Here comes the fourth article in my tribute to Halloween – each article featuring movies from a different horror sub-genre. For this article we’re taking a look at a rather creepy movie monster…the disembodied hand.

I’m sure the first thing that comes to mind when people hear “disembodied hand” is The Addams Family with the classic horror/comedy of Thing. Or maybe they think “Hey, what happened to my hand!!”. Anyway, I always wanted to see the tunnels by which Thing moved through the Addams mansion. Did they consist of smooth, round tubes or perhaps they were just a series of long, wooden boxes with miniature ladders that led upstairs when needed. Maybe Thing had a pneumatic system that sucked him through plastic tubes from location to location? I guess I’ll never solve that brainteaser.

Of course, the unsolvable mystery of Thing’s transportation routes won’t stop us from looking at a batch of films starring his cousins (and in some cases Thing himself), now will it? However, as you might expect, most hands running around without a body have a bit of an attitude problem – they’re rarely as nice or as helpful as Thing. So with that fact in mind, here are 10 movies, in no particular order, containing mean and evil disembodied hands.

 

Honorable Mentions

  • The Child’s Eye (2010)
  • Phantasm III: Lord of the Dead (1994)
  • Return of the Living Dead Part II (1988)
  • Leprechaun (1993)
  • …and a plethora of movies where limbs or hands from serial killers are attached to an innocent patient including The Hands of Orlac (1924), Mad Love (1935), Hands of a Stranger (1962), and Body Parts (1991)

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