Do you like your fairy tales "Grimm"? Well, sit back as Steve Thorpe examines the frightening fairy tale background of our favorite "body parts" films...in other words...
From Fairy Tale to Modern Film
By STEVEN "THOR" THORPE
(The Hands of Orlac 1961 B&W / Body Parts 1991 Color)
"That monster Vasseur is going to die; his hands will never strangle again.
But the hands of Orlac can still be saved!" —The Hands of Orlac
"Where does evil live? Does it live in the soul? In the mind? Maybe it lives in the heart. Maybe it lives in the flesh." —Body Parts
I’ve been reading a fascinating book entitled Grimm’s Grimmest, a collection of the restored versions of the popular Grimm’s Fairy Tales by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm (originally titled Nursery and Household Tales when the first English translation was published in 1823). These original tales show a much darker and gorier side to the watered-down and censored versions of the familiar children’s bedtime stories that we have come to know and love.
Take,
for example, the classic tale of Cinderella
and try to imagine Disney’s artists animating this scene
from the original text: In a frenzy of avarice (driven by the
even more demanding desires of their mother) one of
Cinderella’s step-sisters cuts off her big toe with a knife
in an insane attempt to fit into the golden (not glass in this
version) slipper. The other sister chops off her heel. Ouch. Even
though the sisters’ bloody efforts at deception fail, Gordon
Gekko would still have been proud of these two; although we need
to modify his credo a bit: "Greed is good -- no
matter how much it hurts!"
Let’s look at another less well-known Grimm Brothers tale (although, as we shall see, one which has imprinted itself deeply into the popular imagination) entitled The Three Army Surgeons. In this story the titular doctors suffer from excessive pride in their skills believing "they knew their art perfectly." They are so confident, in fact, that they make these boasts to an innkeeper who has asked for a demonstration of their art: "The first said he would cut off his hand, and put it on again early next morning. The second said he would tear out his heart, and replace it the next morning. The third said he would gouge out his eyes and heal them again next morning."
These precious organs are entrusted to the care of the innkeeper’s servant-girl for the duration of the night. Unfortunately, while dallying with her lover, the tasty morsels are eaten by a cat. Panic-stricken, the desperate girl entreats her lover’s help to procure suitable substitutions: a thief’s hand from the gallows; the guilty feline’s eyes; and a newly slaughtered pig’s heart. The next morning, unaware of the servant-girl’s duplicity, the three surgeons do indeed join together with the bogus body parts (with the help of a magic salve they have created) impressing one and all with their incredible medical knowledge and skill.
It is not until leaving the inn to continue on their journey that they begin to notice certain peculiarities in their own behavior: "The one with the pig’s heart did not stay with them at all, but whenever there was a corner he ran to it, and rooted about in it with his nose as pigs do . . . The second also behaved very strangely. He rubbed his eyes, and said to the others, comrades, what has happened? These are not my eyes. I don’t see at all. Will one of you lead me, so that I do not fall?"
The three manage to reach another inn where: "At a table in the corner sat a rich man counting money. The one with the thief’s hand walked round about him, made a few jerky movements with his arm, and at last when the stranger turned away, snatched at the pile of money, and took a handful from it. One of them saw this, and said, comrade, what are you about? You must not steal, shame on you. Eh, said he, but what can I do? My hand twitches, and I am forced to snatch things whether I will or not."
Later, sleeping in the pitch blackness of their room: "All at once the one with the cat’s eyes awoke, aroused the others, and said, brothers, just look up, do you see the white mice running about there? Then said he, things are not right with us, we have not got back again what is ours." The poor surgeons can never be reunited with their proper pieces, of course, but settle for a large sum of money from the landlord, instead. "It was enough for the rest of their lives, but they would rather have had their own rightful organs."
* * *
The idea of being invaded and physically taken over by The Other is a common enough theme that it easily ranges through the genres of science fiction, fantasy, and horror. In science fiction it usually manifests itself in the complete take-over and assimilation of the human host (The Thing, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, It Came From Outer Space, Invaders From Mars, etc.) The loss of self and free will is the worst-case scenario, of course, but is only frightening in contemplation, like death. After the change, the terror is ended. The real horror, for the individual, would seem to be conscious loss of control over the body (or parts thereof); finding The Other a part of you and being forced to fight for control of limbs which seem to have a will and a purpose of their own.
