The Hand is a psychological horror film, at least that's what it touts itself to be on the video box. It's mostly just a lot of heavy-handed pseudo-thrills meant to give chills and shocks when really it just creates some redundancy. We're given the tragedy of a character, Joe Lansdale, who loses his hand in a rather freak accident while his wife is driving the car, and he can't seem to find the bloody thing in a field. He gets a metal replacement put on ala the Terminator, but does the old hand left for the bugs in the field have its own mind? Or is Joe just controlling the thing and going after all of the people he's close to (i.e. his own wife, his mistress, his mistress's actual guy on the side, etc)?
The real intentions aren't made totally clear, this despite Oliver Stone's attempts at creating a sense of danger and paranoid with Caine's character. And Michael Caine, he does try his best, he really does, going for every scene with the kind of dedication and (trying to search for) truth of the matter even as the script tries to undercut him with below-par dialog. Maybe Stone wasn't really equipped for this material anyway, that in his defense (if possible) he was a hired gun- based more possibly on his first film Seizure, a horror film, than any clout he got from his first Oscar- and whatever skills he brought weren't put into a style that really made things work.
Indeed, now that we have a movie like Raimi's Evil Dead 2: Dead By Dawn, we see how cheesy a killer-hand flick really is and how it would be simply better off as unintentional comedy. There's a couple of scenes were we see the potential for something over the top, like when the black cat jumps up on the desk and inexplicably crashes through the window (!) or just the image of that lizard's tale flapping about which the original book from the movie has its name. But none of the characters are convincing, and the tendencies that are weakest that Stone tends towards which are, frankly, beating-you-over-the-head things with direction and writing, are put way up front here. It's been said, by the man himself, that Stone was on coke for a period in the early 80s prior to writing Scarface. Maybe some of that rubbed off the wrong way here?
Bottom line: whatever's meant to be scary is downright lame, and its just crappy film-making that battles with an actor of Caine's caliber who does try and make it interesting. He does, actually, which may be the only real longevity this has. If you're at all a Stone fan, as I am (up to a point) it's a disappointing Psycho variation, and for his haters it's just more fuel for the fire.
The real intentions aren't made totally clear, this despite Oliver Stone's attempts at creating a sense of danger and paranoid with Caine's character. And Michael Caine, he does try his best, he really does, going for every scene with the kind of dedication and (trying to search for) truth of the matter even as the script tries to undercut him with below-par dialog. Maybe Stone wasn't really equipped for this material anyway, that in his defense (if possible) he was a hired gun- based more possibly on his first film Seizure, a horror film, than any clout he got from his first Oscar- and whatever skills he brought weren't put into a style that really made things work.
Indeed, now that we have a movie like Raimi's Evil Dead 2: Dead By Dawn, we see how cheesy a killer-hand flick really is and how it would be simply better off as unintentional comedy. There's a couple of scenes were we see the potential for something over the top, like when the black cat jumps up on the desk and inexplicably crashes through the window (!) or just the image of that lizard's tale flapping about which the original book from the movie has its name. But none of the characters are convincing, and the tendencies that are weakest that Stone tends towards which are, frankly, beating-you-over-the-head things with direction and writing, are put way up front here. It's been said, by the man himself, that Stone was on coke for a period in the early 80s prior to writing Scarface. Maybe some of that rubbed off the wrong way here?
Bottom line: whatever's meant to be scary is downright lame, and its just crappy film-making that battles with an actor of Caine's caliber who does try and make it interesting. He does, actually, which may be the only real longevity this has. If you're at all a Stone fan, as I am (up to a point) it's a disappointing Psycho variation, and for his haters it's just more fuel for the fire.