“I suspect you of some premeditated diddling on the Hippa side.”
A gangster is gunned down in the streets, his identification taken. He is left in a pool of blood. He is rushed to the hospital. Dr. Gil Harding (Paul Lukather) operates but to no avail. The patient dies.
Vernon Paris (James Noah) is a concert pianist. After a major concert he is riding in a cab when an accident destroys his hands. The doctor wants to amputate. His agent George Britton (Michael Rye) begs the doctor to do something. Dr. Harding, being faced with such a challenge, amputates the hands of the dead gangster and puts them on Vernon. A police lieutenant Syms (Laurence Haddon) is wondering what happened to the hands of the murder victim that died on the operating table. Vernon’s sister Dina (Joan Harvey) is at first furious, accusing the doctor of using her brother as an experiment. At least until she sees what his real hands looked like. Although Dr. Harding declares the operation a success, Vernon incapable of accepting what has happened to himself.
Vernon begins to get obsessed with his hands and first slides into a form of depression. Looking for sympathy he visits his old girlfriend. She is not very responsive to his need for understanding. When he grabs her he unknowingly hurts her. She pulls away and knocks over a candle. The candle sets her dress on fire and Vernon stands, trancelike, watching her burn. Now he has totally slid down the rabbit hole.
Feeling sorry for himself, and blaming everyone else for his situation Vernon, now totally unhinged begins a systematic elimination of everyone he believes is responsible for his tragic state. I believe that Vernon had to be a little high strung to begin with to start killing people who tried to help him. Granted they weren’t his hands, but the alternative was a couple a hooks. Can you play that way?
“Hands of a Stranger” was released in 1962 and was directed by Newt Arnold. If you’ve seen “The Hands of Orlac” 1924 or “The Hands of Orlac” 1960 or even “Mad Love” 1945 you’ve pretty much seen “Hands of a Stranger”. There have been four adaptations of the film. The 1924 version being a silent film. All of them are based, to some degree, on the novel by Maurice Renard officially titled “Les Mains d’Orlac” written in 1920.
In the movie it is never known who the hands belonged to. It’s assumed that it is a gangster since he was shot down but his finger prints never led anywhere. All that is known is that he had strong hands.
The movie plays like part noir gangster film and part Spanish soap opera. It was so much fun. Characters exchanging clipped quips back and forth. The unusual camera angles and the exaggerated descriptive passages were quite amusing. Perhaps the dialogue is a little overboard but oh, it’s worth it. Yea, it was a blast. Granted I don’t think the film makers intended for it to be that way but…