What if a director had the same obsession for hands that Russ Meyer had for breasts? And what if that director also strived to educe the kind of overwrought, morality permeated dialog found in Jack Webb's work, only with an extra twist of non-linearity taken to the brink of incoherence? Well, throw in some Vitalis, and the result might be Hands of a Stranger. A quick IMDB search for Newt Arnold reveals he spent a lot of time as an assistant director, but on three occasions he was the principle meat swinger. This is the first of those efforts, and I can't help but wonder whether he considered it his Citizen Kane.

If you're looking for heads sawed off at the stump, tits and ass, or car chases, then there's nothing to see here. But if like me you can savor a protracted exchange of words that as often as not have little if anything to do with the words which preceded them, all delivered with the turgid weightiness of a Playhouse 90 episode, then by all means hunt this one down and get a vicodin prescription from your doctor.

The upshot here is that Vernon Paris, one of the world's greatest concert pianists, is involved in a tragic car accident on the night of his greatest performance. We're asked to believe that he emerges unscarred, except for the fact that his hands are mangled beyond recognition.

Think about that. How exactly could you be in a car accident and have only your hands mangled, with no other ill effects? Would the other car need to have a sausage grinder mounted to the hood, powered electrically, or perhaps controlled via the alternator and a system of shafts, gears and belts? If so, then you would have to be riding with your arms extended outward toward the windshield at the point of impact, and the front chassis of your vehicle would need to be crushed such that your extended hands could be forced into the sausage grinder. Concurrently, unicorns or fairies or a guardian angel would need to appear for at least 500 milliseconds to ensure the engine block or radio isn't shoved up your ass.

Enter Dr. Gil Harding, played with extreme sincerity by Paul Lukather. It seems an unknown murder victim is in the emergency room on the night the ham fisted pianist has his accident, and goddamn if that murder victim doesn't have a top notch pair of hands. I mean, we know they're great hands, because we've seen them in closeup about five or six times already, most notably in the opening credits. There's no precedent, but jelly mitts isn't going to play Chopsticks, let alone Chopin unless something is done. Let's stitch the other guys hands on his stumps.

This leads to endless overwrought exchanges about the moral implications of hand transplants, whether somebody's soul can be transmitted via a hand transplant, or whether bad mental health might come with a new pair of hands.

Then there's the cop who looks like McLean Stevenson if he were to grease his hair back and try to look psychotic while eating a bag of peanuts. He and the doctor play cat and mouse over that corpse that shows up at the morgue sans mains, and the incidental music has playful woodwinds to let you know that it's amusing.

There are also montage sequences with hands. The pianist's hands. Other people's hands. The hands of juggling clowns. Hands superimposed over Vernon Paris's angry, sweating face. Distorted hands in a carnival mirror.

There are murders involving crushed hands. In one case, a boy has his hands squeezed, then falls backward and dies instantly. He dies from crushed hands. There are numerous references to how important your hands are. The point is: this is a movie about hands.

Then there are the strange, non hand related events. Drapes explode into flames the instant a dinner candle is pushed off a table. Former girlfriends just as quickly are transformed into charred mannequins. Conversations peter out with lines like "come on junior, I have a new trick I want to show you with a scalpel."

I've got to "hand" it to Newt Arnold. It's these understated marvels of bulldada that are ultimately much more rewarding for me than the usual science fiction or horror fare. Repeated viewings only yield new wonders of absurdity. An enthusiastic four Waldos.