BODY PARTS
I love it! Really.
How is it that you can tell, within about three minutes, if a movie's been filmed in Canada? That's so weird.
Anyway, scoff if you will, but Body Parts is the best horror movie I've seen - for the first time, anyway (The Thing doesn't count) - in about a year. Director Eric Red, who previously blessed us with The Hitcher, takes a fairly silly idea and plays it completely straight, and the result is a terrific flick that makes me kick myself for taking so long to see it.
Jeff Fahey stars as a psychologist who loses an arm in an auto accident, but is given the chance to have it replaced - not with a prosthetic, but with a real arm. Of course, he's not conscious to give consent for this, his wife does. When they wheel him into the operating room, eight men in OR scrubs with shotguns are surrounding the donor, and the last thing he sees before they put him under is all of them leaving when this guy's head comes off.
He wakes up with a new arm, and after extensive physiotherapy (all on an inpatient basis, strangely), goes home to his wife and two (annoying) kids. All ain't well, though - he starts having unpleasant dreams of murder, and it's not too long before this new arm of his starts making a few decisions on its own. So he looks into just where this arm came from, and he finds that one other man got the same donor's other arm - and somebody else got his legs!
Like I said, it's a pretty silly setup, but Red deserves credit for taking it (and the audience) seriously. This movie is tense, well-acted (well, Fahey occasionally goes overboard), exciting, and really fun, without seeming trivial. The score is excellent as well, by Loek Dikker. And for once, the climax it builds up to doesn't let down in the least.
The only really disappointing elements here are those two irritating kids, the underuse of Kim Delaney as the wife (which is kind of par for the course, but more's the pity), and a weird sort-of car chase which, while entertaining in its outrageousness, brings to mind a more goofy Maniac Cop 2 kind of tone to things.
Still, an ass-kicking horror movie that makes me feel like a damn fool for having missed it for so long. Eric Red hasn't really been up to much since - he did make Bad Moon, which wasn't exactly a classic. Based on the novel Choice Cuts, which was written by a couple of Frenchmen. A must-see for anyone who wished they could get their hands on Jeff Fahey. (grooooan)