Body Parts

Rating:
Summary: Eric Red, a good filmmaker.
Review: A well-made horror thriller that is surprisingly good but at the same time seams to have something wrong with it. Jeff Fahey plays a criminal psychologist who loses his arm in a car accident but gets it replaced with another by emergency surgical replacement. The good thing is it works. The bad thing is he has little control over it. Yes indeed you may have seen many other horror films like this but director/co-writer Eric Red knows how to make a old story line seem new, but the film's screenplay seems to have some plot implausibilities, the film wath's to have two story lines going and the ending is too happy. A lot of theaters pulled the film after the Jeffrey Dahmer story hit the news. Red's next was BED MOON (1996).

1991. Paramount. 88 MINS.

Rated R (Violence and Language).

Rating:
Summary: Give the boy a Hand!
Review: Bill Chrushank (the great Jeff Fahey) is Living the Dream: he's a rising star, an ambitious young psychologist, has a family that adores him, has great big Eighties Hair, and even does pro bono work counselling felons at the local prison.

But that wouldn't make much of a horror movie, so our own Dr. Phil, while on some nameless interstate during the morning Rush, makes the deadly mistake of taking his eyes off the road for an instant---only an instant. His late-eighties Buick Century decides it wants to see what "airborne" is like and spend quality time with a truck, and when Dr. Chrushank awakes, he's minus a right arm. Oops.

But wait---there's hope! Turns out that Chrushank landed in the right hospital, because resident mad scientist Dr. Agatha Webb (the delectably clinically detached Lindsay Webb, who gave me shivers in the massively twisted tale of freaks in the heartland "The Reflecting Skin"---another must-see) just happens to be debuting a cutting-edge medical procedure---all she needs is wife Karen (Kim Delaney)to sign off on this waiver...hey, time's a-wasting---just sign here, Ma'am.

Now, let's stop the tape a minute. I think you and I both know where this film is going---or where we *think* it's going, because it doesn't exactly go there, which is why I took back the rental and then bought the infernal thing.

Turns out Chrushank is getting his new arm courtesy of both a cutting-edge surgical procedure at the same time notorious death-row killer Charley Fletcher (whose rap sheet makes Jack the Ripper look like a piker) is being parted from his---and not only the arm, but the other arm, legs, and even the head!

I'm a horror movie junkie: I only buy the good stuff, but I'll watch pretty much anything once; when I saw "Body Parts" sitting shabbily alone on the rental shelf, I figured I'd check it out. It looked cheap, sleazy, probably forgettable. And frankly, "Body Parts" could have succumbed to a by-the-numbers anonymous production: the old possessed hand routine is a beloved staple of the horror genre, well-used by hack and genius both.

"Body Parts" distinguishes itself and proves unforgettable on its own terms: you've got Jeff Fahey letting the hair do the heavy lifting but still carrying out his tormented psychologist part like a champ. Naturally daddy comes home from the hospital, and his adoring kid (kids? I can't remember. I'm not a family guy; families in horror flicks are there for body count) want to know that "it's still Daddy". And yeah, it's still Daddy alright, although he has this big ugly pinkish bruiser of an arm grafted onto his stump (though oddly, the arm looks pretty much identical to his left arm. Oh who cares?).

You look at that thing, and you watch Chrushank tousle his kid's hair, and you get uneasy: you wonder how long it will be before the arm gets---well, you know, restless, starts getting ideas---and how long it will take before Chrushank stops tousling hair and starts slamming the tyke's head into the wall at Mach-8.

Not long, actually. Chrushank starts having dreams and getting novel ideas: like seeing what it would be like to throttle his wife in her sleep, or fondling kitchen utensils. He gains street creds and loses a prisoner patient after the guy freaks out on seeing his new arm, sporting a Death Row tattoo and matching serial number and Penal System bar code. A lesser man would give in to the Arm, deep-six the family, and wind up on Unsolved Mysteries---but not our man Chrushank. He's a psychologist! A delver! He wants to dig in and do some *research*, and get in touch with the Arm Within.

What follows is happily deranged, considerably goopy, and not only sick, but competently carried out. Eric Red serves up the gore on a hotplate, but doesn't insult our IQ overmuch in the process. Best of all, we get a screen-stealing cameo by the great Brad Dourif as artist Remo Lacey, who got the other arm and whose career has metastasized: he's tossed aside landscape art to produce canvasses of jaw-dropping sickness and brutality. Ah, for a Muse of Fire!

