THE HAND THAT FEEDS ON DEATH: “Frankenstein” twist

The Hand That Feeds on Death was filmed simultaneously with The Mortal Lover, yet it is a significantly worse film than its “brother.”

In a laboratory fire, Professor Rassimov—a famous surgeon working on groundbreaking medical discoveries—perishes. His daughter, Tanja, survives but is left with scars disfiguring her face, forcing her into isolation. Her husband, Dr. Nijinsky, who was also Rassimov’s student, continues his mentor’s experiments on skin grafts in an effort to restore Tanja’s lost beauty. However, to conduct his research, Nijinsky requires a constant supply of human bodies—particularly skin and blood—which his assistant procures by kidnapping and murdering young women from a nearby village. One day, three new visitors arrive at the Nijinskys’ estate: Alex and Masha, a young married couple involved in a car accident, and Katja, a woman searching for her missing sister. Nijinsky sees them as potential skin donors for Tanja.

Sergio Garrone shot The Hand That Feeds on Death in parallel with The Mortal Lover, meaning both productions share locations, the technical crew, the cast (including Klaus Kinski, Katia Christine, Ayhan Işık, and Erol Taş), and even several sequences—where dialogue tracks and context were altered depending on the film. For example, both movies reuse scenes of Nijinsky’s victims in a meadow and sequences at a police station. The names Nijinsky and Rassimov also appear in both, though they do not refer to the same characters. This kind of recycling, reminiscent of Roger Corman and Jesús Franco, was the result of a deal between Turkish producer Şakir V. Sözen and the Italian director: instead of making one film in six weeks, Garrone would shoot two films in two months in Istanbul, using the same actors—especially Turkish star Işık and Klaus Kinski, who was already an international name.

While The Mortal Lover was almost a plagiarism of Robert Louis Stevenson’s Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, The Hand…, according to Garrone himself, was meant to be a variation on Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. However, the similarities to Shelley’s novel are superficial, and the film is closer in spirit to other horror-thrillers about face transplants, such as Eyes Without a Face (1960) by Georges Franju, Circus of Horrors (1960) by Sidney Hayers, The Awful Dr. Orloff (1962) by Jesús Franco, Seconds (1966) by John Frankenheimer, The Face of Another (1966) by Hiroshi Teshigahara, and Corruption (1968) by Robert Hartford-Davis. The Hand… borrows not only from The Mortal Lover but also from these films—consistent with Garrone’s modus operandi, as he built his directing career on more or less obvious imitations (see his Django-inspired exploitation films).

It is astonishing how much worse The Hand… is compared to The Mortal Lover, despite the two being nearly identical. Both suffer from formulaic scripts devoid of tension and uninspired craftsmanship (direction, cinematography, music, etc.). Their strengths lie in lavish set design, striking locations, and elaborate costumes. One additional asset of The Hand… is its special effects by Carlo Rambaldi, known for his work on Alien (1979) by Ridley Scott, Possession (1981) by Andrzej Żuławski, and Dune (1984) by David Lynch. The previous film’s saving grace was Kinski’s nuanced performance—convincing both as a jealous husband and a deranged killer. Here, however, the German actor looks entirely bored with his role (perhaps already weary of being on set?). As a result, The Hand That Feeds on Death fails to redeem itself even with the qualities that made The Mortal Lover somewhat defensible.