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John Lansdale's severed hand is the main antagonist in the 1981 horror movie The Hand.

Biography[]

Comic book artist John Lansdale (Michael Caine) is planning to move to New York with his wife Anne and his daughter Lizzie. After chopping some wood, he notices Lizzie poking a lizard's severed tail with a stick, asking how it's still moving around without its head and he tells her it's only a reflex, but she's still unsure of it. Their cat Amanda then suddenly eats the tail, shocking them both.

While on a drive, Anne tells John about the apartment they plan on getting in New York until they get behind a truck and another impatient driver behind them who repeatedly honks at them, annoying John. Anne then starts talking about how their marriage isn't doing well, angering John even more with the impatient driver's incessant honking. Anne tries passing the truck but another car is suddenly coming towards them, John tries telling the impatient driver to pass them but when Anne breaks, John's hand is snapped off by the back of the truck. John's hand is unable to be found.

At the hospital after his arm is tended to, John gets depressed about losing his drawing hand that he needs for his work. When Anne asks how he feels, John says it's like he can still feel his fingers moving. John's doctor tells him that he'll experience phantom hand symptoms for the rest of his life, then recommends him a man great with making prosthetic hands.

Back at his house, Lizzie tells John of a time she heard of a boy's severed hand being reattached, but John tells her that the hand has to be found right away before it dies. When she asks where John's hand is now, he jokingly tells her when Anne went looking for it, the hand ran away. Anne thanks John for breaking the news to her gently and then comforts him when he cries about losing it.

Later that night, John goes out to his gallery when he's unable to sleep and he tries drawing with his other hand, but he's significantly less skilled with it. When he hears Amanda groaning and hissing, he at first doesn't see his cat until it jumps down and screams at him, them runs through a window. The next day, he goes back to the sight where he lost his hand, where it's shown rotting in a field. As he walks through the field looking for it, he finds his signet ring that his severed hand was wearing, then starts searching for it again but soon gives up.

That night while in New York, John's severed hand mysteriously comes to life while he's having dinner with a woman named Karen Wagner who was talking about his hand with her, where John believes it should be nothing but bones by now due to birds and insects eating it. After dinner, John walks to Anne's yoga class, jealously watching her instructor Bill Richman. That night, he dreams of his severed hand crawling back to him, stealing his signet ring, and quickly crawling away after Amanda runs through the window.

The next day, he tries on his new prosthetic hand and the salesman says it could take a few months before he's skilled enough with it to draw again. Later on while he's in the shower, he hallucinates one of his shower handles turning into a hand and then back again. The next day, when John confronts David Maddow, the artist who's taking over his comic, believing he's weakened his character "Mandro". When his boss Karen takes out David's story boards, they find that they've been ruined with ink and they both accuse John of purposely ruining them out of spite.

John leaves the studio, eventually bumping into a homeless man who questions him about his prosthetic since he's also missing a hand, but John brushes him off. After John leaves, his severed hand appears suddenly and possibly strangles the homeless man to death, although the screen turns black and white just like John's dreams.

Back at his apartment, he confronts Lizzie about David's ruined story boards and asks her if she ruined them because she didn't like them just like how he didn't like them, and she denies to having ruined them. When Anne asks how his meeting went, John tells her that Karen fired him. He then tells her he's going to get a job in California where it's revealed John's hand is hiding in their apartment. In California, John meets Brian Ferguson who is another teacher at the college he is working at.

At his new house, John tries getting used to his prosthetic hand, finding it difficult to get used to the strength of his gripping. His wife Anna calls to tell him that they'll be able to come to visit him at Christmas in two months. While they talk, John hallucinates his hand violently strangling her. Then, he finds his signet ring on his pillow, but not his hand.

After class the next day, one of his students named Stella Roche goes to his house to give her sketchbook to John so it can be graded, and she starts flirting with him. They then have sex in his bed and she leaves by herself soon after. John looks through her sketchbook again when she leaves, finding an incredibly well drawn picture of Stella having sex with John's severed hand, whereas Stella's drawing were poorly made.

At a local bar, John talks with Brian who theorizes the drawing is just something he did and not remembering it due to his trauma, like when a hockey players gets a concussion and then can't remember who won the game they were in. While they talk, it's revealed John's severed hand made the drawing, though Brian guesses while John was in a blacked out state his brain sent impulses to his prosthetic to draw the pornographic picture. Brian warns John about the dangers of being in a blacked out state, since his blacked out state would be who John really is, possibly a violent murderer. As he walks home, John has another dream where his severed hand crashes through a window to attack him.

