscure in America, but available subtitled from the usual sources. This is one of the greats, and almost nobody even knows about it.

--Judexdot1--

Klaus Kinski plays an evil scientist named Nijinski who wants to restore beauty of his disfigured wife.With the help of his hunchback he kidnaps young women to steal their faces."Evil Face" by Sergio Garrone is a dull Italian horror film with a bit of gore and lesbian sleaze.The characters are often wandering around doing nothing.There are some huge lapses in logic and several characters are extremely dumb.The cinematography is lazy and uninspired too.Fortunately "Evil Face" never reaches the dullness of Garrone's annoying Nazisploitation flick "SS Experiment Camp".It's always great to see Klaus Kinski in the role of villain.I have seen much worse Italian horror films,so I can recommend this one for fans of Italian horror.6 face transplants out of 10.

Klaus Kinski delivers a rather subtle performance here as a mad scientist dominated by his disfigured wife Tanja. With the assistance of his ace henchman, a brutish, limping dolt named Vanya (Erol Tas), he must procure victims to function as donor bodies in order to restore Tanja's beauty. A young woman named Katja (the appealing Marzia Damon) is certain that this couple murdered her sister, and intends to find out for sure. Meanwhile, a travelling couple named Alex (Ayhan Isik) and Masha (the gorgeous Katia Christine) must take advantage of Kinski's hospitality when their coach has an accident on a trail.

The set-up and the story (by director Sergio Garrone) are largely routine, in this umpteenth variation on the old "Eyes Without a Face" tale. But there are still pleasures to be had. The film, a period piece, looks pretty good (Kinski's lab is a standout), and there's a steady parade of attractive ladies (also including Carmen Silva as Sonia) to maintain viewer interest. Also, people who like their period pieces / mad scientist yarns to be on the trashy side will be satisfied, as there is a notable amount of both sex and gore. Squeamish people will want to avoid this for the repeated shots of surgical procedures, but voyeurs will love the ample nudity and the lovemaking scene that takes place around the 50 minute mark.

The performances are actually all pretty decent. It's nice to see a more restrained performance from Kinski that even contains some pathos at the end. Christine is fun to watch, especially towards the end. Isik is amiable, and Tas is amusing as the almost mute thug who is regularly tortured aurally by a device that Tanja employs.

Although obviously not very well known, this is now available on DVD and Blu, so interested viewers can check it out for themselves.

Seven out of 10.

The Hand That Feeds the Dead apparently is often confused with a film called Lover of the Monster. That's not at all surprising; they're both directed by Sergio Garrone, feature basically the same cast (both headed by Klaus Kinski), both were released in 1974, they both feature similar plots and even some of the same footage. Unfortunately, they're also both rubbish. After seeing Lover of the Monster recently, I had it in my head that at least it couldn't be worse than The Hand That Feeds the Dead - but I was wrong, as despite a very nice title; this film is utter dross. The film takes place in the nineteenth century and focuses on a doctor by the name of Prof Nijinski. He stumbles upon an old laboratory in his basement and begins experimenting with life and death (yadda, yadda). Of course, the experiments go wrong and end up messing with the doctors head.

I have to admit that the version I saw was sourced from a Turkish VHS and was cut down to about seventy eight minutes. I don't know exactly what was cut out, but I'm guessing it was all the good bits because we haven't been left with much. I'm sure that some of the gore was cut out because I didn't see much of it; there were a few skin graft scenes but overall the film is very lacking on that front. The period setting and obvious low budget gives the film something of a gritty feel that works fairly well with the plot but is nowhere near enough to save the production on the whole. Klaus Kinski is undoubtedly one of the major stars of cult cinema, but even his presence is not enough to lift this production; frankly he looked about as bored as I was. The pace is very slow and the editing is inept, which makes the film even harder to watch. I really didn't care what happened at the end and the climax was not interesting anyway. This film has vanished into obscurity since its release and I'm not at all surprised about that. The Hand That Feeds the Dead is nowhere as interesting as it sounds and is not recommended!

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.