How I've remained in the dark about this 1981 movie all these years is beyond me, but I had no inkling (or fogotten any inkling I might once have had) that Michael Caine had made a movie called The Hand about a comic artist who loses his hand and becomes a bit unglued about it all. Russ pointed me in the direction of his flick in a comment on the series of movies I reviewed last week which to varying degrees adapted "The Hand of Orlac". Though I've not seen The Hand, from this trailer it appears that it too goes into that territory.
Of particular interest to comic book fans is that Barry Windsor-Smith, famous for his lush and detailed renderings of Conan the Barbarian among others did some artwork specifically for this movie to pass as the work of Caine's character. See the beautiful example above and for more go here and here too.
I really need to watch The Hand. Thanks Russ.
Rip Off
Written by Oliver Stone, who worked on the Conan film a year later. At Windsor-Smith's request, Roy Thomas wrote the dialog for the beautiful prop comic strips. BWS's hand allegedly appears in a closeup of the artist drawing.
ReplyDeleteI never saw the movie, but there were appearances of the art in fan publications and Marvel's Epic. A great interview showed up with Windsor-Smith in Steranko's Prevue (or whatever it was called that month) in which the artist explained the psychological parallels between what happens with the character in the film and his own reaction to being followed on Conan by John Buscema.
As I understand it, the movie got terrible reviews and then disappeared.
Apparently this was also covered in an early issue of Comic Book Artist, one I have. So likely I've read about all this and erased it from my meager memory. Thanks for the reminder though.
DeleteRip Off