The Severed Arm

I watched this and immediately got a sense of film from my childhood (films appropriate for my age!) with the synthesizer soundtrack and the station wagons. Anyway back to this.

An annoyingly degraded print didn't help my enjoyment neither did the premise. The film begins with a timeline from five years previously. A group of six men go on some caving expedition and predictably get trapped. With ever growing facial hair their chances of survival are of course reducing until one of the six comes up with an idea that may increase their depleted food stocks! Let's cut off the arm of one of us and eat the human flesh. As you do in these situations.

Drawing lots one poor member of the six has his arm severed as in the title. His life when/if he gets out of this cave ruined as such. What makes the situation even worse is a rescue party arrives very shortly after the dastardly deed is committed.

Quelle surprise a mental breakdown and the action returns to five years later the poor guy in total mental breakdown mode and out for revenge on the other five guys. Murder (what method?), fear, retribution. A daughter of the perpetrator joins the film as the others fight for survival.

Predictable suspense but a horrific premise.

When a half-dozen friends become trapped in a cave for a fortnight, they contemplate cannibalism as a means for survival, amputating the arm of one of their companions but then live to regret that decision years later.

David G.Cannon is essentially the star, the anti-hero who conjured the great idea, Paul Carr is his policeman buddy, and John Crawford the surgeon whose limb lopping lunacy lands him top of the list when vengeance comes knocking. Former one-time "Gidget" Deborah Walley has a sympathetic supporting role and whilst overall the acting is serviceable, the direction and narrative is weak and full of contrivances; it's essentially a conceptual outline of a movie without the logic or detail and it suffers accordingly.

There's a couple of memorable amputation scenes that work effectively and the climax is, while not entirely unexpected, still reasonably effective. Overall the film is clumsy, lacking suspense at the crucial moments and threadbare on plot detail. Great title, mediocre film.

What a shame that a movie with this title will only appeal to the usual high school braindead gorehounds. It is nothing of the sort. This is quite a thoughtful and meticulous revenge film. A gang of starving men trapped in a pit finally decide on a desperate day of hunger to prey on the weakest man, thereby cutting off his arm and feeding. Ironically, the men are saved hours later, but the Wounded is spouting crazy cannibalism talk. The remaining men enter into a conspiracy, saying they severed his arm only to save him from a worse cave-in mishap. What follows is a story of revenge in the COUNT OF MONTE CRISTO tradition. In retrospect, this film is definitely more of a drama than it is a horror film. But as most people assume this picture is a drive-in splatterfest, it will only attract the immature, shock-seeking crowd. What a shame. The ending of this film is true poetic justice.

although the movie's acting and directing were very amateur, the plot was an amazing concept. the films script was cheesy, but the story in general was genius. the whole time watching the film, i was thinking to myself that if this movie had th chance, it could be very good. again, its not the story that was bad, it was the acting and directing. i mean if u look a the basic idea, a group of people stuck in a cave, fighting one another for each others flesh, thats a winning plot right there, just ready for any big time producer to bite into. if this move is redone today, with a larger budget and a better cast and crew, this could be a very popular film. too bad it just wasn't done right the first time around.

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!