95 Days to Halloween
Over the next 100 days, I will present one movie of significances in horror, suspense or thrillers for each year from 1919 to 2018. The fifth film presented here is the 1924 Austrian silent thriller The Hands of Orlac directed by Robert Wiene and starring Conrad Veidt.
The Hands of Orlac
Dir- Robert Wiene
A concert pianist named Paul Orlac loses both his hands after a train wreck, his wife pleads with a doctor to save them, so he transplants the hands of a murder. Soon after Orlac feels the hands are not those of an ordinary man and not only is he unable to play the piano he feels the urge to harm others. The Hands of Orlac follows some of the expressionist techniques of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari without the bizarre visuals. Despite the seemingly absurd plot, the portrayal of Paul Orlac stands out, and the film did gain some controversy concerning the use of fingerprint impressions, but these techniques were shown to be fantasy. The Hands of Orlac was remade twice, and the concepts used in the film have been utilized in more recent films.
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