A Severed Hand Comes to Life and Builds an Army: Christopher Lloyd's Strangest Movie

Today I dug up something absolutely wild for you. Picture Doc Brown from "Back to the Future," but he looks like a punk or goth with a dog collar around his neck. He gets caught up in a story about an army of rebellious severed hands.

Intrigued? All of this is the 1997 film "Quicksilver Highway," where Lloyd played one of the lead roles.

In honor of the actor's birthday (he turned 87 on October 22), I'm inviting you to dive headfirst into this amazing piece of trash cinema.

Tales from Horror Royalty

"Quicksilver Highway" is an anthology film. Remember "Tales from the Crypt" or "Creepshow"? Same format here: two short stories tied together by a single narrator.

Director Mick Garris, who made "Critters 2," decided in 1997 to combine stories from literary horror kings—Stephen King and Clive Barker. This technique in cinema is called a "framing device."

And the one who connects these stories? None other than Christopher Lloyd. He plays Aaron Quicksilver, a traveling showman who tells people scary stories during his journeys.

Story 1: "The Body Politic" (Clive Barker)

And here we get to that very trash I've been trying to hook you with from the start.

The main character is a successful plastic surgeon (Matt Frewer). One day, his hands stop obeying him. Right in the middle of surgery, his hand holding a scalpel just hurls the instrument at the wall. By the way, Clive Barker himself played the anesthesiologist who barely dodged it.
Quicksilver Highway Trailer
The further the plot goes, the weirder the film gets. The surgeon's hands kill his wife. Then the right hand cuts off the left one. The severed left hand, running on its fingers (hello, Thing from "The Addams Family"), escapes to the hospital to start a "hand uprising" against their owners.

Pure absurdity, inspired by the second part of "Evil Dead II" (1987) by Sam Raimi, where the character Ash also saws off his possessed hand.

But for the sake of this absurdity and the TV format, they stripped out all of Barker's depth. According to film critic Samantha Jacobs from Certifiedforgotten, in the original it was a dark story about a working-class man's long internal struggle, but in the film everything turned into a comedy just about hands:
Due to the change in pacing and restrained depiction of violence, the Evil Dead version of this story feels far more insane than Barker's original.
Film critic Samantha Jacobs on Quicksilver Highway

Story 2: "Chattering Teeth" (Stephen King)

The second story is a King adaptation. A man (Raphael Sbarge) is rushing to his son's birthday party. Along the way, at a roadside diner, he's given a strange toy—a pair of oversized novelty "chattering teeth."

They're broken and don't work. The man drives on and, unfortunately for him, picks up a young hitchhiker.

The guy turns out to be a robber, pulls out a knife, and demands the car. Our hero refuses, floors the gas pedal, and the vehicle goes flying into a ditch at high speed.

The robber comes to first and is about to finish off the driver when those same teeth miraculously come to the rescue. Still absurd, but way more atmospheric and creepy.
Actor Christopher Lloyd with disheveled hair, on the right multiple hand brushes moving on their fingers
Scenes from "Quicksilver Highway"
Source:
I read King's story before watching. Here's what needs to be said: the original is way more atmospheric and disturbing. The film, unfortunately, lacks the brutality of the source material. That said, the adaptation follows the plot pretty faithfully.

Is It Worth Your Time?

Let's be real: the film has a 4.9 on IMDb and a 22% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes. Reviews call it "absolute garbage," "the worst anthology," and complain that "nothing scary or even interesting happens."

But! Other viewers insist "Quicksilver Highway" is a hidden gem. It's embarrassing to watch, but you can't look away. One reviewer wrote: "I was up at 2 AM in a hotel, turned on the TV and... it looked terrible, but there was something weirdly mesmerizing about it."

Thanks to its absurdity, mediocre special effects (even for the mid-90s), and Lloyd's wild overacting, this horror flick is hilariously entertaining. It's not a good movie. But if you were looking for something genuinely bizarre featuring Doc Brown—you've found it.
Earlier on zoomboola.com, we covered "The Prophecy": a thriller where the world's kindest actor played Lucifer.