HANDS OFF! | Offscreen
Forget Ash's possessed hand in “Evil Dead II” or Thing T. Thing, the helpful hand from “The Addams Family”. The hands stealing the show in this B to Z are another breed of five-fingered beast entirely. “Demonoid” AKA “Macabra” starts off in a small town in Mexico, homeland of the film's director Alfredo Zacarias (whose other Z-movie credits include “The Bees”), and tracks the bloody progress of a demonic hand which serially possesses a variety of humans, including a plastic surgeon and a priest. Never before has a severed body part demonstrated such ingenuity in eliminating its opponents! In “The Hand”, another extremity turns homicidal after being violently severed in a car accident and even begins to infect the mental health of its former owner (Michael Caine). This second feature from writer-director Oliver Stone (“Natural Born Killers”, “JFK”, “World Trade Center”) is a barking mad psychological thriller with splashes of horror and even a touch of slapstick.
DEMONOID
While exploring a Mexican mine, Jennifer Baines (Samantha Eggar) and her husband Mark unearth an iron casket containing a severed hand which takes possession of Mark. The appendage travels back with them to America, where it jumps like a virus from one host to another, leaving a trail of carnage.
THE HAND
Jonathan Lansdale (Michael Caine) is a comic-strip artist who loses his hand - and livelihood - in a freak accident. No-one can find the severed extremity, yet it continues to lurk, embarks on a throttling rampage, and even scuttles up the trouser leg of its former owner, with hilarious results.