The duality of Good and Evil
fighting for supremacy within one man’s body for his soul
has 
long been a staple of the horror genre and has
been explored in both its supernatural and scientific
implications: demonic possession, vampirism and lycanthropy,
hypnotism, organ transplantation and the reanimation of dead
tissue, and of course, Dr. Jekyll’s famous
biological/chemical experiments which literally transformed him
into The Other: Mr. Edward Hyde. Here we
find the ultimate loss of control over mind and body: a
liberation of the dark side (at least for the duration of the
effects of Jekyll’s potion) which dominates and suppresses
Dr. Henry Jekyll’s good side to the point of nonexistence.
In Robert Louis Stevenson’s original story, the evil Hyde
half of Jekyll’s drug-tainted personality hated the other
side of himself so much, that he attempted to do it harm in its
absence: "Hence the ape-like tricks that he would
play on me, scrawling in my own hand blasphemies on the
pages of my books, burning the letters and destroying the
portrait of my father; and indeed, had it not been for his fear
of death, he would long ago have ruined himself in order to
involve me in the ruin."
The Monster in Universal’s 1931 Frankenstein was given the bad brain of a criminal (or, as Igor explained in Mel Brooks’ Young Frankenstein, the brain of Abby Normal) which caused problems later on down the line after Dr. F. boots it back to life. Of course the whole ghost-in-the-shell phenomenon of previous occupants of transplanted body parts exerting an influence on the current owner takes on mind-boggling proportions when dealing with a multiple patchwork human collage like Dr. Frankenstein’s Creation, and leaves us asking the question: Who is driving, anyway?
Which brings us to the movies, so to speak, at hand . . .
* * *
The Hands of Orlac (1961 B&W, dir. Edmond T. Greville) a.k.a. Hands of a Strangler, is the third remake of Maurice Renard’s novel Les Mains d’Orlac starring Mel Ferrer as the handsome and gifted concert pianist, Stephen Orlac, who’s hands are "burned to the bone" in a fiery airplane accident. The infamous strangler Louise Vassuer is guillotined for his crimes on that same day, conveniently providing the raw material for the brilliant Professor Volcheff’s experiments in transplantation. Volcheff immediately grafts the criminal’s appendages onto the musician. This would seem to produce a satisfying atonement for Vassuer’s villainy; that in death his hands, once used only to destroy, should now provide the means to save the creative genius of a man such as Stephen Orlac.
While recovering from his surgery, Orlac begins
to experience certain strange impulses
connected with his hands, which he cannot fully explain. "These
hands don’t feel as though they belong to me . . ." he
muses after an unsuccessful attempt at tinkling the ivories.
Orlac then begins exhibiting uncharacteristic violent behavior,
which he seems helpless to control. At a street carnival he
almost breaks the "strength testing" machine using one
of his new hands. While trying to relax at his fiancée’s
villa he kills her cat (the cat had hissed at his hand when he
tried to pet it) and attacks her gardener as he buries the
animal. Finally, he attempts to strangle his fiancée in a moment
of passion.
Mel Ferrer is capable enough in his role as the tortured pianist, but it’s the young Christopher Lee in a slick stand-out performance as the sleazy blackmailing magician, Nemo, who steals the movie and infuses it with a much needed taste of real evil.
"Look at these hands! They’re not mine, they belong to someone else. They have their own thoughts, their own will. I can’t control them!" After eavesdropping on this conversation between the seemingly unbalanced Orlac and his fiancée, Nemo begins a campaign of terror designed to convince Orlac that the strangler Vasseur still lives and desires to be reunited with his hands.
All in all, a nice little psychological horror drama, although the entire supernatural hook is negated at the end when another murderer confesses to the stranglings and Vasseur is posthumously declared not guilty of the crimes.
"Vasseur is innocent! My hands are innocent!"
