The Hands of Orlac (1924) | 31 Days of Horror: Oct 3

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Idle hands are the devil’s playthings.

One hundred years ago, The Hands of Orlac, a tense psychological thriller was released. While different from horror films of the modern era, it still features many elements of tension and anxiety that thrilled audiences of the time.

Before Viewing

Viewing the trailer for this creates a simple premise. A gifted pianist is involved in a horrible train accident and has his hands injured. Afterwards he is haunted by strange visions and visitations. Several scenes make it appear as if he is sleepwalking. The trailer also notes that the film is by the director of The Cabinet of Dr Caligari, a seminal early horror work. What is wrong with The Hands of Orlac?

Presented below is the trailer for the film.

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After Viewing

After a concert, renowned pianist Paul Orlac (Conrad Veidt) becomes injured when the train he’s traveling in crashes into an oncoming train. Hearing of an accident, his wife Yvonne (Alexandra Sorina) rushes to the accident site. Dozens of workers help remove the injured passengers. Yvonne finds Paul in one of the cars, and with assistance gets him on a stretcher and to the local clinic.

Doctor Serral (Hans Homma) receives word that the body of the killer, Vasseur, will be delivered to the clinic shortly after his execution. Paul is looked over by Serral who informs Yvonne that his hands are damaged beyond repair. She begs the Doctor to save his hands, as they are his most important asset. The doctor decides to use the hands from Vasseur in a transplant operation. Paul recuperates, but is shocked to see hands that do not belong to him when the bandages are removed.

Paul receives a mysterious note informing him that hands are from the killer, Vasseur. He vows never to touch another person with the hands, which can no longer play the piano. Wanting more information, he finds a recent newspaper that recounts Vasseur’s killing of a moneylender using a dagger marked with an “X” on the handle. When he returns home he finds the same blade in his house. He hides the weapon in his piano, believing his hands are cursed.

Paul visits with Serral again to beg him to remove the hands. The doctor reminds him that it is he that controls the hands, not the other way around. During this time, Yvonne is visited by bankers who give her one day to pay their bills. She asks Paul’s father (Fritz Strassny) for a loan, but he refuses–stating he hates his son. Paul is meanwhile freaking out that his handwriting is so different than it used to be. Yvonne tells Paul that he must visit his father to get the money.

Pauls stops by his father’s and finds him murdered by the same dagger with an “X.” He informs the police of the crime, but overhears them talking about Vasseur’s fingerprints being found along with a note in the same script of Vasseur, and begins to doubt his sanity. He sneaks out and is met by a strange cloaked man (Fritz Kortner). The man reveals himself to be Vasseur, complete with metal hands and a scar on his neck from the guillotine. He demands $1 million franc from Paul or he will tell the police who actually murdered his father. Paul is panicked.

Recounting this meeting to the police, they convince Paul to make the exchange in order to catch the man. The inspector reveals that the man claiming to be Vasseur is a blackmailer named Nera and exposes the fraud by removing his gauntlets and scar. Nera informs the police that Paul now wears Vasseur’s hands, and it was him that killed the old man. Just as the police attempt to arrest Paul, his maid (Carmen Cartellieri) arrives and convinces the police Nera is the actual killer, not Vasseur. Not only of Paul’s father but also the man Vasseur was said to have killed. Nera wore rubber gloves with Vasseur’s fingerprints in order to frame him. Pauls relaxes, realizing his hands are not those of a murder. He pulls and holds his wife close to him.

“The hands don’t rule the person the head and the heart lead the body, and command the hands.” – Doctor Serral

Theme weeks have become a fun distraction during the making of 31 Days of Horror. Realizing that horror films were over 100 years old in 2022, I started a theme week celebrating the anniversaries of certain films, specifically ones that were a Century old, including Nosferatu and The Hunchback of Notre Dame. This year I have chosen the 1924 film The Hands of Orlac to start this anniversary week. It’s a German film by director Robert Wiene. Though cinema was still in its infancy in 1924, Weine had been directing movies for 10 years, averaging over 2 films per year with Orlac being his 24th film. He is also known for his 1920 horror film The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, which also starred Conrad Veidt.