Later that night, John and Stella have sex again and then she helps him put up Christmas decorations, where John gives her lingerie as a gift. He then goes back to the bar to meet Brian where he says he's going to Los Angeles just like Stella, where Brian reveals he's been having sex with her, to which John silently musters up his anger. Stella drives to John's house to meet him, but John's severed hand attacks her, breaking her arm and killing her off-screen.

Sometime later, Anne and Lizzy finally come to his home, and John has visions of Stella in his house when she was murdered. He goes inside after telling them he has a surprise for them, finding a mess under the tree. After bringing Anne and Lizzy inside, Anne finds Stella's lingerie and asks if it's for her. John lies saying that it is and asks if she likes it. She says it's pretty but then asks what made him think of lingerie. John notices the card that had previously said "To Stella" had been changed to read "to Anne", and he tells her simply that he thought she'd like it.

That night, John finds one of Anne's bags still packed with clothes and he believes that Anne intended to leave again, where she's going to join Bill again in San Francisco. John asks if Anne has been having sex with Bill, she says it's none of his business at first, but soon admits she has. John angrily puts his real hand around her throat after she tells him that Lizzy knows she's been dating Bill and tells her that he'll never let her take Lizzy away from him. He then threatens her to leave his house and stay out of his life, then storms off.

At Christmas however, Anne is still there opening gifts with Lizzy. In the garage, Anne notices a foul smell, and John sees his severed hand behind her but says nothing before she drives to the store. John then imagines Anne being attacked by his severed hand and Anne driving off of a cliff. Anne then arrives at John's house while he's playing games with Lizzy after he insists it wasn't her car outside that she heard.

John goes back to the bar to see Brian, where he drunkenly says no one has seen Stella in a long while, upset that he could be in Los Angeles with her right now but he's still at the bar. While John drives back home, Brian stops in front of him and accuses John of having sex with her, though he denies it saying he went to Reno by himself. Brian brings up that he was having black outs at the time she went missing so he could've been doing anything, then tells John he's going to tell the police and goes back to his car. His car has trouble starting at first, but John's severed hand suddenly starts strangling Brian until he's dead.

Back at his house, John finds Anne in his bed and ask when she's leaving, to which she says tomorrow morning and she's taking Lizzy. John says she can't take her, but Anne tells him she wants to leave with her, then goes to sleep in a separate room. John's severed hand crawls onto Anne's bed and starts strangling her, but her screaming wakes up John and Lizzy. John finds her unconscious and his severed hand jumping out the window. Lizzy finds John hunched over her, thinking he was strangling her with his prosthetic hand and he tells her that he's trying to help her and to call the police.

John chases after his hand with a knife, following its blood trail into a barn where it attacks him, at one point detaching his prosthetic. His severed hand then interlocks its fingers with his still attached one, trying to break his fingers until he bites it enough to where it lets go and then stabs it through the palm. The hand crawls away with the knife still in it and stabs John's car tire to deflate it, then crawls up his pant leg to his neck to try and strangle him again until he's unconscious.

When he wakes up, his other hand is around his neck and policemen arrive who tell him Anne is fine. John notices them searching his car and one of them notices the same foul odor that Anne had noticed previously, saying that it's coming from John's trunk. John opens the trunk after they tell him they found Brian's abandoned car, revealing Stella and Brian's bodies inside and the police arrest him.

John is taken to a psychiatrist who believes he murdered both Stella and Brian while he was blacked out in a fit of rage, where he starts believing that he did kill them and attempted to kill Anne by beating her with his prosthetic hand. She tells John to take responsibility for his actions instead of blaming his severed hand, until his severed hand appears once again behind her and strangles her to death. The sight of this drives John completely insane and he laughs manically until the screen goes black and white again.

It's currently unknown where John and his severed hand are now.

Victims[]

  • Homeless Man - Strangled by Jon Lansdale's severed hand. (Possibly)
  • Stella Roche - Strangled off-screen by Jon Lansdale's severed hand, body shown.
  • Brian Ferguson - Strangled by Jon Lansdale's severed hand.
  • Psychologist - Strangled to death by Jon Lansdale's severed hand.
    • Total - 4

Gallery[]

Trivia[]

  • It is never explained during the film as to how or why John's hand gained a consciousness of its own and decided to try and frame John for the murders it committed.
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