Hands of a Stranger

source: Hands of a Stranger

This is not as bad as it looks, although it definitely is not a very uplifting film. As so often in American films, everything is lost by the lack of self control. The pianist loses his hands in a car accident, but an ingenious pioneer surgeon succeeds by a bold transplant operation in giving him a new pair of hands, which seem to work, but they work too well. They are too strong for him, and he can't manage them, and things go awry to the extreme. We never get to know whose hands they were, but they are too strong for his own good, and by his psychological liability in the deep personal crisis of having lost all his active life and everything he lived for, he can't control them as his impulses drive him over the edge. Dirk Bogarde or Farley Granger would have made a better performance of this complex character, like Hitchcock would have done much more of the thriller, much could have been made better of this very interesting psychological study into the emergence of psychopathology; as it is the realization of the drama is too superficial, as if some important scenes were missing, but it's a fascinating study in the nature of hands and what they mean to us. Whatever would you do if you lost your hands? That's the issue of this film, which indeed makes you think about it, especially if your life and work is totally dependent on the control and reliability on your hands... The fatal mistake of Dr. Gil Harding (Paul Lukather) is not to realize that the pianist could impossibly take up piano playing again with a pair of hands not his own, which in all probability never had touched a keyboard, but the surgeon seems to imagine this to be possible in the over-optimism of his medical success. It's not a flaw of the extremely interesting case story, but important to observe this psychological mistake, and the doctor seems to realize it in the end. At least he tried all his best.

I am compassionate when it comes to the biggest of all human sacrifices, giving apart of yourself to someone else in need. Being an organ donor. I was a recipient of two corneas from two different people I have never met. Every day I wonder who those individuals were and I privately thank them for giving me back my precious eye sight each and every day. That being said, I am also a registered organ donor and when my time comes I am willing to give a piece of myself so the living can function and have a better quality of life. When I read the brief synopsis of this movie Hands Of A Stranger, I had to see the outcome of this movie. Concert pianist, Vernon Paris,(James Noah) ,tall, dark and handsome and most importantly egocentric has a huge following playing concert halls across the country. There is no limit to his success. Youth and good looks plus magic fingers, Pianist extraordinaire Vernon Paris tickles the Ivory that not only hits the right notes, but speak to the hearts of thousands. After his performance our star hails a cab . The cab driver George Sawaya) recognizes his acclaimed passenger in his rear view mirror. The driver goes on about how his 10 year old son also plays the piano. as the cabbie reaches for his wallet to show Vernon. they suddenly crash. Next scene is the Hospital and a hysterical woman Vernon's sister Dina played by actress Joan Harvey is giving the surgeon the business as he tells her that her brother's hands are destroyed in the car crash. Joan's acting reminds me of actor Lorraine Bracco but far less superior than her. Ok, Down right awful. The long winded surgeon is played by Paul Lukather accompanied by a terrible music score made this movie feel like a second rate soap opera. Yet I was curious to see the outcome of the transplanted hands.Despite the deplorable acting, the narrative holds the movie together. Will Vernon play the piano again? Despite the amazing results of a hand transplant Vernon saw the glass as half empty. There is a few distressful scenes throughout the picture especially when Vernon visits the cab drivers home . This scene could rival the original Frankenstein (Boris Karloff version) movie, when the monster drowns the little girl. My question was, were those hands evil or did Vernon have past issues and lashed out in frustration? One more thought, How unlucky could that cab driver be ? I found his life more interesting than a stuffy concert pianist. In summing up this film I was sadden to learn that the gang at Mystery Science Theater 3000 never aired this debacle and secondly the only horror in this movie aside the visit to the cabbies home was the acting.

After a horrible car accident, a concert pianist's hands are transplanted and he becomes a monster in "Hands of a Stranger," a 1962 film starring Paul Lukather, James Stapleton, and Joan Harvey. Somewhat based on the often remade "Hands of Dr. Orlac," Stapleton plays Vernon Paris, a gifted pianist. The cab he is in has an accident, and his hands are mangled. A surgeon (Lukather) decides to try a hands transplant, taking hands from a corpse brought in a couple of hours earlier. When the bandages come off and Vernon realizes they're not his hands, he basically flips out and goes on a killing spree. A couple of times, he doesn't know his own strength and people end up dead. Then he starts deliberately killing. Unlike Mad Love, where we know the transplanted hands are those of a killer, we never do learn the identity of Vernon's new hands. As for Vernon, I guess we just assume for some reason he goes nuts. His hands are ruined, the doctor gives him a chance to continue his career, and he's furious with everyone involved and seeks revenge. Directed by Newt Arnold, this is a fairly atrocious film. For one thing, the eye makeup and use of a shiny eye shadow used to draw light is obvious. On Stapleton, who has effete features, it looks ridiculous. The dialogue is mind-bogglingly dense and the images in the film are sledge-hammer obvious, focusing on hands, hands, hands. The acting - I imagine most of these poor souls did the best they could under the circumstances. Joan Harvey is so over the top screaming and fake crying that she's practically on the ceiling. In contrast, Stapleton's face and voice remain completely unchanged throughout the movie. Paul Lukather, whose voice is famous because of all the video games he's done, had a very distinguished career in all mediums and tries to strike a balance. But what could he do talking about beauty and science and mankind all the time. If you want to watch it, be advised and just get a kick out of it.

