S1E36 - The Thieving Hand

A look at an early work that influenced horror, and may have been saying something about class mobility. I was inspired to get off my butt and do the episode by the wonderful episode of Slums of Film History about Terrible Transplants!

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The Thieving Hand

SUMMARY KEYWORDS film, hand, idea, artificial limb, arm, transplant, street peddler, charles manson, old vaudeville, science fiction films, pawn shop, passers, brilliantly, good, registry, clockwork, terrible, essence, lead actor, print The thieving hand from 1908 is one of the most important films that's not on the National Film Registry. And it's not important in the way that something like. Well, a lot of the black thin films for example, but it is important for more of a content story idea. And the story is this. There's a street peddler who has one arm. And he does a favor for this rich guy who takes him in buys him a clockwork prosthetic. And so when they put the arm on the peddler the hand gets a mind of its own, and start stealing things from passers by to great pickpocket. This feels like someone doing the idea of a old vaudeville routine. And then bring it to stage. Because the guy is so great, he can actually manage to do the three quarters of the body doing other things. And then to make the hand look like it's doing something of its own. And the sleight of hand in here is actually fairly good. But then, he gets caught, carrying a woman's fur and a watch and so forth. He also sells the arm at one point he pawns it takes to a pawn shop, and it comes back to him. And so after he gets caught and taken to jail, the arm removes itself and attaches itself to another prisoner. Here's where it gets really interesting for me. This idea, or minor variations of it is the basis for so much. So much American horror. This is the idea that one that if we give the less fortunate the same advantages that everyone else has. That it will bring crime. That in essence that the lower classes are unable to control their urges. That, in a way reminds me of sort of what a lot of people thought about Manson that after the the revolution in which the African Americans rose up and killed all the white men that they would be too dumb to run the world. That's what Charles Manson was preaching more than anything. Well, that and drugs on the other hand, there's a very interesting line you can draw through, there's a film with Aurillac in which he gets handed the pianist who gets the hand transplant for 24 You have the amazing hand films of the 1990s most notably idle hands and there's actually right now a great just recently came out just today, a great episode on transplants gone wrong from the slums of film history, which if you're not listening to you should be because it is a phenomenal podcast. But the idea of an external force that in some way, the idea of being made whole comes with a price and we see this in some in a lot of horror films in a fair number of fantasy and science fiction films as well. But the idea here seems to be that we can do terrible things and be unaware of it in essence, it is technology here that is leading to the thefts, these are artificial limbs, even though they look completely real, and I believe are always played by real arms that this improve technology has taken on a life of its own and gone on to do terrible things which harm the person who has adapted it. There's so much here, and it's not on the registry, which really shocks me because, one, there are at least two prints. Film Preservation Associates has won. The George Eastman Museum has won. I believe that even the the Library of Congress holds a complete print and some supporting material. content wise, this is arguably the first transplant film, even though it's technically an artificial limb, I think really, the idea that bringing a an exterior force to an acceptor is the key here. And it's brilliantly made the performance of the lead actor who is I've not been able to find who he is, is solid. It's really good pop handlers in it. It's a film that I think represents one of the finest things that Vitagraph was doing at the time. And the location shooting was really two. Overall, this is a phenomenal film and it should be on the National Film Registry.