I like to keep my hands soft. To do so, I use hand soaps and lotions like Palmolive (you’d be amazed at the money you can save by using printable Palmolive coupons). But not everyone is so particular about their hands. In fact, a number of movie characters over the years have been stuck with appendages that are cursed, possessed, or otherwise evil. If you’ve been looking for a way to combine your passion for hand care with cinema, here are 10 movies to add to your queue.
Films with Severed Limbs and Possessed Hands
- Evil Dead 2 (1987) – Bruce Campbell and Sam Raimi resurrect their franchise about a big-chinned hero battling the forces of evil at an isolated cabin. When these dark forces possess his hand, he’s left with no choice but to amputate it with a chainsaw while laughing maniacally. Of course, that doesn’t stop the hand.
- The Hand (1981) – Before he was getting nominated for Oscars, director Oliver Stone made this horror flick starring Michael Caine as a cartoonist who loses his hand in a car accident. But he keeps dreaming about the lost appendage, and soon he’s certain that the hand is still out there committing murder.
- Idle Hands (1990) – Devon Sawa is a stoner whose hand becomes possessed by evil and causes him to kill those around him. Jessica Alba is the girl-next-door, while Vivica A. Fox is a druid. It’s mostly played for laughs, by the way.
- Dr. Strangelove (1964) – Stanley Kubrick’s anti-war film is a black comedy masterpiece, largely thanks to the trio of performances turned in by Peter Sellers. One of these is Dr. Strangelove, an ex-Nazi who now works for the U.S. government and seems to have little control over his gloved right hand.
- Body Parts (1991) – Jeff Fahey is a criminal psychologist who loses his arm and gets a replacement courtesy of a serial killer. You just know that’s going to be trouble.
- Quicksilver Highway (1997) – Features horror stories written by Stephen King and Clive Barker. In the latter, a man finds that his hands are planning to rebel against him.
- The Addams Family (1991) – It wouldn’t be a proper big-screen adaptation without the presence of Thing, the severed hand who lives with Gomez and Morticia.
- Mad Love (1935) – Peter Lorre is a surgeon obsessed with a beautiful–and married–woman. When her pianist husband’s hands are crushed in an accident, she turns to the good doctor for help…with disastrous results.
The next time you rub Palmolive on your hands, think about how lucky you are not to have a serial killer’s body parts attached to you. It’s little thoughts like this that keep me going throughout the day.