1981 Horror Flick THE HAND: That Time MICHAEL CAINE and BARRY WINDSOR-SMITH Teamed Up – Sort Of
A REEL RETRO CINEMA Birthday Salute: New looks at old flicks and their comic-book connections… — UPDATED 5/25/25: Barry Windsor-Smith turns 76! Perfect time to re-present this Rob Kelly piece from August 2018! Dig it. — Dan — By ROB KELLY The Hand is a 1981 horror film directed by Oliver Stone(!) starring Michael Caine (in what he himself described as “a money job”) as a writer/artist who produces a very successful adventure newspaper strip called Mandro, a Prince Valiant/Conan hybrid. Over the opening credits, we see Jon Lansdale (Caine) hard at work on the newest installment. Jon is married to Anne (Andrea Marcovicci), and they have a young daughter, but it doesn’t take long to see that they’re not happy. Anne wants to move to New York and get into some New Age-y stuff but Jon is content to stay in Vermont where his work, as he puts it, “pays the bills.” Indeed it does—Jon’s strip must have circulation equivalent to Peanuts or Doonesbury, given the size of the lakefront property that he and his family live on. While on a drive, a fight breaks out when Anne reveals that when—not if—she goes to New York, she’s not all that interested in having Jon come with her. Jon starts to yell and Anne, rattled by Jon’s fury and an impatient driver behind them, veers off into the opposite lane. Unfortunately, she does this just as a garbage truck is coming the other way! She tries to swerve, and mostly does, except Jon’s outstretched hand gets smashed by the truck, shooting blood in every direction! As you might imagine, this doesn’t make things better between them. Even worse, Jon has lost his drawing hand, which leads to his agent suggesting he partner up with another artist to continue Mandro. Jon goes to New York to meet the guy (played by Roger Rabbit himself, Charles Fleischer), but, in the midst of a deep depression, he’s so rude that the whole arrangement collapses and the agent fires him off his own strip. Right around this time, we see that Jon’s right hand, last seen in a field, has come alive and has started to move around on its own. It finds its way to New York (boy, that must have taken a while) where it kills a homeless man (played by...
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