ERIC RED

Bil’s rating (out of 5):  BBB.  USA, 1991.  Vista Street Entertainment.  Screen story by Patricia Herskovic, Joyce Taylor, Screenplay by Eric Red, Norman Snider, based on the novel Et mon tout est un homme by Pierre Boileau, Thomas Narcejac.  Cinematography by Theo van de Sande.  Produced by Frank Mancuso Jr..  Music by Loek Dikker.  Production Design by Bill Brodie.  Costume Design by Linda Kemp.  Film Editing by Anthony Redman.

A psychology professor (Jeff Fahey) is in a ridiculously horrible freeway accident that results in him losing his right arm.  While still passed out in his hospital bed, his attending doctor (Lindsay Duncan) pressures Fahey’s upset wife (Kim Delaney) to agree to experimental surgery that will restore his missing limb.  The process, it turns out, takes the arm of a recently deceased donor and attaches it to our hero, who endures painful rehabilitation before going home and noticing something is amiss: the arm seems to have a mind of its own and is giving him horrific nightmares (the audience should definitely not notice that his new arm and hand suspiciously match his own perfectly).  When Fahey discovers that the body it was taken from was that of an executed mass murderer, he begins to suspect that his arm is trying to infect him with its evil, so he seeks out other recipients of missing limbs from the same donor to see if they have been experiencing anything out of the ordinary.  A ridiculous plot and a few makeup effects that misfire only increase the pleasure of this zippy B-movie that features a great musical score and a committed performance by its lead.  It’s hard to decide if it’s bad early Cronenberg, soulless Robocop or a classy version of Paul Morrissey’s Frankenstein, but either way it’s a fun watch and provides more than a few effective jumps.