The Hands of Orlac, Hands That Bind, Hang 'Em High, and a few more movies

Six flicks today, and six recommendations. It's not because I'm going easy, but because I don't watch Fast and Furious crap and Marvel movies.

The Hand (1965; Czechoslovakia)  
Streaming free at Internet Archive

From Jiří Trnka, this is a wordless 18-minute animation, about an artist who wakes up happy, but his pleasant morning is soon interrupted by a giant gloved hand. The stop-motion is terrific, while the story is up for discussion:

Does the hand symbolize God? Or a totalitarian government? Either of which, in a stop-motion world, are basically the same thing — it means the artist needs to make art the hand approves of, or else.

Verdict: YES. 

♦ ♦ ♦ 

Hand of Death (1961)
a/k/a Five Fingers of Death
Streaming free at YouTube

When some hick accidentally wanders into a secret test area, he topples to the ground. Two men wearing head-to-toe protective gear carry him inside the facility, where they check him out and tell him he'll be AOK, but they won't say what brought him down.

It's top secret, so the barely-recovered hick is sworn to secrecy before they let him walk away. Soon as he's gone, the dudes in protective gear excitedly congratulate themselves on their good luck — now they have a human test subject!

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Turns out they're developing a nerve gas that paralyzes its victims, which would let America have easier victims in more and more wars. Also turns out, the senior scientist is a little lackadaisical about safety procedures, and after spilling some nerve gas on his work station, everyone he touches dies.

Sounds like schlock, right? Well, it is schlock-adjacent, but mostly the movie works, thanks to crisp widescreen black-and-white CinemaScope cinematography by Floyd Crosby (High Noon), and a simmering score that's scary by itself, from big bandleader Sonny Burke. Scripted by Eugene Ling (Lost Boundaries, Shock), and directed by Gene Nelson (18 Mod Squads, 22 Donna Reed Shows).

John Agar stars, with Butch Patrick and Joe Besser in small pre-Munsters and post-Stooges roles, respectively.

Verdict: YES.

♦ ♦ ♦ 

The Hands of Orlac (1924; Austria)
Streaming free at Public Domain Movies

Paul Orlac is a concert pianist who loses his hands (They must be around here somewhere!). A helpful surgeon does a double-hand transplant, leaving Orlac with hands recycled from a convicted and executed murderer.

Orlac isn't wild about the situation, and the hands won't let him play the piano. He's downright phobic of his new mittholders, and soon the hands demand that he become a killer, too.

I've described it lightly, but the movie is super-serious, and it really grabs hold of you. Directed by Robert Wiene (The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari 1920), this isn't Caligari-good, and has little of that classic's sumptuous surrealism, but it's scary and disturbing and handsy.

It gets added punch from a great score by Paul Mercer, whose music wasn't part of the original release, him not yet being born and all.

The story was familiar to me, and it took some research to find that I'd already seen a remake, Hands of a Stranger (1962) — same plot, but not nearly as good.

This one's a ten-finger tingler, though. It's based on a novel by Maurice Renard, but I don't read French so I'm adding a few of the other remakes (Mad Love 1935, The Hands of Orlac 1960) to my movie watchlist.  

Verdict: YES. 

♦ ♦ ♦  

Hands on a Hard Body (1997)
Streaming free at Internet Archive

A small-town car dealer stages a contest every year, where if you touch a truck longer than the other contestants, you win the truck.

No leaning, though, and no squatting. Only standing is allowed. Occasional breaks are granted, for a few minutes at a time, but you gotta have your hand on the truck again before the whistle blows.

Instead of entering the contest himself, local boy S.R. Bindler filmed it as a documentary. It takes three days to winnow the crowd down to a winner, which Bindler trims to an hour and 38 minutes. Winner gets that truck, but the losers get nothing except the memory of wasting three days standing on concrete inside a car store.

The contest is an ad campaign, and it's slightly horrific to see how people subsume their lives to the chance for winning a truck. There's more than one holy roller who believes God wants them to win. There's a woman with worse teeth than mine, and one of the contestants had won the contest in a previous year, and came back hoping to win a second free truck. He's an ass, obviously, so Bindler lets him talk a lot on camera.

