''Body Parts'' is a 1991 American
sci-fi
Science fiction (sometimes shortened to Sci-Fi or SF) is a genre of speculative fiction which typically deals with imaginative and futuristic concepts such as advanced science and technology, space exploration, time travel, parallel universe ...
body horror
Body horror or biological horror is a subgenre of horror that intentionally showcases grotesque or psychologically disturbing violations of the human body. These violations may manifest through aberrant sex, mutations, mutilation, zombification, ...
film directed by
Eric Red
Eric Red (born Eric Joseph Durdaller; February 16, 1961) is an American screenwriter, director and novelist, best known for writing the horror films '' The Hitcher'' and ''Near Dark'', as well as writing and directing '' Cohen and Tate''.
Biogr ...
and starring
Jeff Fahey
Jeffrey David Fahey (, born November 29, 1952) is an American film and television actor. He has portrayed Captain Frank Lapidus on the ABC series ''Lost'' and the title role of Deputy Marshal Winston MacBride on ''The Marshal''.
Early life and ...
,
Kim Delaney
Kim Delaney (born November 29, 1961) is an American actress known for her starring role as Detective Diane Russell on the ABC drama television series ''NYPD Blue'', for which she won an Emmy Award. Early in her career, she played the role of Je ...
,
Brad Dourif
Bradford Claude Dourif (; born March 18, 1950) is an American actor. He was nominated for an Oscar, and won a Golden Globe and a BAFTA Award for his film debut role as Billy Bibbit in '' One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest'' (1975). He is also kn ...
,
Zakes Mokae
Zakes Makgona Mokae (5 August 1934 – 11 September 2009) was a South African-American actor of theatre and film.
Life and career
Mokae was born in Johannesburg, South Africa, moved to the United Kingdom in 1961, and to the United States ...
, and
Lindsay Duncan
Lindsay Vere Duncan (born 7 November 1950) is a Scottish actress. On stage, she has won two Olivier Awards (for ''Les Liaisons Dangereuses'' and ''Private Lives'') and a Tony Award (for ''Private Lives''). She has starred in several plays by H ...
. It was produced by
Frank Mancuso Jr.
Frank G. Mancuso Jr. (born October 9, 1958) is an American film producer.
Mancuso, the son of the former Paramount Pictures president Frank Mancuso Sr., was born in Buffalo, New York. Mancuso produced sequels to '' Friday the 13th'' and co-cr ...
, from a screenplay by Red and
Norman Snider
Norman Snider (November 14, 1945 – January 4, 2019) was a Canadian screenwriter.
Credits
*'' Partners'' (1976)
*'' Dead Ringers'' (1988)
*'' Body Parts'' (1991)
*'' Rated X'' (2000)
*'' Call Me: The Rise and Fall of Heidi Fleiss'' (2004)
*''Ca ...
, who dramatized a story that Patricia Herskovic and
Joyce Taylor
Joyce Taylor (born Joyce Crowder; September 14, 1937) is an American actress. She starred in movies and TV series mostly in the 1950s and 1960s.
Early years
Born in Taylorville, Illinois, she based her stage name on her hometown. A coal miner's d ...
had based on the horror novel ''Choice Cuts'' by
Pierre Boileau and Thomas Narcejac. The film follows a psychologist who undergoes an experimental arm transplant surgery and begins having visions of murders.
Plot
Bill Chrushank is a psychologist working with convicted killers at a prison. While driving to work, Bill gets in a horrific car accident and loses an arm. At the hospital, Dr. Agatha Webb convinces Bill's wife to sign off on an experimental transplant surgery.
Bill awakens from the surgery and begins to adjust to his new arm. After he is released from the hospital, he resumes his work and things seem to be back to normal. However, Bill starts seeing visions of horrible acts of murder (as if he is committing them) and occasionally loses control of his new arm. At the prison, a convict tells Bill that the tattoo on his new arm is only given to inmates on death row. Bill has a police friend scan his new fingerprints and is shocked to discover the arm came from executed convicted serial killer Charley Fletcher, who had murdered 20 people.
