Tom Alderman's THE SEVERED ARM took me by surprise. Not having seen this before, and based on the title alone, I expected something along the lines of Michael Caine's THE HAND or THE BEAST WITH FIVE FINGERS. And there are also dozens of other medical horror movies where a person loses their arm or leg, and said limb somehow does not die. Many times the limb actually goes on to commit murder or other mayhem until it is stopped by police or whoever. Speaking for myself, I have never been a fan or medical TV shows like ER. But I do appreciate a good feature length medical thriller. I am a big fan of THE INCREDIBLE TWO HEADED TRANSPLANT since that was my first exposure to the medical terrors growing up. Anyway, getting back to THE SEVERED ARM, I was expecting a medical thriller. It turns out that the director wanted to do a little something different then what people expected. When this movie came out in the early seventies, the Itallian giallos were at their peak box office success and the movie going public craved new genre fare, thanks to the successes of Mario Bava and Dario Argento. Well, director Tom Alderman studied the works of Argento and Bava well. Basically THE SEVERED ARM is a US made giallo. It has all the elements of the genre; like the gloved, killer whose face is never shown, the police procedural parts are here, the kiler uses a device to alter his voice when calling his victims or the authorities. It does have some cheesy parts but it is a pretty decent thriller for a low budget independent nature. I will point out here that obviously this movie lacks the beautiful cinematography that is done in the Giallo masters overseas. And there is no rousing giallo-esq score. The music here is a big disappointment. It is pretty much all sythesezer music (synthezer music would break thru would get big in the 1980s) but here it is terrible and out of place. One other other negative point to mention is that my copy the movie is very poorly lit and it is hard to make the action sometimes in the darn fuzz. If you like Giallo thrillers, you may want check out THE SEVERED ARM; it even has a Dario Argento type twist ending....

The list of people who should be shot, drawn and quartered, then shot again, include the screenwriter(s), the director, the producers, the actors, and I'll even throw in the caterer. Didn't anybody READ the screenplay? The premise is not bad--trapped in a cave-in, the guys eventually decide to eat each other, piecemeal (no pun intended). Right after the cave-in, our lead says, "We have no food and damn little water." Maybe two minutes of screen time later, all our guys are sporting bushy beards (tempus fugit), and one of the other actors says, "They should have found us TWO WEEKS ago." Excuse me? You guys were trapped without food or water (or internet access) for MORE THAN TWO WEEKS(!!!) and the only signs we see of it are you look like refugees from a Gillette commercial? No one seems to have lost weight, no one seems to be DEAD FROM STARVATION. And THEN, they all have the energy to pounce upon the victim and sever his arm? Please. When you start with a gigantic flaw of logic and reality so patently imbecilic, you cannot take anything that follows with the slightest punctillio of even suspended disbelief.

Over all, if you take into account the year it was made, this movie wasn't too bad. I have seen movies much newer that were much, much worse. I mean, it's not nasty gory, or heart-in-your-throat scary, but it has it's moments. There's plotting, a bit of blood, and some hack-and-slash. And as avid a horror movie watcher I am, I STILL didn't see the 'brother' angle coming. The only part I didn't like, was the ending. I mean, they got the last guy, he's locked in a room with a knife. For poetic justice, his options are either cut off his own arm or starve to death. And THAT'S where they end it!! Blasted cliffhangers!! I hate it when movies do that.. It's just...wrong!!

This is possibly one of the worst movies I have ever seen in my life. Boring, stupid, terribly written, acted, directed, you name it, you can be sure that it was bad. I really would like back the hour and a half of my life i spent watching this. there are many things i would rather do than watch this movie again. Like cut my toe nails. and i must have seen the horribly censored version too. Which if it is possible made the movie worse. i felt like i was watching a bad suspense horror flick only reserved for Sunday afternoons. Which i probably was in the long run. I guess i should have known from the title. I probably should have. Shame on me i guess.