The Hand (1981)

I remember watching this film when I was very young and it came on television. For all of these years I could picture the scene where Michael Caine loses his hand. It would pop full-bore into my brain whenever I would pass someone on a two lane road, or when someone else would as I was in a car nearby. Or whenever I would see one car pass another on television. And even sometimes when I just thought about cars passing each other on a two-lane road (from 8:58 to the end of the video below).

Outside of that, I remember absolutely nothing about this movie. Because of that, I was very surprised to find that it was a parable of an artist losing his ability to art, and then being hunted down psychologically by that propensity.

And Oliver Stone directed it, so there must be, like, multiple layers about a story where a dude loses his hand, he becomes a retro-cyborg, his severed hand carries out the vengeance of his subconscious mind (because, really, it can't just go get a job at McDonalds), before the main guy gets thrown in a nuthouse without really telling us whether the hand was imaginary or not. Damn auteurs.

There is some seriously fantastic Michael Caine in this film though. No joke, for a B-rate horror movie, he still brings the goods snarled in the side of his lip (much like the badass Harry Brown), and he lays them dead on the table (see the original Get Carter). He even does this while lip-syncingly commanding his dead-hand to strangle his soon-to-be ex-wife while lying in an adjacent room, and ESPECIALLY while wrestling with his. own. hand.

The following is a Public Service Announcement:

Michael Caine's hand strangles Michael Caine in this movie. Thus, Michael Caine's hand > Michael Caine. If this evidence holds true in relation to all of Michael Cain's limbs, then no one should decapitate Michael Caine's head from Michael Caine's body in the event of a Zombpacalypse. There's no telling what absolute horror Michael Caine's severed head could dispense upon an unsuspecting world.

Thank you for your cooperation.

So, watching this film when I was young scarred me for life. But at least it kept me from getting a limb severed in an automobile accident...and then have that limb, maybe, kill people that made me mad. That would've been pretty awful, right?