4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Spare Parts..., March 14, 2004
This review is from: Hands of a Stranger (DVD)
Vernon Paris (James Stapleton) is an up and coming concert pianist. One night, his cab driver takes his eyes off the road to show Vernon some pictures of his own piano-playing son. This results in a terrible crash, leaving Vernon's hands mangled beyond repair. Across town, someone is gunned down in the street. He is D.O.A., but his hands come in... um, handy as replacements for Vernon's destroyed appendages. Vernon's doctor (Paul Lukather) stitches the hands on and hopes for the best. Well, Vernon doesn't like the idea and sets out on a killing spree. He starts with his "girlfriend" who never visited him in the hospital, and who is about to have a new guy over for dinner. Vernon knocks her over a table, sending candles rolling into curtains that must have been the world's greatest fire hazard, as they burst into flame immediately! The girl goes up even faster! Vernon goes on to kill the son of the (now blind) cab driver, crushing the kid's hands for good measure. Vernon starts on the doctor's surgical team next, killing a young intern and his girlfriend (played by a young Sally "M*A*S*H" Kellerman). Now a full-fledged madman, Vernon has a final showdown with his doctor in a deserted concert hall. HANDS OF A STRANGER is a semi-supernatural thriller with enough tension and plot to keep even my short attention span riveted. There's some nice piano music in the beginning, as well as good creepy music throughout. Go on, buy it...
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Surprisingly serious and compelling rather than campy, May 16, 2006
This review is from: Hands of a Stranger (DVD)
Even if you haven't seen this film, you may actually have seen it - in another form or, to be exact, another movie. The fact that Hands of a Stranger is one of several versions of the same story seems to have a real bearing on any given viewer's opinion of the film, so I'm going to touch on that issue right here at the start. Way back in 1920, Maurice Renard's novel Les Main d'Orlac (The Hands of Orlac) was published; it was the story of a classical pianist who lost his hands in an accident, became the first recipient of a hands transplant, and went on to do evil things ostensibly due to the fact that the hands' original owner was a murderer. Some movies based on the story soon followed, the most famous being 1935's Mad Love. In 1961, The Hands of Orlac, starring Mel Ferrer and Christopher Lee, was released. You wouldn't expect to see another remake for quite a while, yet Hands of a Stranger debuted only one year later. The timing of this film's release has thus been, in my opinion, an unfortunate liability. Obviously, with two films in two years telling basically the same story, some viewers are going to be less than happy about one or both of them.
I happen to think Hands of a Stranger is an unusually effective, impressive film, despite its relatively low budget. This isn't your standard golden age science fiction/horror/suspense film, as Hands of a Stranger has a look and feel all its own - and that, for me, is what really allows it to stand out from the crowd. The plot is actually rather simple and predictable, yet the story doesn't always follow the beaten paths you expect it to. Part of the reason, I feel, is the somewhat misleading plot summary you'll usually find with the film. The implication is that the transplanted hands come from a murderer and somehow force the hands' new owner to go out and start killing people. If you're me, you read that and expect to ultimately see a guy scrambling down the sidewalk trying to regain control of the hands that are leading him down a dark path. That would make for a stupid movie, and Hands of a Stranger isn't a stupid movie. Yes, our young musical genius, Vernon Paris (Paul Lukather), has his hands mangled in an accident just when his musical career was about to really take off, and yes, Dr. Gil Harding (James Stapleton) takes it upon himself to try and preserve the guy's career and life by giving him an entirely new pair of hands, and yes, Vernon is rather upset about the whole business, and yes, a few people do in fact die because of the whole mess - but the ultimate conflict actually plays out in a fairly intelligent manner. Rather than following uncontrollable hands around all day, these characters probe the ethics of the whole situation and get downright philosophical every now and again.
Now if I were a gifted pianist on the verge of stardom and had my hands injured beyond the point of preservation, I would be delighted to learn that my doctor had tried to keep my dream alive by sewing some other guy's hands on to my body. But does Gil get any love for doing just that - and succeeding, I might add? Nosiree. When Vernon's sister finds out what the doctor has done, she worries that the dead guy's personality will be transmitted to her brother through his hands, and Vernon just blames the doctor for making him a freak (like he wouldn't feel like a freak if the doctor had just amputated his hands and left it at that).
There's a distinct flair of melodrama throughout this entire film. In fact, the sets and atmosphere sometimes take on the look and feel of a classic daytime soap opera, especially when individuals are arguing over the ethics of what has been done to Vernon. At first, I found this a little annoying, but it really grew on me as time passed. It gave the film a unique quality, a little flair of its own - and it made for a perfect patch with the sometimes melodramatic dialogue. Where I see effective melodrama, however, some may well see bad acting. For what it's worth, I personally look upon Hands of a Stranger as an underrated semi-classic.
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0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
SUPER CHEESY "B" MOVIE!!......................., December 21, 2009
This review is from: Hands of a Stranger (DVD)
Did I say super cheesy?? YES I did!!
But that's what makes B movies so good!
Cheesy dialog, blurry black & white filming,
Unknown actors, however, NOT cheesy acting or screenplay!
This film actually contains some serious suggestive horror
-that you won't find in modern day films!
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