The Severed Arm

Plot synopsis:
Jeff Ashton is sitting at home one day when a mail carrier delivers a strange package. Upon opening the wrapped item, Ashton is horrified to see that the package contains a severed human arm. He immediately contacts his friend, Doctor Ray Sanders, and the two discuss an incident five years before when, as part of a group of cave explorers, they were trapped by a cave-in. In order to avoid starvation, the group had cut off the arm of one of their fellow cavers, a man named Ted Rogers. However, moments after doing so, the entire group was rescued and they quickly concocted a cover story for the authorities, saying that Ted had lost his arm in the cave in and not as a result of the group cutting it off with a knife.
Jeff and Ray try to find Ted, enlisting the help of one of their former caver friends, Mark Richards, who is now a police detective. Mark finds Ted's daughter (Teddy, named after her father) but she initially refuses to help the group find her father who has now apparently disappeared. However, after Jeff's friend Herman, another one of the cavers who is now a radio personality, is brutally killed on the air of his radio show by having his arm hacked off, Teddy agrees to help the group find her father.
The killings continue until only Jeff and Mark remain. They attempt to trap the killer, who they believe is Ted, but Mark has his arm ripped off after being pushed from a cliff with a rope around his wrist. Jeff is then knocked unconscious by the killer after a struggle. When Jeff awakens, he is in a bare white room and it is revealed that Ted's daughter Teddy was behind the killings. Her plan was for her brother Roger, masquerading as their father (who is now in fact a catatonic) to kill Jeff's friends and then kidnap Jeff, as the original leader of the caving group who came up with the idea to cut off her father's arm. Jeff is then sealed in a room to starve to death, with the only way to avoid death being for Jeff to cut off his own arm. The film ends with Jeff, imprisoned alone, shouting "Never!"

Tags: horror, revenge, cult, murder

Review:
This is far better than some make out and certainly more worthy of attention than it's low average score would suggest.
Admittedly the film slows now and again but never for long and the great ending is worth the wait..
A group of men exploring an old mine get trapped in a cave in, and after weeks of starvation decide to draw straws, and have the unlucky loser serve up an arm for lunch.
Fearing for their reputations everyone except obviously the victim agrees to lie and say that they had to cut his arm off because it was crushed in the collapse, but being quite perturbed because he can no longer clap and can only row boats in circles he vows revenge.
Things start off a few years later when the man whom first suggested the idea receives a severed arm gift wrapped in the mail, and with few exceptions that's where this movie's creativity ends.Not particularly bad but overall pretty slow and boring, although there is a little bit of a haunting surprise at the end it's not enough to make it worth while.
Be weary of the severely edited 83 minute version missing all the gore, its like the editors took a hacksaw to the film stock and made an already extremely weak movie worse.3 out of 10, strictly blood and guts, although it doesn't do that all that well either..
A gang of starving men trapped in a pit finally decide on a desperate day of hunger to prey on the weakest man, thereby cutting off his arm and feeding.
The remaining men enter into a conspiracy, saying they severed his arm only to save him from a worse cave-in mishap.
"The Severed Arm" has a very low score on IMDb and the reviews are generally unfavorable.
Oddly, I actually liked the film and thought it very unique and worth seeing.
I could be wrong, but I was surprised as the title sure makes it sound like a terrible film.The first part of the film is told as a flashback.
Unfortunately, one of the guys is a stupid idiot and he causes a cave-in...and they are trapped for two weeks.
After ripping off the poor loser's arm, a rescue party arrives--and the folks all agree to lie about what happened and say that the man with the missing are was injured and they HAD to do surgery on him!Five years pass.
Now bad things start happening to the five who perpetrated this arm-carnage.
although the movie's acting and directing were very amateur, the plot was an amazing concept.
the films script was cheesy, but the story in general was genius.
the whole time watching the film, i was thinking to myself that if this movie had th chance, it could be very good.
again, its not the story that was bad, it was the acting and directing.
i mean if u look a the basic idea, a group of people stuck in a cave, fighting one another for each others flesh, thats a winning plot right there, just ready for any big time producer to bite into.
Tom Alderman's THE SEVERED ARM took me by surprise.
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.
Anyway, getting back to THE SEVERED ARM, I was expecting a medical thriller.
Basically THE SEVERED ARM is a US made giallo.
If you like Giallo thrillers, you may want check out THE SEVERED ARM; it even has a Dario Argento type twist ending.....
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?
And THEN, they all have the energy to pounce upon the victim and sever his arm?
This movie is quite obviously a low-budget film.
There are some scenes that are reasonably well done and the overall film wasn't AS bad as I expected.
It certainly deserves a place in the annals of bad movie-making.
When a half-dozen friends become trapped in a cave for a fortnight, they contemplate cannibalism as a means for survival, amputating the arm of one of their companions but then live to regret that decision years later.