A talented pianist, Vernon Paris(James Stapleton)has played the greatest concert of his life with a future as bright as could possibly be..until his hands are mangled and broken after his taxi driver, whose attention was diverted, crashes. A dedicated and intensely driven surgeon, Dr. Gil Harding(Paul Lukather), who pushes himself too hard in saving every life under his care regardless of the circumstances, is able to successfully transplant a mysterious murdered man's hands onto Vernon whose own were damaged beyond repair. Awakening to the horror that he no longer possessed the delicate, skilled hands that so wonderfully played such soaring melodies, Vernon rejects the new ones grafted to him. Psychologically traumatized, Vernon begins to violently react towards those he condemns for the new hands that aren't able to adjust to the piano keys that once brought beauty to the world. This includes those who contributed to the surgery and his tragic fate..Gil's doctors and the son of the taxi driver who caused the crash(..also Vernon's glamorous society gal who left him for another after discovering his accident). Overly dramatic, talky, with loud, pounding score attempting to increase the level of weight regarding the characters and story can sometimes make the presentation a bit difficult, but I appreciated the ambitious nature behind the filmmakers in telling a compelling tale about how tragedy effects the lives of many when talent is taken from someone who has prepared his whole life for success. Director Newt Arnold, who also wrote the intelligent and thought-provoking screenplay, uses his camera to emphasize the importance of the hands, their movements and abilities, even focusing on the psychological impact of losing your own and being stuck with those alien to you. I like how Arnold differentiates the changes in the hands, once gentle, bringing only beauty, then strong and powerful creating only death. Arnold establishes that anything(..anyone)Vernon touches, he destroys. The performances are pretty intense and melodramatic, but the situation within the story warrants such heated emotions and debates. Still, one major problem that this film suffers from, I felt, is that Vernon is hard to sympathize with because he seems quite egotistical, arrogant, and the type yearning for the spotlight and fame..he has worked hard for this glory, but it's hard to really embrace him because he's obsessed with beauty to the point that it's the only thing of importance. When this is taken away from him, Vernon immediately sours, pointing fingers at the very ones who, at the very least, gave him new hands. I thought Lukather was very good as the determined surgeon, with a commanding presence, providing his character with an authority. Laurence Haddon is Lt. Syms, who hounds Gil for answers regarding the missing hands from the dead, unidentified man, patient, but steadily getting restless and assertive when the victims start adding up. Harvey, as Vernon's concerned sister, Dina(..and Gil's love interest), can be a bit overwhelming in her histrionics(..her overheated exchange with Gil over Vernon's unfortunate problem is almost cringe-worthy), but when settled/toned down, she isn't too bad. Some impressive photography with Arnold capturing faces/images quite well for extra impact(..the funhouse mirror gag is quite a powerful moment truly displaying the torment Vernon is facing in a visual way).

Granted, this extremely low budget Z grade horror film provided me with many smiles and eye opening moments. Does that make it a good film? Certainly not! It's the type of film that would never be cobsconsid mainstream, the type of experimental movie that the writers, directors and technical team hoped would be groundbreaking but ends up a sometimes underground piece of trash. "The Hands of Orlac" had been done before in classic ways (as recent as the year before this), and the question is asked about this version: why? There are several reasons why from my viewing of it, and the lack of budget gives a certain viewpoint to the story that makes it a must for fans of new wave cinema. The story focuses on a brilliant younh pianist (James Noah) who loses his hands after a horrible car accident and has the hands of a killer sewn on. This gives him an unintentional urge to kill, with the killer's hands obviously having a brain stronger than his own. The murders are shocking and brutal, one involving a teenaged boy truly disturbing. Another seemingly accidental death has the victim burning alive right in front of his eyes. The less said about the acting, the better. A good majority of the acting is amateurish and noisy, with the women in particular braying their lines. One of the young actresses ironically is a young Sally Kellerman. Technically, this has some terrific moments, but then some ridiculously melodramatic moment comes along and destroys the mood. I guess if you go in looking for the unintentional laughs, you might find yourself enjoying it more.

