The Hands of Orlac (1960) poster

The Hands of Orlac (1960)

Rating:

aka Hands of a Strangler
(Les Mains d’Orlac)


France. 1960.

Crew

Director – Edmond T. Greville, Screenplay – John Barnes & Edmond T. Greville, Based on the Novel by Maurice Renard, Producers – Steven Pallos & Donald Taylor, Photography (b&w) – Jacques Lemaire, Music – Claude Bolling, Production Design – Eugene Pirac. Production Company – Riviera International Films/Societe Cinematographie des Studios de la Victorine.

Cast

Mel Ferrer (Stephen Orlac), Lucille Saint Simon (Louise Cochrane Orlac), Christopher Lee (Neron), Dany Carrel (Li-Lang), Felix Aylmer (Dr Francis Cochrane), Donald Wolfit (Professor Volchek), Peter Reynolds (Felix), Edouard Hemme (Ange), Mireille Perrey (Madame Aliberti), Basil Sydney (Maurice Seidelman), Donald Pleasance (Graham Coates)


Plot

The celebrated concert pianist Stephen Orlac flies from a recital in England to Paris to meet his girlfriend Louise Cochrane. However, the plane crashes as it comes in for a landing. As Orlac is rushed to hospital, Louise pleads with the renowned surgeon Professor Volchek to save his hands. Orlac comes around to find he has received a hand transplant. As he recovers, Orlac tries to practice piano but finds that his new hands have a life of their own. He believes they were transplanted from the executed murderer Louis Vasseur and that Vasseur’s will is asserting himself. Driven by brooding obsession, he leaves their villa on the Riviera and rents a tatty hotel room in Marseilles. There the stage magician Neron takes an interest in Orlac and starts trying to extort money from him.


This was the third film version of Maurice Renard’s novel The Hands of Orlac (1920) about a concert pianist who receives hands transplanted from a murderer following an accident and then believes that the hands are trying to possess him. The classic film version of the story was the first The Hands of Orlac (1924) with Conrad Veidt giving a magnificently contorted performance in the title role. This underwent an also excellent and totally bonkers sound remake in Hollywood with Mad Love (1935) starring Peter Lorre and with Colin Clive as Orlac. Subsequent to this there was an American version Hands of a Stranger (1962) with James Stapleton as the equivalent of Orlac.

This was the third version of the story. The filmmakers may well have been inspired by the success that Hammer Films were having in just before this in reviving many of the classic Universal monster films with works like The Curse of Frankenstein (1957), Dracula/The Horror of Dracula (1958), The Mummy (1959) and The Two Faces of Dr. Jekyll (1960). The thinking may well have been to resurrect The Hands of Orlac for the 1960s Anglo-Horror era as well. To this extent, the film makes the debt to Hammer explicit and recruits Christopher Lee, one of the mainstays of the success of Hammer Films, who even delivers his role in French. Donald Pleasence who was just starting to make his name felt on the Anglo-Horror scene.

The 1960 film has the disadvantage of coming after two great previous versions of the story – the 1924 film and Mad Love, both of which were made with incredible visual style for the era and contain great performances. By contrast, you get the impression that Edmond T. Greville hasn’t even seen the other versions. His is a version of the story that comes with all the interesting aspects stripped out. Indeed, it could easily play as just a mundane thriller about a neurotic piano player who gets mixed up in some criminal schemes after having a mental breakdown following surgery.

Stephen Orlac (Mel Ferrer) wakes up with transplanted hands in The Hands of Orlac (1960)
Stephen Orlac (Mel Ferrer) wakes up in hospital with transplanted hands

Greville shoots without any sense of the paranoia that drove the other two versions of the story. Mel Ferrer looks occasionally anguished but Greville seems entirely disinterested in delving into his anxieties and mental state – indeed, in this version there is not even any scene where he learns that his hands came from the murderer Vasseur, which makes the climactic scene where Vasseur is revealed to be innocent come oddly out of the blue. Indeed, this version seems more interested in Mel Ferrer’s dallyings at the fleapit Marseilles hotel with floozy Dany Carel and the blackmailings of Christopher Lee’s stage magician than Orlac’s state of mind.

You could easily play everything that happens here as one of the era’s thrillers without the need for any horror overtones – in fact, it is only the way the film is sold that pushes it over into horror territory, not any of the scenes within. Edmond T. Grevilles’s direction is ploddingly middle of the road and unatmospheric. The film does boast some very nicely photographed locations on the French Riviera with Mel Ferrer’s sports car buzzing around tight mountain curves and the like but these almost cry out to be shown in colour.

The film has the distinction of having been shot in both French and English using the same cast and production crew. Both Mel Ferrer and Christopher Lee deliver their performances in French. The French version seems to be the only print of the film in circulation today and available on YouTube. Certainly, Lee lends fine menacing presence to his scenes.


Trailer here

Full film available here


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