No, the real reason to check out "Body Parts" is the transplant/grafting scene in the hospital. For that alone, I bought this flick. Imagine the serial killer and unwitting organ donor Charley Fletcher wheeled in on the gurney, flanked by about 200 SWAT guards toting shotguns: it's like something out a one of Paul Verhoeven's nightmares. It sets the tone, and for all the subsequent silliness, "Body Parts" never quite loses that throbbing undercurrent of techno-evil.

In the end, "Body Parts" is that rarest of ghoulish, gory gems: a horror movie that can be watched again and again: see it for the gore, the goop, the splatter; see it for Jeff Fahey's hair and earnest, soulful gaze; see it for Brad Dourif---just see it. You'll never look at limb transplants the same way.

JSG

Rating:
Summary: Best Jeff Fahey Movie!
Review: Jeff Fahey plays tremendously into the role of this movie. This has to be one of his best chracters in this Horror/Suspenseful film.

I've wondered for a long time they would make this movie. It is a great story about a man who loses his arm in an accident. Getting a whole new arm when suddenly, the arm starts giving him nightmares of a previous life. Doing things on its own, putting his family and mind in danger when finding out who the arm once belonged to before him.

This is one of the best bloodied, mysterious, low budget films I have ever seen. This is a must have if you are a die hard fan of hardcore action packed movies.

Rating:
Summary: Eric Red, a good filmmaker.
Review: Jeff Fahey's life goes to hell when he receives an arm transplant after an auto accident. Turns out the arm came from a serial killer! Written and directed by genre favorite Eric Red, Body Parts is mostly superior entertainment from beginning to end. Fast-paced, with several exciting action sequences (The pseudo-car chase and hospital finale come to mind) and a decent mystery make certain the movie never lets up. Drags a few times in the beginning and the story gets maybe a little too silly, but this is overall a gripping horror/thriller. Fahey is superb, as is Brad Dourif as an eccentric painter.
*** 1/2 out of *****

Rating:
Summary: A knockout ride of a thriller.
Review: Jeff Fahey's life goes to hell when he receives an arm transplant after an auto accident. Turns out the arm came from a serial killer! Written and directed by genre favorite Eric Red, Body Parts is mostly superior entertainment from beginning to end. Fast-paced, with several exciting action sequences (The pseudo-car chase and hospital finale come to mind) and a decent mystery make certain the movie never lets up. Drags a few times in the beginning and the story gets maybe a little too silly, but this is overall a gripping horror/thriller. Fahey is superb, as is Brad Dourif as an eccentric painter.
*** 1/2 out of *****

Rating:
Summary: A classic horror/action thriller
Review: Of my five favorite motion pictures of all time, Body Parts is one of them. Many people find this movie to be silly and unrealistic, but that's all part of the fun. It's filled with thought provoking questions, edge-of-your seat suspense, and dark, dark humor. Check it out! END

Rating:
Summary: Fady Ghaly's reviews
Review: This is a very interesting film that is as clever as it is scary. A real horror film that will, by the time its narrative will have completely unfolded, have you so very much involved that you'd presume you were on the opposite side of that screen of yours. And I'll go as far as saying that it'll virtually expunge the thought of you exhaling throughout the last half-hour of it, when great havoc arose among our three afflicted leading men whose lives were completely turned upside-down...or shall I say-targets.

Written and directed by Eric Red, and based upon the novel Choice Cuts by Pierre Boileau and Thomas Narcejac, Body Parts is an exhilarating and tightly-paced film that gets under your skin and lingers long after you've seen it. This well-written work-of-art does more than provide great direction, stunning visuals, grotesque and harrowing scenes that are beyond suitable for the lily-livered, and startling action sequences; in addition, it provides superb performances from the entire cast. What can I say? Once the cast is in character and the cameras are rolling, brace yourself for some realistic work. Here you have the underrated Brad Dourif, who perfectly-to no surprise-depicts the eccentric, chilling and edgy roll of Remo Lacey, a mad artist whose isolation from the rest of the world allows him to pursue with his work, which is influenced by the same disturbing nightmares Jeff Fahey's character undergoes, who'll really just keep you breathless as the affects of his transplant gradually began to show and he, to his horror, altered into this completely new, fanatical man without a wife to wake up with or children to kiss goodnight. Many horror films lack in great performances, as you would surely know by now, but this film possibly has the finest I've ever seen!