After losing his hands in a tragic accident, a gifted pianist finds that the surgically replaced hands he now has take a murderous life of their own and must try to stop them from acting out the deadly urges. This here turned out to be pretty much a fun and enjoyable effort. A lot of what makes this one so much fun is brought along by the film's central point of a lot more focus on the hands and how they're getting comfortable following the accident. Since they're far more crucial to the film's plot rather than any other side-quality, the fact that this is able to put more focus on that through the long arguing done before and after the actual surgery as well as the procedures afterward testing how they've come along since. It's all nicely handled here until it turns over it's murderous qualities in the second half. This is an enjoyable affair as this gives us plenty of good scenes including the meeting with his girlfriend in her apartment and the young son of his driver when he stops in to meet with him. The finale here is also fun where it has more creepy qualities than expected, starting with the carnival altercations of people using their hands that eat at him before his playing the game and resulting freak-out in the area, and the stalking of his girlfriend in the theater which includes a fine brawl mixed in here. These here are all enough to make this one enjoyable enough to hold out nicely over the few small flaws here. The biggest problem here is the film's uneven pacing where this one is pretty front- loaded with the bland talking scenes and saves the action for the end. While there's still some focus on the surgeon and his radical experiment here, the fact that this comes in the form of the over-the-top speeches and throwing around how unethical the action procedure is that there's really no time to get this one going on with the hands' ineffectual nature by showing it in action. A lot of that is how this one seems to spiral between being a serious horror effort and more campy material rather than bringing on any kind of display of powers during the examination scenes makes this one lose some steam along the way. As well, there's the rather underwhelming finale does it no favors either with a simple, matter-of-factly occurrence that takes place off-screen for the most part which really causes this to lower the impact of the action. Otherwise, this one was quite entertaining. Today's Rating-PG: Violence

This low budget Allied Artists thriller boasts some very unique camera work and a nice and edgy performance as a Van Cliburn like concert pianist whose hands become horribly mangled in a car crash by Paul Lukather. The film opens with someone killing and then being killed and it's those hands that are grafted on to Lukather when he's brought into the hospital. James Stapleton plays the surgeon whose hubris leads him to using Lukather as an experimental guinea pig for a new surgical transplant technique. Who knows if eventually it might have worked, but imagine asking Van Cliburn to put his career on hold around this time for several years. Lukather is not that patient and several fatalities result because of that, most tragically the death of child prodigy Barry Gordon. Though the film holds up pretty well for such a low budget product with limited production values in 1962 no one would have mistaken the lead for anyone else other than Van Cliburn. That dimension is lost to today's generation. Doesn't mean they can't enjoy a good low budget shocker.

What strong hands. My hands. What about my brother's hands? Transplant the hands. Who's hands are those? Enough about the freaking hands! After about thirty minutes I wanted to take this movie out of my DVD player and skeet shoot it in the yard. They say that brevity is the soul of wit. Something this movie sorely lacks. There are no yes a no answers in this film as every reply resembles more a college dissertation than a retort. If these actors got paid by the word than surely they became millionaires after filming this. What's so frustrating is all the words spoken to advance such a thin plot. I can summarize this movie in one sentence. A skilled pianist has his hands replaced after a car accident and becomes resentful of his new circumstance. That's it. Why he chooses to lash out on the very people who tried to help him, especially the doctor who gave him hands, is never really explored and makes him appear as an ingrate rather than a victim. Without the operation he would have NO hands at all. By the way, what kind of insurance plan covers trips to the amusement park with your doctor? That's gotta cost a pretty penny. No doubt he has one of those "Cadillac" insurance plans the current administration wants to tax so desperately. There is also a detective who constantly questions the doctor about a murder case that he clearly has no involvement with. At one point the "interrogation" takes place as both the cop and the doctor lean on the same side of a desk about six inches apart. Just kiss him and get it over with flatfoot! A mouthy and unsuspenseful limb replacement thriller that has been done far better by other films. Toss a couple of shekels Jeff Fahey's way and watch Body Parts instead.

This is the talkiest movie I've ever seen. I have a simple rule of thumb: if you watch a movie on fast forward and it still seems too slow you've got a problem. By editing out the slow, pointless, redundant dialogue you might be able to trim this film down to a serviceable 30 minute short, but in its present form I find HANDS OF A STRANGER just intolerable. I found the sloooow talking philosophical police detective a particular nuisance. I'm sure the writer/director meant to craft an intelligent, literate horror film but all he ended up with is a pretentious bore. Sorry. I'm not a guy who enjoys trashing other people's hard work, but there you have it. On the plus side, there are a couple of creepy touches (including nice use of a fun house mirror --- I'd seen a still of this shot in a horror movie magazine years ago and always wondered what movie it was from!) and the aforementioned good intentions. The hand motif got to be a joke after a while. And the scene where the pianist's girl friend accidentally dies (possible spoiler) was truly absurd. She falls back, knocks a candle off a table and into some curtains, and the whole room instantly goes up in flames. It's like she kept her curtains constantly soaked in gasoline in case of just such an event. And the boy friend just stands by watching while she's immolated in a matter of seconds. By the way, I'm a little surprised by the members who irately commented that the plot was a steal from HANDS OF ORLAC. I thought everyone knew HANDS OF A STRANGER was a remake of ORLAC --- although I suppose it is a bit suspicious that neither ORLAC nor its author is ever mentioned in the credits. Maybe I'm the one being naive.