Bill confronts Dr. Webb and finds the identities of two other patients: Mark Draper and Remo Lacey who received the killer's legs and other arm, respectively. Bill visits Remo, who was a struggling artist before the transplant but now is making a small fortune selling paintings he made with his new arm. Noting Remo's paintings depict the same visions he had, Bill tells him that he is painting what the killer saw. Remo, however, only cares about his newfound success and dismisses Bill's warnings. Bill meets Mark and tries to warn him but Mark is just happy to be able to walk again and advises Bill to be grateful and move on.
Bill becomes increasingly agitated and violent. He demands that Dr. Webb remove his arm but she refuses, stating that the problems he is experiencing are insignificant compared to her experiment's success. Bill meets up with Remo and Mark at a bar. A drunk man recognizes Bill from news about the surgery, and demands to see his arm. Bill snaps and a bar fight breaks out where Bill single-handedly takes out several men and almost kills one before being stopped.
As Mark returns home, his legs suddenly stop functioning. Scared, Mark calls Bill, who hears Mark yell and struggle with someone. Bill goes to Mark's apartment and finds him dead, with both legs missing. Bill calls the police and implores the lead detective to check on Remo. However, they are too late as Charley — who is still alive, having his head transplanted onto a new body — rips Remo's arm off and throws him out a window.
As Bill and the detective stop at a traffic light, Charley pulls up in a car beside them and handcuffs his wrist to Bill's. Charley speeds away, and the detective desperately tries to keep up, lest Bill's arm gets ripped off. Bill uses the detective's gun to destroy the handcuff just before they hit a divider that splits the road in two. As the detective leaves the car and opens fire on Charley, Bill drives away to pursue the killer. Charley brings his old limbs back to Dr. Webb.
Armed with a gun from the detective's car, Bill enters the hospital and finds Charley's torso and limbs in a glass case, wiggling as if having a mind of their own. Dr. Webb appears and says she is ready to take the arm back, and Charley knocks Bill unconscious. Bill wakes up strapped to an operating table. As Dr. Webb approaches him with a circular saw, he breaks his restraints, knocks her out and wrestles with Charley for his shotgun. Right before Charley can pull the trigger, Bill is able to snap his neck. He destroys the glass case and shoots at Charley's body parts. Charley, still alive, aims at Bill with the detective's gun, but accidentally kills Dr. Webb. Bill shoots Charley in the head, killing him for good.
Bill sits with his wife in a park. In his journal, he notes that he hasn't had any other problems with the arm after Charley's death, and he is still thankful to both Dr. Webb and Charley for the new arm.
Cast
Production
Principal photography
Principal photography is the phase of producing a film or television show in which the bulk of shooting takes place, as distinct from the phases of pre-production and post-production.
Personnel
Besides the main film personnel, such as actor ...
of ''Body Parts'' was scheduled to begin on December 10, 1990 in
Toronto
Toronto ( ; or ) is the capital city of the Canadian province of Ontario. With a recorded population of 2,794,356 in 2021, it is the most populous city in Canada and the fourth most populous city in North America. The city is the ancho ...
, Ontario, Canada, but was postponed until January 1991.
Filming completed in late February.
[ Despite this, director Eric Red recalls filming in late 1989 and early 1990 in the commentary to the 2020 Blu-ray release.
The score by Dutch composer Loek Dikker is notable for its prominent use of a ]singing saw
A musical saw, also called a singing saw, is a hand saw used as a musical instrument. Capable of continuous glissando (portamento), the sound creates an ethereal tone, very similar to the theremin. The musical saw is classified as a plaque ...
.
Release
''Body Parts'' was theatrically released August 2, 1991 in 1,300 theaters.[ Paramount pulled ads for the film in Milwaukee, Wisconsin after police found dismembered bodies in ]Jeffrey Dahmer
Jeffrey Lionel Dahmer (; May 21, 1960 – November 28, 1994), also known as the Milwaukee Cannibal or the Milwaukee Monster, was an American serial killer and sex offender who killed and dismemberment, dismembered seventeen men and boys ...
's apartment.
Critical response
On the review aggregator
A review aggregator is a system that collects reviews of products and services (such as films, books, video games, software, hardware, and cars). This system stores the reviews and uses them for purposes such as supporting a website where users ...
website Rotten Tomatoes
Rotten Tomatoes is an American review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee, and Stephen Wang ...