Former one-time "Gidget" Deborah Walley has a sympathetic supporting role and whilst overall the acting is serviceable, the direction and narrative is weak and full of contrivances; it's essentially a conceptual outline of a movie without the logic or detail and it suffers accordingly.There's a couple of memorable amputation scenes that work effectively and the climax is, while not entirely unexpected, still reasonably effective.
They have no food and little water, yet somehow they all survive for a couple of weeks.
(Probably raw, since there'd be no sure way for the smoke from a fire to escape the cave.) Anyway, they are quickly rescued after making that fun decision.
Five years later, one of them gets a severed arm in the mail.
Not big stars but competent enough to have long resumes.Maybe it was the fading of the print I watched but the deep blacks made the story all the more creepy, as well as the synthesizer score.For those interested in horror movie history--I recommend it..
Man I hate movies like this----movies that don't have one single solitary interesting thing about them.This dog is basically unwatchable unless you're just determined to tough it out so you can come in here and slam it.So it was with me.6 guys end up trapped in a cave or old mine for reasons unclear to me.They went under ground and started banging around with hammers to collect 'samples' of something for some reason and they cause a cave in and get stuck underground.After two weeks of no food and basically no water they look surprisingly fit and lively.They've still got lights and one guy has a radio and the fat guy still looks as pudgy as ever.But nonetheless the 6 guys draw straws to see who will donate a body part to feed the group.The loser is held down and his arm is hacked off as today's special.Soon after the group hears the sounds of a rescue crew digging them out.
Five years later bad stuff starts happening to the 5 and they figure out the one armed guy is seeking his revenge.Don't let my dazzling synopsis fool you....this film is a badly acted,darkly lit,special effects missing piece of crap from beginning to end.Nothing about this film will stick with you once you finish it.It's as a worthless piece of junk as I've ever watched.The only scary thing about this picture is a couple of the reviews in here that painted this mess as some sort of dark grand revenge poetic justice movie .Oh brother.Those reviews must have been written by some family members of the hacks who made or 'starred' in this complete waste of time.Don't bother at all with this dog.It's bad....
and not the bad kind that is fun to watch either..
The ending sucks, and photography sucks, the whole film plain sucks.
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.
i felt like i was watching a bad suspense horror flick only reserved for Sunday afternoons.
This film is badly written, the dialogue is puerile, the acting is at best on a par with a local community theatre production at christmas!It seems a pity that a story such as this, could be a great film.
The other reviewer absolutely hit the nail on the head when he said that you might watch this expecting a 70's "so bad it's good" film, but even then you'd be disappointed, as it's truly irredeemable.
With its unseen killer, prowling POV shots, and the use of a distinctive murder weapon, it seems clear to me that The Severed Arm was heavily inspired by the prolific giallo genre, but writer/director Tom Alderman has a few tricks of his own up his sleeve, including one scene that would be famously imitated by classic slashers Black Christmas and When A Stranger Calls (you know the scene I mean...).The film opens with six men exploring an old mine, only to become trapped underground by a cave-in.
After two weeks with no sign of rescue, the starving men decide to draw straws, with the loser to have his arm cut off for food.
Ted (Ray Dannis) is the unlucky donor of the tasty limb, but no sooner have the other men performed the amputation than help arrives.
Years later, a maniac with a hatchet stalks the five friends who chopped off Ted's arm.
For much of the running time, The Severed arm is a fairly routine 'killer on the loose' horror, with perhaps a bit too much chit-chat, but the aforementioned scene (you know the one I mean) makes this an interesting precursor to the slasher craze of the '70s, while a couple of fun deaths (including a man having his arm wrenched off by a rope as he falls to his death) and a cool ending help make this more entertaining than one might imagine given its obscurity..
One man loses and they cut his arm off.
Right after severing his arm they hear people coming to rescue them.
So they devise a story to lie and say his arm was lost in the cave-in.
And that he's been delirious for a week, claiming they took his arm for food.
I Really like this movie a lot.
Sure the actings below average but the story was good enough to hold my attention.
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.
And as avid a horror movie watcher I am, I STILL didn't see the 'brother' angle coming.
For poetic justice, his options are either cut off his own arm or starve to death.
Like everyone else who've seen this and commented on it here I will be reviewing an obviously cut version, as there wasn't a single drop of blood in the entire thing, but all of the boring stuff was still there, unfortunately.
A long box, just big enough for say, an arm!
It turns out that it is indeed a severed arm.
Six men, Jeff, Doc, police man Mark (Paul Carr), a radio DJ 'Mad Man Herman' (Marvin Kaplan), Bill (Vince Martorano) and Ted (Ray Dennis) are trapped in a cave-in when 'Mad Man Herman' starts to hit the wall with a hammer, idiot.
But non of them are dead yet, so Jeff (who put him in charge?) helpfully says they draw straws and the loser has to give a part of his body up for the survival of the group.
