Skin transplants, a veiled wife, and a professor's bloody quest for lost beauty.
THE HAND THAT FEEDS THE DEAD
Under strong influence from his burn victim wife, a wealthy aristocrat does skin transplants from young women, who were captured, operated on against their will and then killed, to fix his wife's burnt body.
Quick Answer
The Hand That Feeds the Dead is a 1974 Turkish-Italian horror film directed by Sergio Garrone about a professor who performs skin transplants on unwilling young women to restore his disfigured wife's beauty.
Programmer's Pick
If your taste in horror leans toward gothic laboratories, veiled brides, and dubious medical ethics, this one's a bloody slice of Euro-cult. Come for Klaus Kinski's haunted professor, stay for the skin-crawling experiments and candle-lit depravity.
— SassyFlix Programmer
Overview
Details & Specs
- Director
- Sergio Garrone
- Writer
- Sergio Garrone
- Release
- 1974
- Runtime
- 1h 27m
- Country
- Turkey, Italy
- Language
- Italian
- Genres
- Horror
- Also Known As
- The Hand that Feeds the Dead, Evil Face, Klaus Kinski: Evil Face, Original title: La mano che nutre la morte
Why This Matters
This 1974 Gothic horror film pairs director Sergio Garrone with Klaus Kinski, centering on a 19th-century doctor's experiments in reanimation, reflecting the era's fascination with mad science and the macabre.
Cast & Crew
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Why Cult
Kinski brings his signature intensity to Professor Nijinski, a man unhinged by obsession and science.
Expect shadowy laboratories, veiled heroines, and a palpable sense of dread drawn straight from the Italian Gothic tradition.
The film doesn't shy away from its surgical horrors, with skin grafts performed on unwilling victims in pursuit of forbidden beauty.
Blending nudity, violence, and taboo-breaking surgery, this is cult horror with a distinctly European edge.
Scene Gallery
Threat File
Tanja's disfigurement in a laboratory fire
Non-consensual skin transplant experiments
Young women abducted, operated on, and killed
Gothic laboratory and estate
Questions from the Vault
Who directed The Hand That Feeds the Dead? +
Sergio Garrone directed The Hand That Feeds the Dead.
How long is The Hand That Feeds the Dead? +
The Hand That Feeds the Dead is 87 minutes long.
What genre is The Hand That Feeds the Dead? +
The Hand That Feeds the Dead is a horror film.
Where can I watch The Hand That Feeds the Dead? +
You can watch The Hand That Feeds the Dead on SassyFlix.
Trailers & Clips
