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..

(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.

Titled on my box as, The Hand That Feeds Death, but a more accurate translation, I believe is, The Hand That Feeds The Dead. Either way, of course nothing to do with the film in hand. Another confusing aspect to this title is the fact that director Sergio Garrone managed to complete another film the same year, called Lover Of The Monster, that had almost the same cast, same locations and more or less the same story. using much of the same footage. Add to that the fact this was made by the Italians with the Turkish, it is no wonder it seems a little off kilter. More than that it seems to switch from one location to another, day to night and almost story to story in the blink of an eye. On the positive side we do have Kinski (brilliant at the very end with lipstick bloodied lips) lots of gore (transplants) and a fair amount of flesh (young and female) and although it seemed ridiculous from the outset, I enjoyed it. It is bright, colourful and cheery with a really impressive laboratory with blood being pumped hither and thither. Silly yes, boring no.

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.

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--