Severed Ties

Take a Barker concept ("Body Politic") & mix it with a dash of latter-day Herbert West - the results would in all probability resemble this dumb gore movie. Perhaps seasoned veterans (in this case Sommer & Reed) need a trash backdrop such as this to really let loose - and do they ever! The kind of film, that if your attention wavered (or you needed to go to the toilet...) , by the time you "came back", you'd swear you're watching a collection of out-takes from SOCIETY, BRIDE OF RE-ANIMATOR & RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD PART 3 (apologies to Brian Yuzna). What the hell; Sommer is GREAT (a performance that would make Tim Curry look like a master of understatement), Johnny Legend's voice would seem more at home in a DeathMetal outfit - even some bargain-basement Freud thrown in for those of an academic bent. Unfortunate proof that a sincere love of horror movies doesn't automatically = superior product; probably a project that should have been produced by those who actively hate the genre in order to gain a degree of perspective.

My review was written in September 1991 after watching the movie at a Times Square screening room.

Lip-smacking performances by Oliver Reed and Elke Sommer lift the horror film "Severed Ties" above the pack of low-budget shockers. Columbia TriStar Home Video should have good results with this third entry from Fangoria's film unit.

Tongue-in-cheek effort has Sommer as an extremely possessive mother who has her son Billy Morrissette imprisoned to work on perfecting the gene-bonding regeneration experiments left unfinished by her late husband.

Morrissette comes up with the solution, but it's imperfect, resulting in a severed arm that becomes a lizard-like creature with a life of its own.

Film fits into the grotesque horror genre dominated by Frank Henenlotter ("Basket Case"). Combo of grotesque gore effects and over-the-top acting is a winning one.

Oliver Reed as Sommer's partner in evil, planning to exp;loit the son's formula, is a superior villain and Morrissette delivers as the young antihero.

"When scientific madness gets the upper hand... and arm!" Young but somewhat crazy scientist Harrison Harrison (yes, you read that right) is experimenting with human limb regeneration. When he loses his right arm in an accident he injects it with a plasma, a new arm does indeed grow but it is part reptilian, it can detach itself and has a mind of its own ("Part lizard, part psycho, part me" Harry says). This film reminded me of the likes of "Basket Case" (1982), "Brain Damage" (1988) and "Re-Animator" (1985), only they are classics and "Severed Ties" most definitely is not. Made by Fangoria Films, unfortunately their skill at producing horror magazines did not translate to making movies, this is a horror comedy that overall is a disappointment. Oliver Reed stars as some kind of Nazi and is Harry's reluctant step dad. He is one of my favourite actors, sadly the 1980's and 90's saw him appear in plenty of bad movies. This is far from being the worst but even so it rates as one of the poorer movies on his filmography. Elke Sommer plays Harry's mother, she was still looking great at 50 plus but I'm afraid here her acting doesn't match her looks. The plot does have a few eccentric characters,Stripes (Garret Morris) being one of the better ones, but it's not enough to make this a riveting watch. At least the special effects, courtesy of KNB, are good. There's not a great deal of gore, apart from a man having his face ripped off and a woman having a finger sawn off, I had hoped for more. This appears to be a little known movie, I have it on VHS but to the best of my knowledge it has never had a disc release. A blu-ray release would certainly make it look better, maybe one day it will happen and peoples' generally low opinions of it may improve. This movie had good ingredients but sadly the end product was disappointing,

If you like Brain Dead, or The Return of the living dead movies you're in for a ride. This one although a bit light on the gore part features a funny cast and a, although silly, interesting plot. The director and/or writers of this were not aiming for an Oscar by any means. They just wanted to give a funny gore fest, and I for one, appreciate their effort. BTW, the girl that plays the mute girl... Is so freakingly amazing hot... Too bad She hasn't been in anything besides this movie. Does anybody know if there's a DVD version of this film? And if thats the case... Would you happen to know where I could get It? Or maybe Download it, I don't know.. Help me out guys. I am looking for the unedited version if possible.

Young scientist Harrison Harrison (Billy Morrisette) is working hard to recreate his deceased father's gene splicing experiments. Funded by his mother Helena (Elke Sommer) and her sleazy beau Dr. Hans Vaughn (Oliver Reed), Harrison spends his days in a basement lab trying to splice human DNA with that of a lizard in an effort to regrow limbs. When he conveniently loses his right arm, he injects himself with the fluid and grows a new scaly arm. Wait, isn't this the plot of THE AMAZING SPIDER- MAN? Anyway, after that things get really weird. He runs away from home and lives with some bums led by war vet Stripes (Garrett Morris) who live in the sewer system. When mom comes looking for his formula and steals it back, Harrison creates an army of severed lizard-arms to fight her. This was the third film produced by Fangoria Films (after CHILDREN OF THE NIGHT and MINDWARP) and might be the oddest of the trio. In fact, it is surprising not to see Frank Henenlotter's name on this as it is totally up his alley and the film's look even resembles that of the BASKET CASE sequels. The film is a bit too low budget to be a classic, but it does have some original ideas and good gore effects by KNB. Perhaps most surprising are the performances by Sommer and Reed. They could have totally phoned their respective roles in, but both give it their all. Originally titled ARMY (haha, get it?).