The Hands of Orlac is not a traditional horror film that audiences have come to expect in the last 50 years. There’s no monster in the movie except for the troubled psyche of a traumatized victim. Instead, the film works as a psychological thriller–as many films from Alfred Hitchock would. The look and tone of the film create the necessary tension and unsettling mood to allow the audience to feel the same anxiety and madness that Paul is feeling. It’s a similar type of anguish and madness that was featured a couple of days ago in the review of Vincent Price’s protagonist in The Pit and The Pendulum. A role that might have been inspired by Conrad Veidt. It’s the adept acting by Veidt that is the key to selling the events of the film.

Conrad Veidt creates a character through his performance that is thoroughly convinced that his actions are being controlled by the evil nature of his new hands. Enough so that it causes audiences to become uncertain what is real as well. The story asks the question: if evil is something that resides in the physicality of a person, can it be transplanted with that body part into another? Doctor Serral advises Paul twice that his hands are his, and any actions controlled by himself. But audiences see Paul’s anxiety rise to such a level that perhaps he has created a different persona. And though there is no monster, other than Paul’s anxiety, there are several jarring cuts that might be considered proto-jump scares by the director. One imaginative shot includes Veidt gnarling his hands in a grotesque way and then walking directly into the camera lens, thrusting the potentially murderous appendage at the audience. Robert Weine may have just invented the de facto shot for all 3D horror films.

The style of The Hands of Orlac also does much to enhance the mood of the film. It is an example of German Expressionism, but not as fanciful as other similar films such as The Cabinet of Dr Caligari or M. The sets are all built to enhance the lighting and shadows in angular lines. They also provide a feeling of isolation for the characters by creating larger spaces than necessary to make the individuals seem smaller. Paul’s hospital room is a gigantic space, filled with only a small bed. Similarly, his father’s house is made up of a receding hallway which has multiple planes alternately lit and darkened, to provide a depth for characters to walk through. The lighting also enhances Veidt’s descent into madness with some harsh underlighting to create unnatural shadows on his faces and hands.

The film also contains several technical shots that might not seem like a big deal in 2024, but probably wowed audiences in the 1920s. The opening sequence of the film spends a lot of time at the wreck of the trains, as men climb through the wreckage looking for survivors. Yvonne arrives at the wreck just as dawn breaks, having been traveling in a car on dark roads. Scenes of the car driving at night were filmed from another vehicle that included some spotlight used to light both Yvonne’s car and the road ahead of it. It seems like a rudimentary shot, but must have been a marvelous technological breakthrough at the time. Additionally, the wreckage of the trains appears to feature numerous cars. It’s possible this was filmed at a train graveyard, where most of the vehicles were scrapped, but the enormity of this set also is very grandiose for the time, showcasing Weine’s commitment to a reality in the film.

The Hands of Orlac provided an early inspiration for other horror films that wanted to capture similar vibes, but with more supernatural elements. Movies like the low-budget The Incredible 2-Headed Transplant, The Thing with Two Heads, or 1991’s Body Parts, all deal with new bodily additions not behaving the way that they were intended to. And these types of transplant films have given way to a genre called body horror, which deals with grotesque deformities and mutations of characters in various ways. It’s doubtful that the extreme type of body horror that exists in 21st Century cinema would have ever been considered in 1924. Films back then seemed to be a little simpler, even if The Hands of Orlac asked very complex questions. Stay tuned this week for other interesting films. What follows will be films from 1974, 1984, 1994, 2004 and 2014 celebrating their anniversaries on 31 Days of Horror.

Assorted Musings

• This film is based on a French science-fiction story,  “Les Mains d’Orlac” by Maurice Renard.
• The Hands of Orlac has been reimagined/remade three times. Once in 1935 as Mad Love starring Colin Clive as the pianist and Peter Lorre as the Doctor. Again in 1960 as The Hands of Orlac with Mel Ferrer as Orlac and Christopher Lee as Nero. And most recently in 1962 as Hands of A Stranger starring James Noah as the pianist.