Well this was not what I expected. I bought it a while back when we were going through a Conrad Weidt phase (along with
The Man Who Laughs, which proved to be unplayable) and I thought I knew the plot from the films that have drawn influence from it over the years. For our purposes, the most important of these was a film called
Body Parts that we saw in previews in Los Angeles (that is, we were given a free pass on the condition that we filled in a questionnaire about it afterwards so they could decide what changes to be made before releasing it) that was both terrible and wonderful. In
Body Parts a man gets the hands of a convicted serial killer and becomes convinced that the evil in them is infecting him. This idea comes directly from
The Hands of Orlac (or, more precisely, from
the novel on which it is based) but the film (in my opinion) wimps out, or rather, tries to be relatively realistic (for a film that portrays successful hand transplantation in France in the early 1920's). Anyway, the basic plot is that Paul Orlac, famous concert pianist, is returning by train to his loving wife (to whom he has written of his wish to run his hands across her trembling hair and skin in a
Simpsons-esque foreshadowing) when it derails. Boldly she races aboard to rescue him and he is carried off. Meanwhile, we see a sinister figure stalking the scene. The good news is that he just has a slight skull fracture which is easily fixed. The bad news is that his hands are crushed beyond repair. This sends his wife (whose acting, perhaps most of an extreme bunch, cannot be over-the-topped) into a swooning fit, screeching "his hands are his life!!!!"
When Orlac awakes the wife comes to smooch him
and we get some troubling indication that his mind may be going because he thinks he sees a face leering at him through the window in his room's door (the same one that has appeared to him in a dream),
but when the wife turns to look there is nothing. Anyway, she goes back home and he is given some time to recuperate, at which point the doctor breaks it to him that he now has the hands of the recently executed murderer Vasseur. Orlac is, I would say, less than grateful, given the alternative and the extent of this medical achievement, but as he discovers he can no longer play the piano (I was half hoping the hands would only play "Chopsticks" or something like that - in some possible world there's a
Young Frankenstein version where this happens) and will soon be destitute, you can see his point. There's some shenanigans of the maid writing to somebody that she cannot obey his terrible orders any more, Vasseur's infamous murder weapon (a knife with an X on the hilt) turning up in Orlac's door, and Orlac becoming more and more obsessed with the idea of the evil of the hands infecting his soul. Sidenote: the real strength of this film, as you'd expect from a product of German Expressionism, is the lighting and the sets. Orlac's house, in particular, is fantastic, with bizarre furniture, a huge door and a very bizarre lamp on the wall.
Even more so is Orlac's father's house, which we see when first the wife and then (at her urging) Orlac himself go to him to beg him for money. But no luck for the wife because, as the father says with relish, "I hate him!" Orlac is reluctant to go himself, because the feeling is mutual ("he's EVIL!"), but when he does, we see him go in... then come running out and head straight for the police, because his father is lying dead with Vasseur's dagger in his chest.
Moreover (as the detectives announce after merely peering around with a magnifying glass, which shows great eyesight
and memory) Vasseur's fingerprints are everywhere, including the murder weapon. This, of course, bemuses the cops (if not Paul) because they've executed Vasseur. Paul races home to look in the piano, which was where he hid the knife when he found it in the door, and it's gone! Did
he kill his own father in some kind of psychotic fugue? Well, he's out in the street when a sinister figure approaches him - and it's the man with the face he saw through his hospital room's door! The man takes him to a bar
and demands that he pay him a sizeable chunk of the money that will now be coming to him from his rich dead father for staying quiet about the fact that he, Paul Orlac, has Vasseur's hands. "And I know this because I am Vasseur!" says the man, who appears to have metal prosthetic hands, "at least, his head" (here he reveals a livid scar on his neck) "because the doctor's assistant performed the same trick on the head that the doctor performed on the hands!" Anyway, Orlac promises to pay the man tomorrow, but goes to his wife and spills his guts and she tells him to go to the cops... and they believe him! So they turn up to arrest the strange man, and it turns out (a) they've been after him for a while, (b)
he's the doctor's assistant, and (c) the metal hands are fake, concealing his real hands. Then the maid shows up and reveals (d) the fingerprints were planted by this criminal because he knew Vasseur, took molds of his fingers and created fake fingerprints that he attached to gloves (that she produces). Finally, (e) it was
he and not Vasseur who committed the murder (of a money lender) for which Vasseur was wrongly convicted and executed! At this Paul realizes his hands are innocent, too, and there's no danger of them turning him evil, so his wife finally gets the long-promised caresses. As I said, a bit of a silly cop out. I'd prefer ludicrous superstitious evil-in-the-flesh nonsense (which is what it sounds like the novel is, and
Body Parts certainly is) than this, (undeniably entertaining) ludicrous criminal plot nonsense. But, as always, Weidt is worth the price of admission: you'll never see more expressive hand acting, I guarantee it!
