For the record, I hated THE HAND when I first saw it and don’t like it much more today. Not because it’s not scary at all (its one or two jump scare moments and the nutty ending work for me), and not because Michael Caine isn’t “givin’ it ‘is awl” (heh) as a strip cartoonist who loses his drawing hand in a freak accident, gets a prosthetic replacement and soon has a bit of a psychological breakdown afterwards that involves a few dips into murder. Nope, Caine is fine and creepy here as Jon Lansdale and in fact, the other actors do a mostly fine job with Stone’s script (based on the Marc Brandel novel “The Lizard’s Tail”).
My big beef with the movie is how very, very little of Barry Smith’s outstanding comic art (created specifically for the film, mind you) is seen once the main credits have finished rolling. It’s a shame because the films isn’t quite the horror film it needs to be despite trying very hard to bridge the gap between low budget indie and major studio first effort (it was Stone’s first time behind the camera on a feature film). Granted, this isn’t supposed to be a Smith biopic or anything like that and I eventually saw a chunk of the art in an interview Smith did around when the film was released or so (and it’s some beautiful work). But for all the story’s emphasis on Lansdale’s Mandro character being so important (hell, no hand, bro means NO Mandro!), we never see that much of the artwork up close or find out much about Mandro other than the art looks like Marvel’s Conan the Barbarian when Smith’s art really matured near the end of his run on the book… Continue reading
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