Takahiro Fukuya as Osamu, transforming

The Beast Hand Review

One might not expect a dark and dirty horror by Taichiro Natsume, who gave his faithful audience Love Shark and Convex Attack!! Psychic Research Team Kachikomi 3, to come with literary annotations. But the Japanese director’s modestly gory look at ex-convict Osamu (Takahiro Fukuya) struggling with his subservience to his nasty former accomplice Akira (Yota Kawase), and with the titular hand might just be the weirdest adaptation of Maurice Renard’s obscure 1920 novel The Hands of Orlac yet.

For the unlucky and rather unsympathetic protagonist, these are his hand and underarm. Chopped off by a guy dressed like a ninja from a cheap horror movie (or just being a ninja in this cheap horror movie, hard to tell) during a disastrously botched robbery, they are replaced by a black market doctor with what looks like a brownish bulbous mock-up. Well, again: it is a brownish bulbous mock-up. Let’s just note that what little money this production did have – a significant part invested by actor-producer Fukuya – was not invested in convincing costumes and prosthetics. When Osamu’s arm is severed, the remains resemble a mangled mannequin.

Glaringly unconvincing effects such as these are as involuntarily funny as the economical use of fake blood. Even ripped bodies hardly drip since apparently the daily blood limit was spilt. Still, the two-chapter story is not void of gruesome scenes. These are the sociopathic sadism and extreme sexual violence by Akira who seems to fanatically hate women. Osamu’s cowardly compliance makes him an equally repellent character which leaves his battered ex-girlfriend Koyuki (Misa Wada) as the sole bearable character. Then again, if you don’t run as soon as the credits start rolling, you’ll see what happens to her offspring. Can you say sequel?

The Beast Hand premiered at this year’s Tallin Black Nights Film Festival.



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