THE SEVERED ARM

A moody little revenge tale with a no-nonsense title, The Severed Arm is good for low-impact proto-slasher sleaze. Trapped for weeks in a cave-in, a small group of men draw straws to determine who will sacrifice an arm for food. The loser is a bad sport, but the others amputate anyway, mere minutes before finally being rescued. Fearing the legal ramifications of their desperate (and ill-timed) act, they tell authorities that the arm was crushed by falling rocks; luckily, the victim has lost his mind as a result of the experience, and his madness allows the others to keep their conspiracy alive. Five years later, a severed arm is mailed to the former leader of the doomed excavation, and one by one each member is attacked by an axe-wielding maniac. Who else could the killer be but the one-armed man? It's a cute premise, but too easy to poke holes in if one isn't careful. Why do the spelunkers assume that no one will believe the one-armed man's "crazy" story? Wouldn't the police search for the missing limb after the rescue and discover the lie? And why trust the daughter of the disfigured man to help when the bodies start dropping? First time director Thomas S. Alderman (his only other known credit is for 1974's Coed Dorm) moves things along at a decent pace, but much of The Severed Arm is too dark to determine what's happening, set as it is in caves, dimly lit stairwells and all-night radio stations. Some versions of the film have been stripped of excess grue, but the murders are disturbing nonetheless, and the whole exercise is shot through with a very '70s grindhouse flavor that should please exploitation fans (dig that "eerie" synthesizer score!). The acting is par for the course, relatively flat even when the leads are facing certain murder. Former Gidget and Beach Party girl Deborah Walley figures prominently in the film's "poetic justice" conclusion. Character actor Marvin Kaplan (from TV's Alice) does his usual wisenheimer/schlep routine as a bearded late-night DJ named "Madman Herman." Ray Dannis was far more lively in the oddball cannibal classic The Undertaker and his Pals than he is here as the reluctant amputee, and brawny Vincent Martorano had a meatier role the following year as a soft-hearted killer/kidnapper in The Candy Snatchers.