It takes place in Texas, where owning a pickup truck seems as important as Mom and Guns and Hating Immigrants. To remind you it's Texas, the soundtrack is slow banjo plucking, and everyone on-screen has a Southern accent.

This is basically a sports movie, and a good one — it's Rocky but the sport is standing still. It's authentic, though, so the character you're rooting for might not be the winner.

Verdict: YES.

♦ ♦ ♦  

Hands That Bind (2021; Canada)
Streaming free at Tubi

Main dude's been working on Nick Campbell's farm for a long time, hoping to one day buy the place, but the owner's prodigal son returns to claim his birthright, and jeepers he's a prick.

Meanwhile, there are strange goings-on at the farm, and the film is in no hurry to explain what's up. These people see lights in the skies, cattle bizarrely butchered, experience moments of nausea and vomiting, but almost aggressively don't want to talk about it. Some people are like that, so it feels real, adds to the tension, keeps the story moving at its own pace, which is not blockbuster speed. This is an independent film, not a calculated studio product.

Lots of the line deliveries sound slightly peculiar, not like bad acting but like a foreign accent, and just as I was wondering whether the film might be Canadian, a couple of characters start talking about Saskatchewan.

The director has a penchant for loud machinery and hammering and other noises, which got on my nerves. The music, all new age ominous, is exactly what you'd expect, which makes it mildly wrong for a movie that's always sidestepping ordinary.

It's set in the here and now, with microwaves and pickup trucks, but feels like a western as written by Philip K Dick. It's surreal, but also very real.

More than the sci-fi elements, it's about desperation, paranoia, even claustrophobia, despite so many open-air shots of the sprawling Alberta countryside. It smolders, but never bursts into flames, and I like that.

Verdict: YES.

♦ ♦ ♦  

Hang 'Em High (1968)
Streaming free at Vimeo

Jed Cooper (Clint Eastwood) is accused of cattle rustling and lynched in the movie's first few minutes.

Being the star of the movie, of course, Eastwood ain't quite dead, and comes back with a marshal's badge pinned to his shirt, looking for the nine men that done tried to kill him.

Maybe they'll all hang on Main Street, in a town where the gallows and regularly-scheduled hangings seem to be the leading industry. But not before the preacher leads the crowd in singing "Rock of Ages."

Hang 'Em High doesn't pretty-up the hangings, so you could almost read a message against the death penalty into it. It's sorta stilted, like a '50s movie more than a '60s, but it's got squintin' Eastwood, and a kickass but (of course) impossible story, almost over-the-top direction, and music by Dominic Frontiere that's sometimes comically overwrought and possibly plagiarized — despite never having seen this movie before, stretches of the score were known to me, exactly.

With Ed Begley, Pat Hingle, Ben Johnson, Charles McGraw, Inger Stevens, and smaller bits for Bruce Dern, Arlene Golonka, Alan Hale Jr, Dennis Hopper, L.Q. Jones, and James MacArthur.

Verdict: YES. 

♦ ♦ ♦  

Hobbled by emphysema, David Lynch says he'll never direct again, unless maybe he can work remotely

Richard Linklater: "Would Dazed and Confused be made today? No way" 

Wil Wheaton on Star Trek: Prodigy and the return of Wesley Crusher

8/5/2024   

• • • Coming attractions • • •     

The Hanging Tree (1959)
Hangmen Also Die! (1943)
Hangover Square (1945)
Hannah and Her Sisters (1986)
Hanzo the Razor: Sword of Justice (1972)

... plus schlock, shorts, and surprises

— — —
Now accepting movie recommendations,
especially starting with the letter 'I'.
Just add a comment, below.
— — —

Illustration by Jeff Meyer. Click any image to enlarge. Arguments & recommendations are welcome, but no talking once the lights dim, and only real butter on the popcorn, not that fake yellow stuff. 

 

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