The Hands of Orlac

1924 drama

Rating: 14/20

Plot: A concert pianist loses his hands in a train accident, but doctors are able to transplant him some new ones. Unfortunately, the new hands belonged to a murderer, and they cause him to overact.

I'm sure somebody's already had the idea, but I think this would work better if the main character ended up with the hands of a chronic masturbator. There are two 70's movies about penis transplants--Percy, which features music by the Kinks and involves the penis of a womanizer, and The Amazing Transplant where the transplanted penis once belonged to a serial rapist. My movie is still going to involve transplanted hands though, and the main character has to deal with an uncontrollable urge to whip it out no matter where he's at and start jerking off. I'm thinking a Celine Dion heavy soundtrack and a protagonist played by Crispin Glover but with a penis created by the magicians in charge of the Muppets. Let me know in the comments below if you've got any money and would like to produce this son of a bitch. The Hairy-Palmed Hands of Orlac? Self-Graftification: The Movie? Squeeze Me Once, Shame on You But Squeeze Me Multiple Times in Public and We've Got Some Really Big Problems? I'm still working on a title.

There are things I liked about this silent drama although it was overly long and pretty boring. I liked the atmosphere at the beginning with some great lighting and a gnarly train wreckage scene. It does beg the question: What exactly happened to this guy on the train where only his hands were damaged? I suspect that since I haven't seen as many silent movies lately as I used to watch, that maybe the atmosphere was more typical of silent dramas or horror movies and that I just wasn't really used to it. The versatile and usually fun Conrad Veidt starred and delivered this sluggishly over-the-top performance. It's not good acting exactly, but I think I still loved it. Regardless, he had the fingers for this--abnormally long fingers that almost worked like an organic special effect. I haven't seen any of the remakes of this story, but I'm guessing they're a little more quickly paced than this one. This was so slow--too slow--and just kind of became redundant after a while. I did, however, enjoy the updated score by somebody named Paul Mercer. Sometimes, the modern scores they add to reissues of these movies just don't work, but this one was effective.

His Hands, My Shaft
Take My Hands off My Meat!
See You Later, Ejaculator
Come and Cum Again
The Glands of Orlac