You have a dirty mind if you think what I think you're thinking. Just kidding. I would like to talk about horror stories involving disembodied hands. 
The hand that comes alive on it's own is a beloved staple but not the most widely used. This might be because it has limited range and can be seen as tacky. The disembodied hand lends itself to oddball comedy a little too easily. Then again, animated hands are freaky and they tie into the essential elements of weird fiction. It's a clear violation of natural laws. Hands just don't come alive on their own. In this case, if done correctly, it can make for grisly horror fiction.
The earliest examples of this kind of story in my experience come from the old Tales from the Crypt comics. In two stories, the amputated hands of dead men avenge themselves on their killers. Both left their impressions on my little pre-teen mind.
One of the earliest treatments of the disembodied hand is W.F. Harvey's "The Beast with 5 Fingers" which is an essential classic. Harvey didn't write any novels but his short horror stories are unjustly neglected. "Beast with 5 Fingers" was filmed as a gothic mystery in the 40s starring Peter Lorre. While the short story is supernatural, the phenomena in the movie has a natural it-was-all-a-dream resolution. I personally thought it was a cheat.
A few other examples come to mind. There was the Christopher Lee segment in Dr Terror's House of Horrors which I need to see again because I don't remember much about it. There is The Crawling Hand, a crapfest blasted by Mystery Science Theater 3000 and starred The Skipper from Gilligan's Island (Alan Hale). And Now the Screaming Starts is a personal favorite of mine, an appropriately creepy gothic film based on David Case's excellent short novel Fengriffen. It is about a brutal curse brought down on the wife of a nobleman because of his ancestor's evil deeds and has a grim resolution.
The most famous movies I can think of both play the disembodied hand for laughs although I love them. Evil Dead 2 is a fan favorite. When Ash's hand is infected by the deadites and turns on him, he puts on one of the best one man shows of all time. We see Ash beating the piss out of himself, cutting off his hand, and manage to survive the ordeal without pain meds. What tops it all is when his detached hand flips him off. It's the best slapstick since the 3 Stooges. The other movie is the Addams Family. Of course, I refer to the family's adorable animated hand Thing.The movie's morbid, goofy humor never fails to get a smile out of me.
The disembodied hand may have its limits as a subgenre but it is always welcome in my book. The best stories involving them encapsulate the essence of supernatural horror: simple, nasty, and unnerving.
Written by Nicholas Montelongo
The hand that comes alive on it's own is a beloved staple but not the most widely used. This might be because it has limited range and can be seen as tacky. The disembodied hand lends itself to oddball comedy a little too easily. Then again, animated hands are freaky and they tie into the essential elements of weird fiction. It's a clear violation of natural laws. Hands just don't come alive on their own. In this case, if done correctly, it can make for grisly horror fiction.
The earliest examples of this kind of story in my experience come from the old Tales from the Crypt comics. In two stories, the amputated hands of dead men avenge themselves on their killers. Both left their impressions on my little pre-teen mind.One of the earliest treatments of the disembodied hand is W.F. Harvey's "The Beast with 5 Fingers" which is an essential classic. Harvey didn't write any novels but his short horror stories are unjustly neglected. "Beast with 5 Fingers" was filmed as a gothic mystery in the 40s starring Peter Lorre. While the short story is supernatural, the phenomena in the movie has a natural it-was-all-a-dream resolution. I personally thought it was a cheat.
A few other examples come to mind. There was the Christopher Lee segment in Dr Terror's House of Horrors which I need to see again because I don't remember much about it. There is The Crawling Hand, a crapfest blasted by Mystery Science Theater 3000 and starred The Skipper from Gilligan's Island (Alan Hale). And Now the Screaming Starts is a personal favorite of mine, an appropriately creepy gothic film based on David Case's excellent short novel Fengriffen. It is about a brutal curse brought down on the wife of a nobleman because of his ancestor's evil deeds and has a grim resolution.
The most famous movies I can think of both play the disembodied hand for laughs although I love them. Evil Dead 2 is a fan favorite. When Ash's hand is infected by the deadites and turns on him, he puts on one of the best one man shows of all time. We see Ash beating the piss out of himself, cutting off his hand, and manage to survive the ordeal without pain meds. What tops it all is when his detached hand flips him off. It's the best slapstick since the 3 Stooges. The other movie is the Addams Family. Of course, I refer to the family's adorable animated hand Thing.The movie's morbid, goofy humor never fails to get a smile out of me.
The disembodied hand may have its limits as a subgenre but it is always welcome in my book. The best stories involving them encapsulate the essence of supernatural horror: simple, nasty, and unnerving. Written by Nicholas Montelongo
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