* * *
Body Parts (1991 Color, dir. Eric Red) begins as a fairly straightforward remake of Orlac. Bill Chrashank (Jeff Fahey) is involved in a severe auto crash and loses his right arm. Dr. Agatha Webb (Lindsay Duncan) grafts on a new limb in its place through her experimental transplantation surgery. Chrashank attempts to return to his normal life but begins having violent dreams . . .
The writers have abandoned the musician angle and re-written the Orlac character as a professor of criminal psychology, supposedly so that he may share some insight into the possible motivations of the evil mind behind his new rogue limb. Unfortunately, his observations simply tend to echo the thoughts of the other cinematic Orlacs down through the century. "Does the arm really have a soul of its own?" Chrashank writes in his journal at one point.
After a disturbing session with
one of his jailhouse patients, who recognizes a Death Row 
tattoo on Chrashank’s new arm, he discovers
(through the hand’s fingerprints) that the former owner of
the arm was a convicted mass murderer named Charles Fletcher.
"You put a killer’s arm onto my body and you didn’t tell me. Now I have a murderer’s blood in my blood." When Chrashank confronts Dr. Webb, she tries to convince him that his problems are all psychological rather than physical. "That arm can’t do anything you don’t want it to," she asserts. This pronouncement proves rather disconcerting to Chrashank after he punches his child in the face as their father/son roughhousing turns ugly, and later attempts to strangle his wife in her sleep after she has spurned his sexual advances.
At this point the film deviates from the standard Orlac formula and veers off into Frankenstein territory . . . and beyond. Chrashank discovers that Dr. Webb (not one to waste a perfectly good mass murderer’s corpse) has transplanted all of the criminal’s limbs onto other patients. Including Fletcher’s head.
The hell? All right then: logic be damned! Full speed ahead! Let the gore festival begin!
Fletcher’s head, in an elaborate neck brace atop his new body, begins collecting his scattered body parts from their new owners using extremely primitive surgical methods. He simply rips them off. (No pun intended). After failing to acquire Chrashank’s arm and barely escaping from the police only to end up in a fiery car crash, we see Fletcher staggering down the street, in the film’s most memorable visual tableau, carrying his collection of bloody limbs over his shoulders. He collapses, finally, at the feet of Dr. Webb, who apparently has been covertly watching over her pet experiment. Dr. Webb, it seems, has left the State we normally live in, and gone around the bend to visit Mad Scientistville. All aboard! Next stop: Frankenstein’s Laboratory!
Chrashank catches up with the good Doctor at the hospital, where he finds Fletcher’s jigsaw-puzzle body parts all prepped, wired-up to life-support systems, and waiting in the operating room for the final piece to arrive – Chrashank’s arm. Dr. Webbenstein has decided to try a reverse engineering approach to creating life by putting Humpty/Fletcher back together again. (Hey, don’t ask me, folks, I just work here.) Dr. Webb even has a little speech prepared: "The grafting on of limbs was only the beginning. Science – like Nature – destroys to build. I’m a part of a process that’s bigger than all of us." Yawn. Ed Wood, Jr. wrote better Mad Scientist patter for Bela Lugosi in Bride of the Monster. Of course, poor old morphine-addled Bela could still out act this Ice Queen even with his arm tied-off and waiting . . .
The final bloody confrontation between Chrashank and Fletcher in the O.R. can safely be classified as Shoot-out at the Body Parts Corral and leaves no organ, attached or otherwise, unruptured.
The bottom line on why this movie fails, I believe, is the deadly seriousness with which it takes its ridiculously unbelievable plot. Just sharing a few knowing winks with the audience (which wouldn’t have saved the film by any stretch of the imagination) would at least have gone a long way towards smoothing out some of the rough logic potholes in the road and made the ride a lot more fun along the way.
* * *
Thor’s Rule of Thumb: If you ever find your limbs attempting to force you to perform questionable acts, please keep in mind Ash’s quick and easy cure-all for demonic possession from the prologue to Army of Darkness: "It got into my hand and it went bad. So, I chopped it off at the wrist."
Ouch! That's more a "Rule of Thumb-less"...but thanks, Steve, for clearing the cobwebs surrounding the fairy-tale foundations of Orlac and Parts. Cheers!
Article copyright Steven Thorpe
