The Hands of Orlac (also known as Les Mains D'orlac) is a 1960 horror film directed by Edmond T. Gréville, starring Mel Ferrer, Christopher Lee and Dany Carrel. It was written by Gréville, John V. Baines with additional dialogue by Donald Taylor. It was based on the 1920 novel Les Mains d'Orlac by Maurice Renard, which had previously adapted into silent film and as a Hollywood film production.
Gréville shot the film in both English and French-language versions during production.
Contents
Plot
The renowned pianist Stephen Orlac is injured in an aeroplane crash, and he believes his badly damaged hands have been replaced with those of a strangler.
Cast
Mel Ferrer as Stephen Orlac
Christopher Lee as Nero (French version: Néron)
Dany Carrel as Li-Lang
Lucile Saint-Simon as Louise Orlac
Felix Aylmer as Dr. Francis Cochrane
Peter Reynolds as Felix
Basil Sydney as Maurice Seidelman
Campbell Singer as Inspector Henderson
Donald Wolfit as Professor Volcheff
Donald Pleasence as Graham Coates
Yanilou as Émilie (Louise's maid)
Peter Bennett as first member
George Merritt as second member
Arnold Diamond as dresser
Janina Faye as child
Gertan Klauber as fairground attendant
Mireille Perrey as Mme Aliberti
David Peel as pilot
Walter Randall as waiter
Anita Sharp-Bolster as Volcheff's assistant
Production
The Hands of Orlac was based on the science fiction novel Les Mains d'Orlac by French author Maurice Renard which was published in France in 1920. The novel is one of Renard's most popular, and was previously adapted into films The Hands of Orlac (1924) and the Hollywood production Mad Love (1935).
Gréville had dual French and British citizenship and directed four British film productions before World War II. Following working on Raoul Walsh's Captain Horatio Hornblower (1951), he began making more commercially-oriented cinema, stating he saw low budget films as "a challenge, that should inspire a director to higher things." The Hands of Orlac was his last British production. Gréville used two film production crews: a French one for the scenes on the French Riviera and a British one for the London backdrops. When filming at the studio, after each scene had been shot in English, a cry of "version française" would be sounded, and the film would be shot again in French.
Release
The Hands of Orlac was released in the United Kingdom in December 1960 and in France on May 16, 1961. The English version's running time is ten minutes shorter than the French-language version.
Critical reception
The Monthly Film Bulletin wrote: "Limping version of Maurice Renard's lurid horror novel, filmed by Robert Wiene in 1924 with Veidt and Krauss, and remade some ten years later by Karl Freund and M-G-M as Peter Lorre's Hollywood début, Colin Clive playing Orlac and Lorre the mad doctor. Updated, shorn of essential suspense and hallucinatory splendour, this shoddy little piece throws away its chances by substituting a moth-eaten magician for the surgeon as its villain, and by casting a chronically stolid actor as Orlac. The dialogue is inept, the mounting and technical credits (the work of an entire French unit for the Riviera scenes, and a British one for the London backdrops) lacklustre. Edmond T. Gréville's direction is banal, featuring as it does that battered old box of tricks – crazed laughter, upside down reflections of embracing couples on piano lids, bizarre masks – which he has been carting around with him for the past 30 years."
Kine Weekly wrote: "Psychopathic poppycock ... The picture, just too silly and transparent for words, quickly dissipate its heart interest, fails to create the slightest suspense, telegraphs every 'thrill' and adds insult to injury by indulging in careless talk."