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Double feature at the house featuring limb removal as a bridging topic.
The Severed Arm (1973) and Body Parts (1991).
The Severed Arm, while stilted and amateurish, had a bit of the Herschel Gordon Lewis aesthetic to it all. Done on the cheap, but there were legitimately solid sequences and experimentation with what would become the slasher genre throughout. Killer POV shots, bizarre yet somewhat catchy synth scoring, extreme amounts of cross cutting during the many dispatches of characters (a fuckton of coverage for the first victim especially), a proto-Dressed to Kill elevator sequence that found a way to make a four floor ascent suspenseful, a wonderful waterfall distortion dissolve into the flashback that sets the whole film up (shout out to Wayne's World), and a really solid nod to Eddy Allan Poe at the conclusion. All in all, not bad. Not great, but entertaining. Wish the print were cleaner, but for what is available, the graininess is a feature.
Body Parts. Following a wild road accident that is as horrifying as it is technically impressive to behold, Jeff Fahey is gifted the arm of Orlac. Only this Orlac had most of himself donated to others lacking appendages. One being Brad Dourif. Each donated part starts rebelling and rejecting its donor in wild ways, and some squirrelly shit starts to make ol' Fahey become junior detective to uncover the how and why of it all. Some great body horror sequences (including one toward the end that would be right at home in Robocop), a third act involving a reveal that hits overdrive on the insanity of the premise (excellent stunt work there and one slow motion shot that just rules), all anchored by pretty entertaining performances by both Fahey and Dourif. The bar scene alone is worth the price of admission, really. This really does have a bit more meat to it than most high concept horror/thrillers of the era. Definitely worth the time.
The Severed Arm (1973) and Body Parts (1991).
The Severed Arm, while stilted and amateurish, had a bit of the Herschel Gordon Lewis aesthetic to it all. Done on the cheap, but there were legitimately solid sequences and experimentation with what would become the slasher genre throughout. Killer POV shots, bizarre yet somewhat catchy synth scoring, extreme amounts of cross cutting during the many dispatches of characters (a fuckton of coverage for the first victim especially), a proto-Dressed to Kill elevator sequence that found a way to make a four floor ascent suspenseful, a wonderful waterfall distortion dissolve into the flashback that sets the whole film up (shout out to Wayne's World), and a really solid nod to Eddy Allan Poe at the conclusion. All in all, not bad. Not great, but entertaining. Wish the print were cleaner, but for what is available, the graininess is a feature.
Body Parts. Following a wild road accident that is as horrifying as it is technically impressive to behold, Jeff Fahey is gifted the arm of Orlac. Only this Orlac had most of himself donated to others lacking appendages. One being Brad Dourif. Each donated part starts rebelling and rejecting its donor in wild ways, and some squirrelly shit starts to make ol' Fahey become junior detective to uncover the how and why of it all. Some great body horror sequences (including one toward the end that would be right at home in Robocop), a third act involving a reveal that hits overdrive on the insanity of the premise (excellent stunt work there and one slow motion shot that just rules), all anchored by pretty entertaining performances by both Fahey and Dourif. The bar scene alone is worth the price of admission, really. This really does have a bit more meat to it than most high concept horror/thrillers of the era. Definitely worth the time.
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