The Hands of Orlac

One of the numerous film versions of the compelling story of The Hands of Orlac, a pianist who has a murderer's hands grafted on to his after an accident. This time Mel Ferrer is Stephen Orlac. Ferrer actually does a pretty good job in this rather complex role of someone being torn apart not by the fact that he kills but rather by the thought that he sometimes thinks he must or will kill. There is only one murder in this film, so if action is your poison you might want to pass. However, despite the lack of action and any real budget in this film, the film is rather good, especially during the second half where the pace is picked up considerably. Christopher Lee as a blackmailing magician is the real star of the film as he plays one of his oiliest, slickest bad guys on film. Lee oozes a kind of vitriolic charm as he maniacally laughs and speaks ever so nicely whilst blackmailing. Danny Carrel plays his lovely French-speaking assistant with gusto, charm, and lusciousness. The film has a good cast of character actors like Felix Alymer, Donald Pleasance in a meaningless yet nice cameo, and Sir Donald Wolfit in an equally small role. Modern(what passed for modern then) music plays throughout.The film is markedly different from many other versions, and in particular Mad Love. It has an interesting twist ending. All in all a pretty good little film.

A good story and a good cast are wasted in this amateurishly written and directed misfire. It's nearly as bad as Ed Wood films like PLAN NINE FROM OUTER SPACE.

How these no-talents managed to engage so many name actors is a mystery. It was a French production, I guess, and they tried to film it in French and English, but the results are amazingly tacky and clumsy.

Virtually every scene falls flat or is unintentionally funny. But it's not quite bad enough to be good, like PLAN NINE. It's just bad.

What's worse? Christopher Lee's unintentionally comic "maniacal laughter"? Or the jaunty, jazzy musical score. Apparently no one told the composer he was writing music for a horror film. The grimmest scenes are accompanied by toodling flutes and cheery jazz riffs that would be more appropriate to a 1960s documentary on "Swingin' London".

The best version BY FAR of this much-filmed story is 1935's MAD LOVE, directed by the great Karl Freund, with Peter Lorre.

I liked this film how cunning Christopher lee was to black mail Mel Ferrer, and how he nearly got away with it, the french version seems to have more pieces to the film compared to the englisch version, (Christopher lee) he spoke excellent french, i have this englisch version i enjoy watching it over and over again.

One of my sci-fi/horror/fantasy reviews written 50 years ago: Directed by Edmond T. Greville; Produced by Donald Taylor and Steven Palios, for Britannia Films; Released in America by Continental Distributing. Screenplay by John Baines and Greville; Photography by Desmond Dickinson and Jacques Lemare; Edited by Oswald Hafenrichter and Jean Ravel; Music by Claude Bolling; Production Manager: Ben Arbeid. Starring: Mel Ferrer, Christopher Lee, Dany Carrel, Louise Saint-Simon, Felix Aylmer, Basil Sydney, Donald Wolfit and Donald Pleasence.

Remake of a classic silent film has exactly the same plot as "Hands of a Stranger", but poorly done.

There have been at least four versions of this story*. The original silent version is the best, though the sound remake with Peter Lorre is awfully good. The 1962 version, sadly, is so bad it's almost unwatchable. So what about this 1960 British version? Is it worth your time? It's current rating of 5.6 might seem to indicate the answer, but I decided to watch it and give it a chance.

Shortly after the story begins, the great concert pianist, Orlac (Mel Ferrer) is in an accident and he loses his hands. Considering how important these hands are, it's not surprising that the doctors would try something radical for 1960...give him a double hand transplant! But what they don't realize is that the dead donor was a murderer...and somehow these murderous impulses have been passed on through the hands to Orlac!

Apart from some distracting music, there's nothing wrong with this film...nor anything particularly right about it either. You've got a great basic story but the acting (Ferrer was a fine actor....but not here) and look of the film is a bit cheap. My advice is see one of the previous versions...they are both so much better and have much more energy than this slow version.

*There also was a short remake made for one of "The Simpson's" Halloween specials. In it Snake is finally executed for his infamous crimes and his cool head of hair is transplanted onto Homer...with expected results.