Disembodied and/or possessed hands have been a staple of horror since day one, with your Mad Love, Hands of Orlac debauchery through The Beast With Five Fingers to Amicus’ oft-used mechanical hand, first seen belonging to Michael Gough and terrorising Christopher Lee in Dr Terror’s…, then reused several more times, each outing rendering visibly more moth-eaten then the last, really pissing off Stephanie Beacham with its temperamental aspects in a crucial ‘following the bird upstairs’ scene. They’ve always creeped us out somehow. Even when Dave Allen (!) did a parody of The Beast… where the hand joins him in a piano duet, it rendered our young hair a-quiver. Anyhow, this is possibly the ultimate severed hand flick, with the titular left appendage freed from a Mexican goldmine by long-suffering Samantha Eggar for an orgy of possession, repeated dismemberings and flying-through-the-air shots to land on the next poor old sod’s screaming face. A film that more than lives up to its authentically pratty title.
