Rent The Hands of Orlac (1924)

Disrturbing - The Hands of Orlac review by sb

AKA The Hands of Orlac- after the success of Dr Caligari director Weine and actor Veidt re-united for a slice of body horror.

Veidt plays Orlac a concert pianist who is on the way home to his wife when is is involved in a horrific train crash.

The surgeon saves his life but cannot save his hands and its revealed they are the transplanted hands of a convicted murderer.

Orlac realises that not only can he no longer play but becomes obsessed with the fact that the hands retain some muscle memory of the lethal instincts of the previous owner.

He refuses all contact and even keeps his wife at a remote distance for her safety - meanwhile a mysterious stranger seems to a strange power over the maidservant and soon begins to ensnare Orlac in his web - is he who its implied he is?

Its been remade serveral times but never as powerfully as this - as always Veidt is electric using the hands as almost reptillian beings that must be destroyed and his eyes are endless pools of despair as his mind fragments under what he must endure.

The set design is remarkable - all art-deco rooms far larger than than they need be with minimal furniture and dark shadows that seen to trap Orlac with no-where to hide and a constant strident atonal score that becomes more and more disorintating as the film progresses.

Ok you can see the ending as a sleight of hand (pardon the pun) but then its revealed that its far more than that - a truly remarkable film - 4/5

Killer hands! - The Hands of Orlac review by LC

As far as I am aware, this is the first movies to launch an entire sub-genre of horror movies about possessed hands with minds of their own. The melodramatic plot creaks a bit around the edges, but it has some effective and atmospheric moments, and the blu ray restoration looks fantastic. I'm not sure about the score however, which is relentlessly dissonant and unmelodic for the entire running time - as much as I enjoy experimental music, it doesn't leave much scope for light and shade. [3.5 out of 5]

Silent Horror. - The Hands of Orlac review by Steve

Classic German expressionism based on Maurice Renard’s famous French horror serial about a concert pianist who loses his hands in a train crash… which are replaced by grafts from an executed knife murderer. So the musician begins to feel controlled by violent, homicidal impulses.

Only it’s so much weirder than that… and grotesque. The screen is dominated by Conrad Veidt as Orlac, driven to obsessive insanity by his psychological rejection of the transplant. Of course, this is an expressionist performance typical of silent horror and sometimes it feels like watching interpretive dance!

Still, Veidt is phenomenal and the main attraction. Admittedly, anyone not fascinated by his portrayal may find this slow, as the narrative dwells on his hallucinatory anguish. Fritz Kortner is convincingly repellent as the blackmailer who convinces the ex-maestro that the new hands are responsible for another killing.

The expressionist set design isn’t as extreme as director Robert Wiene’s previous The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920), but still deeply evocative. And the film is darkly transgressive. It feels a happy miracle that this landmark gothic tale was adapted at such an auspicious time in cinema history.