The Severed Arm

Tom Alderman's THE SEVERED ARM took me by surprise. Not having seen this before, and based on the title alone, I expected something along the lines of Michael Caine's THE HAND or THE BEAST WITH FIVE FINGERS. And there are also dozens of other medical horror movies where a person loses their arm or leg, and said limb somehow does not die. Many times the limb actually goes on to commit murder or other mayhem until it is stopped by police or whoever. Speaking for myself, I have never been a fan or medical TV shows like ER. But I do appreciate a good feature length medical thriller. I am a big fan of THE INCREDIBLE TWO HEADED TRANSPLANT since that was my first exposure to the medical terrors growing up. Anyway, getting back to THE SEVERED ARM, I was expecting a medical thriller. It turns out that the director wanted to do a little something different then what people expected. When this movie came out in the early seventies, the Itallian giallos were at their peak box office success and the movie going public craved new genre fare, thanks to the successes of Mario Bava and Dario Argento. Well, director Tom Alderman studied the works of Argento and Bava well. Basically THE SEVERED ARM is a US made giallo. It has all the elements of the genre; like the gloved, killer whose face is never shown, the police procedural parts are here, the kiler uses a device to alter his voice when calling his victims or the authorities. It does have some cheesy parts but it is a pretty decent thriller for a low budget independent nature. I will point out here that obviously this movie lacks the beautiful cinematography that is done in the Giallo masters overseas. And there is no rousing giallo-esq score. The music here is a big disappointment. It is pretty much all sythesezer music (synthezer music would break thru would get big in the 1980s) but here it is terrible and out of place. One other other negative point to mention is that my copy the movie is very poorly lit and it is hard to make the action sometimes in the darn fuzz. If you like Giallo thrillers, you may want check out THE SEVERED ARM; it even has a Dario Argento type twist ending....

There are some B movies and there's "The Severed Arm". It makes a whole lot of sense in every way. Especially, when the postal worker gives you a special delivery. That delivery contains a severed arm. That arm eventually brings back a memory of some men who ventured into a cave and get trapped for days. During their time, they would resort into cannibalism in order to survive. So they resort in maiming one of victims. After being rescued, they concocted a story to the police about the cave-in. 5 years later, one of the men received a cut up arm in the package. And their nightmare is just the beginning. The doctor is assaulted. And the rest of them have been maimed and/or killed by the limb hacker. Is it the comrade exacting revenge? Or is it a copycat with the same M.O.? You decide. Before Jason Voorhees or Michael Myers, this is the first killer in slasher film history. Way before "Prom Night". One must not make hasty remarks about B movies. This movie may have flaws, but it was entertaining. And it's the beginning of Angus Scrimm 6 years before "Phantasm"! 2 out of 5 stars

One of the unfortunate heroes hints at the sixty sailors lost at sea;but there's also a French nursery rhyme ("IL était un petit navire" =once upon a time a little ship )which goes like this :

"They drew straws To know who would be eaten.

The lot fell on the youngest, The cabin boy who set to crying Next they ponder with what sauce The poor child will be eaten."

With gore kept to the minimum,the scene in the cave (which follows the plot of the folk song ,so to speak ) ,and the terrifying ending (which will make your hair stand on hair ) make stuff like "saw" almost look like fairytales. Remember it was made in the early seventies!

There's a slight sag in the tension towards the middle of the movie which has a tendency to become repetitive ,but it regains its strength in the final sequences .

A must for horror movies!

These five dudes go hiking and then get trapped in a cave after one of them chips away at the fragile structure seemingly holding it all together. Boom, cave-in. They have no food and little water, yet somehow they all survive for a couple of weeks. And then and only then do they draw straws to see who's gonna have to lose an appendage so they can eat something. (Probably raw, since there'd be no sure way for the smoke from a fire to escape the cave.) Anyway, they are quickly rescued after making that fun decision. Five years later, one of them gets a severed arm in the mail. OMG could it be the guy they ate part of? Nice twist at the end, although it won't be a surprise if you've been paying any sort of attention. Protagonists are all kind of stupid.

This is far better than some make out and certainly more worthy of attention than it's low average score would suggest. However appropriate the title, I guess it does give the impression that there may be more blood and guts than there is and some may be disappointed in that respect. The direction is certainly uneven and the acting perhaps more so and maybe there could have been less driving about in the dark but I still enjoyed it. There are some standout scenes including two excellent lift sequences and the early scenes down the cave are pretty grim. I thought the crazy DJ was going to irritate but in the end I found his antics quite endearing, especially as we (and he) are anticipating the inevitable. Admittedly the film slows now and again but never for long and the great ending is worth the wait.