This is the second remake of The Hands of Orlac I’ve reviewed. There is yet another and now I feel obligated to watch it. Can’t be worse. Here everyone monologues in an overly melodramatic way, except for a cop that monologues in an overly snarky way. The dialog is so thick and awkward it would make George Lucas cringe. And it doesn’t let up. All 84 minutes of it. Each character grandstands emotionally at another followed by an unusual number of face slaps. It feels like it was written by a teenaged girl with a thesaurus. It was exhausting.
I focus on this because we get the premise. Will he ever play the piano again? Whose hands were theses? Was he a killer? Will he become a killer? Is he going insane? These questions are addressed gracelessly. For the record, no, don't know, don't know, yes, yes.
Sally Kellerman (you know, MASH, Back to School) has a small role. She was a cutie. Some of the cast went on to appear in films and not suck at acting, while others did us the favor of retiring. Anything else to report? Well, the opening credits feel like a made for TV movie. It sat on the shelf for two years before release maybe because it was terrible, but more likely because the other Orlac remake came out at that time.
A more generous me would say the acting and dialog style was a stylistic choice that simply didn’t work, but so many other choices were terrible as well. I mean, we never find out the identity of the stranger. Spoiler alert! AMRU 2.
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