, the film has an approval rating of 42% based on 19 critics, with an average rating of 4.8/10. ''Variety
Variety may refer to:
Arts and entertainment Entertainment formats
* Variety (radio)
* Variety show, in theater and television
Films
* ''Variety'' (1925 film), a German silent film directed by Ewald Andre Dupont
* ''Variety'' (1935 film), ...
'' wrote, "What could have been a reasonably interesting thriller literally goes to pieces in last third, until the brain seems the most salient part missing." Janet Maslin
Janet R. Maslin (born August 12, 1949) is an American journalist, best known as a film and literary critic for ''The New York Times''. She served as a ''Times'' film critic from 1977 to 1999 and as a book critic from 2000 to 2015. In 2000 Maslin ...
of ''The New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...
'' called it "an intriguing sleeper" that "makes the mistake of opting for grisly horror effects when a less literal-minded approach would be more compelling." Stephen Wigler of ''The Baltimore Sun
''The Baltimore Sun'' is the largest general-circulation daily newspaper based in the U.S. state of Maryland and provides coverage of local and regional news, events, issues, people, and industries.
Founded in 1837, it is currently owned by Tr ...
'' called it a distasteful, "so-bad-it's-almost-good film" that is "the best film for barbecue lovers since ''The Texas Chainsaw Massacre
''The Texas Chain Saw Massacre'' is a 1974 American horror film produced and directed by Tobe Hooper from a story and screenplay by Hooper and Kim Henkel. It stars Marilyn Burns, Paul A. Partain, Edwin Neal, Jim Siedow and Gunnar Hansen, ...
''." Peter Rainer of the ''Los Angeles Times
The ''Los Angeles Times'' (abbreviated as ''LA Times'') is a daily newspaper that started publishing in Los Angeles in 1881. Based in the LA-adjacent suburb of El Segundo since 2018, it is the sixth-largest newspaper by circulation in the Un ...
'' wrote that the film "isn't quite as terrible as you might imagine." Richard Harrington of ''The Washington Post
''The Washington Post'' (also known as the ''Post'' and, informally, ''WaPo'') is an American daily newspaper published in Washington, D.C. It is the most widely circulated newspaper within the Washington metropolitan area and has a large nati ...
'' wrote that the film has an interesting premise but does not live up to it. ''Time Out London
''Time Out'' is a global magazine published by Time Out Group. ''Time Out'' started as a London-only publication in 1968 and has expanded its editorial recommendations to 328 cities in 58 countries worldwide.
In 2012, the London edition becam ...
'' called it a "tacky but vigorous mad doctor movie". Patrick Naugle of DVD Verdict
DVD Verdict was a judicial-themed website for DVD reviews. The site was founded in 1999. The editor-in-chief was Michael Stailey, who owned the website between 2004 and 2016, and the site employed a large editorial staff of critics, whose reviews ...
criticized the pacing and screenplay.
Home media
It was first released on home video February 20, 1992 and later on DVD September 14, 2004. Scream Factory
Shout! Factory is an American home video and music company founded in 2002 as Retropolis Entertainment. Its video releases include previously released feature films, classic and contemporary television series, animation, live music, and comedy ...
released the film for the first time on Blu-ray
The Blu-ray Disc (BD), often known simply as Blu-ray, is a digital optical disc data storage format. It was invented and developed in 2005 and released on June 20, 2006 worldwide. It is designed to supersede the DVD format, and capable of sto ...
on January 28, 2020.
See also
* ''Les Mains d'Orlac
''Les Mains d'Orlac'' ( en, italic=yes, The Hands of Orlac) is a French fantasy/horror novel written by Maurice Renard, first published in 1920. It is an early example of the body horror theme in fiction.
Plot
The pianist Stephen Orlac suffer ...
''
References
External links
*
*
*
{{Organ transplantation in fiction
1991 films
1991 horror films
1990s slasher films
American serial killer films
American slasher films
American body horror films
Films based on French novels
Films based on works by Boileau-Narcejac
Films directed by Eric Red
Films scored by Loek Dikker
Films set in New York (state)
Films shot in Toronto
Films about organ transplantation
Paramount Pictures films
1990s English-language films
1990s American films
Films produced by Frank Mancuso Jr.