Talk to the hand…and beg it not to kill you!

I love giving a good hand blog, so I wrap my fist around three spanning two decades in this one.

THE HAND (1981)

Hard to believe Oliver Stone directed this rather forgettable 1981 horror flick that feels more like a 1970s horror flick.

I guess Bloody Knuckles may have been paying homage to this film in a way, since Michael Caine plays a comic book artist who loses his hand.

It happens in a pretty cool scene of his hand being hacked off because he has it sticking out a car window.

Hands go away, but life goes on, and there seems to be a severed hand following Caine after he gets a bionic replacement. He also starts to mess up at work, has hand delusions, and runs into marital problems. So he goes to stay in a house on his own for a while.

It’s shocking that this film runs an hour and forty-five minutes and that so little happens beyond Michael Caine falling apart and listening to Blondie’s “Union City Blues.”

Also of note is that the girl playing his daughter portrayed little Christina in Mommy Dearest!

It’s seriously more than an hour before the hand first attacks someone, it only attacks a couple of people, and by the end it’s implied that the killer hand was all in Caine’s head…then that it wasn’t…or was it…or did they just need a final frame jump scare? We’ll never know…or care. Because there are two better killer hand films we could be watching…

BODY PARTS (1991)

Eric Red, the director of Bad Moon, makes the predictable body part plot more interesting with a few standout scenes that ramp up the thrills.

Jeff Fahey is a criminal psychologist who gets into a kickass car accident. His fricking body and cars go flying! Now that’s how you outdo the Michael Caine crash.

He gets a new arm with a mind of its own, and pretty soon it’s doing insane shit like smacking his kid around and choking out his wife while he sleeps. Must be an unhappy closeted gay arm.

Actually, he learns the arm came from a death row convict (a plot point recycled in the anthology Body Bags in 1993). He tracks down the other dudes who scored some of the body parts to see what they’re experiencing. One of them happens to be Brad Dourif, who is perfectly weird as always.

But apparently someone is coming to reclaim the body parts! Awesome. The most unforgettable scene in this film has Fahey’s evil arm handcuffed to another car next to his as they speed down the road, each trying to reach the finish line with the arm as the trophy.

The doctor who gave him the transplant also ends up being a total highlight of the film before all is said and done.

IDLE HANDS (1999)

Rodman Flender, director of 90s flicks The Unborn and Leprechaun 2, ends the decade with the highlight of his career. Idle Hands is an absolute classic. Teen comedy, teen horror, Halloween horror, a great 90s cast—this one has it all.

The opening kill scene in a house decorated for Halloween is straight up horror, like something out of Urban Legend.

Then we meet our main burnout, played by Devon Sawa (Final Destination, The Exorcism of Molly Hartley, Devil’s Den, 388 Arletta Avenue), who soon discovers he has a possessed hand.

His buddies, Buffy alum Seth Green and Elden Henson (Daredevil’s law partner), help him remove the hand…just as he scores a date to the Halloween dance with Jessica Alba.

The hand escapes and follows them to the school to wreak havoc in a classic teen movie scenario! Little do they know that a crazed Vivica A. Fox is on the hunt, planning to stop the evil herself.

Humor, gore, a montage set to Motley Crue’s “Shout at the Devil”, The Offspring covering Ramones at the dance (and even getting in on the gore)…

Rob Zombie’s “Dragula” video…

…the classic Chiller Theatre clip…Idle Hands still rox my sox. Actually, my gloves.