They cut his arm off and ate it, apparently anyway as I didn't actually see it happen, as I've said the version that seems to be available at the moment appears to be censored, mine certainly was.
However, not long after the men are rescued, Jeff (once again) convinces the men to lie and say Ted's arm was trapped under rocks during the cave-in and that they had to cut his arm off to save his life.
Both Jeff and Doc are sure Ted sent the arm and decide to call a meeting at Docs house later that night.
Meanwhile outside a one armed man with an axe is watching them through a window.
Directed by Thomas S.Alderman this is a pretty awful film.
But I liked the idea and thought the script was OK, don't forget that this was made way before many highly regarded slasher films, the central idea was neat, the killer actually had a decent motive this time.
I also really liked the twist ending (I just about made it that far!), even if it's a little silly, it's entertaining.
With all the gore supposedly cut out the film drags badly, lots of padding like people walking and driving around, it gets very boring incredibly quickly.
It's a terrible film as it is, but I liked the ending and the idea behind the film.
Five men are trapped in a cave in .
Five men are trapped in a cave in .
As time passes and there is no signs of rescue one of the men says they should draw lots and eat the arm of one of the.
After the arm is removed rescue arrives.
A few Years later the guy who suggested the turn to cannibalism gets an arm in the mail and then he and the others begin to be stalked.Its okay as the low budget 1970's drive in fare goes, but suffers from the type of pacing that might have worked playing to a drive in full of people doing more than watching the movie, but when seen on a TV causes on to fall asleep.Its an okay trip to the drive in but those actually expecting quality should look elsewhere.
Those who like old analog synthesizer scores in horror movies will be reminded of the score for Shock Waves.
(But that score seems mostly to be composed, whereas the one for The Severed Arm seems largely improvised in several layers of overdubbing.)I wasn't expecting the plot twist at the end, and that makes the movie fun for me to watch over and over again.
I'd definitely recommend it to anyone who likes B- movie horror..
An extremely dull and sub-par 70's low-budget horror revenge stinker.
Six starving, desperate geologists are trapped in a cave for two weeks.
Five of these guys cut off the arm of a sixth luckless dude and eat it.
Five years later the understandably embittered fellow who got his appendage severed vows revenge.
He begins killing the other five guys by cutting off one of their arms with a hatchet.
SPOILERS!This is a horror movie that attempts to build suspense but doesn't quite get there.
A group of amateur spelunkers get trapped in an old mine for weeks.
They somehow survive on one canteen of water for that entire time, but finally hunger gets the better of them.
They decide to draw lots and eat someone's arm.
Sure enough, no sooner do they eat the arm and they are rescued.
The cave-in is blamed for his missing arm.Five years later the leader of the group receives a severed arm in the mail.
Soon we meet the one-armed man's daughter, whom we assume is the real killer.
At the end we find that we were right - it's the one-armed man's son, whom we never knew about until now - with the help of the daughter.
When he gets hungry enough, he will eat his own arm.
The end.This is the darkest movie I have ever seen.
It's really frustrating not being able to see.Some bad movies are amusing to watch.
According to the "alternate versions" listing at this site, there is a heavily edited version of The Severed Arm with most of the gore scenes removed.
Nevertheless, I doubt that any amount of gore could possibly redeem this film.The story might have been interesting, but it falls apart under the burden of terrible acting, dialogue, music, and photography.
Even giving the filmmakers the ultra-low-budget benefit of the doubt, this is just a badly made, boring movie.Spoilers follow.It's obvious from the first few times we see her that the daughter character is involved in the killings.
Even if the hero couldn't find any way to escape using the knife, he would probably just use it to kill himself instead of choosing the ridiculous option of cutting off and eating his own arm.
This is an absolutely worthless Horror film, that's extremely boring, the only bright spot in the film is the ending, as it was quite cool.
This is an absolutely worthless Horror film, that's extremely boring, the only bright spot in the film is the ending, as it was quite cool.
All the characters are very dull, and the story isn't all that interesting, plus I'm quite certain I got the censored version, as their is hardly any gore in sight, other then the severed arm we see a few time's throughout the movie.
It's very poorly made and written, and I thought the performances were especially bad as well, plus It's extremely hard to pay attention at times, because it's painfully dull, as not much happens.
It consists a lot of people walking around, lots of dialog, people driving, and creating no interesting characters, plus as I said while the ending was very good, it's nowhere near enough to save this piece of junk.
I got this in a DVD Horror set called Back From The Grave, along with a bunch of other horror films, plus the music score at the beginning was actually pretty creepy, as I was thinking this might not be to bad, sadly I was wrong.
This is an absolutely worthless Horror film, that's extremely boring, the only bright spot in the film, is the ending, as it was quite cool, however it's not enough Avoid it!.
Alderman does a very bad job here, with shoddy camera work, and keeping the film at an incredibly dull pace.