So, you're a highly strung cartoonist (sort of Jack Nicholson's illustrator alter-ego of "The Shining") experiencing marital problems when you lose your drawing hand in a freak road accident. From there, your life spirals out of control, as your former appendage takes on an existence of its own, prowling the country-side, defacing your artwork and strangling your bedfellows. You'd go mad - who wouldn't? Michael Caine certainly did, but it's whether his altered state occurred before or after he agreed to make this picture, that is really in question. Sure, it's dark, haunting, there's a grim atmosphere and some gruesome violence, but it never manages to escape the absurd premise.
Caine is at his unhinged best, while Marcovicci as his Shelley Duvall, takes flight into the arms of a co-worker, as his odd behaviour turns strangely obsessive. He seems to maintain a psycho-somatic link to his phantom grip, but is he really able to control its actions? That's the sixty-four dollar question that we never really learn, although there's more than a hundred minutes in which to watch it all unravel - the movie that is (it only takes Caine one scene to reach maximum lunacy).
Capable supporting cast (McEnroe, McGill, Corley, Lindfors and Murphy) restore some mental equilibrium and the music and cinematography also help create a sense of psychological nightmare in spite of the credibility weaknesses. Had director Stone not been so explicit and only 'played his hand' (so to speak) by implication, this could almost have succeeded. But just when the cast and dialogue seem to have achieved maturity, out pops the crawling, decomposing throwback to the Addams family, with its vice-like mind grip on Caine's cognisance, and an equally taut clasp around a victim's throat. Sordid revision of "The Beast With Five Fingers" is testament only to the longevity of Caine's career, in spite of the plethora of abominable pictures he made in the eighties, of which "The Hand" is exhibit A.
Caine is at his unhinged best, while Marcovicci as his Shelley Duvall, takes flight into the arms of a co-worker, as his odd behaviour turns strangely obsessive. He seems to maintain a psycho-somatic link to his phantom grip, but is he really able to control its actions? That's the sixty-four dollar question that we never really learn, although there's more than a hundred minutes in which to watch it all unravel - the movie that is (it only takes Caine one scene to reach maximum lunacy).
Capable supporting cast (McEnroe, McGill, Corley, Lindfors and Murphy) restore some mental equilibrium and the music and cinematography also help create a sense of psychological nightmare in spite of the credibility weaknesses. Had director Stone not been so explicit and only 'played his hand' (so to speak) by implication, this could almost have succeeded. But just when the cast and dialogue seem to have achieved maturity, out pops the crawling, decomposing throwback to the Addams family, with its vice-like mind grip on Caine's cognisance, and an equally taut clasp around a victim's throat. Sordid revision of "The Beast With Five Fingers" is testament only to the longevity of Caine's career, in spite of the plethora of abominable pictures he made in the eighties, of which "The Hand" is exhibit A.