The ’80s Horror Thriller From A Master Director And A-List Actor Everyone Is Forgetting
Academy Award-winning director Oliver Stone is renowned for his riveting political sagas and hard-hitting war films. But years before Born on the 4th of July or Platoon, Stone wrote and directed a horror film that has been largely forgotten over the decades. Now is a great time to discover The Hand, Stone’s chilling foray into the fright-flick business.
A Michael Caine Meltdown
The Hand is the tragic story of a popular comic book artist that loses his drawing hand in a horrific accident. Jon Lansdale (Michael Caine) finds that after his hand was severed from his body, he is unable to continue his work as an artist. Moreover, his wife Anne (Andrea Marcovicci) is consumed with guilt after causing the accident, which begins to put a terrible strain on their marriage.
Jon was unable to locate his hand after it was cut from his body, despite thorough searching. The artist begins to hallucinate during what audiences are led to believe is a mental breakdown, as he sees different inanimate articles come to life and transform into his missing appendage.
Taking A Hands-Off Approach
The Hand takes Jon on a journey across the country from his home in New York City to the west coast where he takes a teaching job at a community college. All is well until he begins to have an affair with one of his students. As his tryst with Stella (Annie McEnroe) intensifies, Jon begins having horrific hallucinations of his missing hand strangling her to death.
Jon sees several people he’s at odds with slowly succumbing to death without mercy from the missing hand. As the film intensifies, you’re not sure if Jon’s hand is really carrying out the killings or if Jon, in the throes of a mental breakdown, is unknowingly murdering people.
A Nightmare Brought To Life
The Hand shows Oliver Stone’s uncanny ability to bring to life one man’s nightmare and project it onto a theater screen in a way that is as terrifying as it is captivating. From a novel of the same name written by Marc Brandel, Stone adapted an intriguing screenplay that, while having some slow spots in the middle, overall keeps the audience’s attention.
Classic Use Of An Unreliable Protagonist
Michael Caine keeps audiences guessing throughout the entirety of The Hand. One moment you’ll be sure that he is really being stalked by his severed unit, but details that emerge in other scenes will make you swear that Jon Lansdale has simply succumbed to an untreated mental breakdown following the loss of his career and his family. Caine plays the part to perfection, undoubtedly helped along by the fledgling director Stone’s vision.
An Intense Psychological Exploration
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The Hand is an atypical entry in 80s horror, giving audiences more of a psychological ride than one that is frame after frame of teens getting stalked and hacked to pieces by a masked killer. It’s an intense thriller as much as it is horror as Jon Lansdale becomes to fall completely apart while his “hand” (whether real or imagined) is working to further pull away the remaining segments of his life.
The Hand isn’t streaming for free, but you can rent it on-demand Through Amazon Prime Video. To further explore the title, you can check out the GenreVision podcast.
