The Story:
Let me just start by saying this movie opens with an almost 4 minute long presentation of credits. Luckily, the score was chilling enough to keep me wanting to hear it, so I refrained from fast forwarding. It really felt like I was watching one of those mysterious graphical intros to a Batman flick with red as the choice of color.

This is one of those movies in which you are shocked to discover that something tragic happens to the main character within the first five minutes. Well, in this case, more like the first 9 minutes, due to the 4 minute intro.

Jeff Fahey stars as a criminal psychologist, with a wife (Kim Delaney) and kids, who leaves for work…and gets into a horrible accident en route. He loses an arm, and his wife has to make a split decision while he is unconscious as to whether she should have a new arm transplanted on her husband.

So daddy comes home with a new arm, and it takes he and the family time to become attached to it. But before they can even get past the initial handshake (I'm groaning at my own bad puns) the arm takes matters into its own hand (but I continue making them). Fahey starts acting somewhat violent, and soon discovers why…his arm once belonged to a death row inmate.

What follows is more of a mystery than a horror flick. There isn't much action, mostly Fahey hunting down clues to the extreme truth of his extremity. This hour and a half film moved rather slowly, but there were enough new elements added along the way to keep me interested. The real payoff was at the end. To start with, there's the sickest, most unrealistic car chase I think I've ever seen, but if you can believe a guy's arm can have a mind of its own, then you can put up with this. Personally, I thought that when the truth of the mystery of the killer body parts came out, it was a satisfying take on the transplant theme overall.

The DVD

Video:
Body Parts sports a widescreen presentation, and an aspect ratio of 2:35:1. Although enhanced for 16x9 widescreen TVs, owners of such sets will still have to contend with black bars (unless your television has a "zoom" function, then they practically disappear). I was shocked at how incredibly gorgeous the picture quality was of this rather old film that isn't one of the more famous horror films. Even in progressive scan, it looked stunning. Sharp image, deep, dark blacks, and rich colors. There were virtually no specks or dust on the print, although near the very end of the film there was a momentary shock of them, but it was fleeting. It literally looked like a different print of the film was suddenly swapped in, then taken out again. Weird.

Sound:
The 5.1 surround option tended to be set deep into the speakers for most of the movie. The payoff was on the raucous, thrilling sequences, which utilized the back speakers well. There is also a Dolby surround 2.0 audio track, but you'll want to stick with the 5.1.

Extras:
Well, if you want to call it extras, there's a French stereo audio option, as well as an English subtitles option. That's it on extras. But the graphic presentation of the menus was nicely done. The plastic DVD case was like a standard case, but with clasps on it. I'm not crazy about clasps. First, you forget they're there, so you don't understand why you can't get into the case. Next, they so promise to eventually snap right off if you use them too much.

Final Thoughts:
Body Parts is a slightly different twist on the "evil transplanted limb" genre of horror movies. In this case, the movie leans more towards being a "whose body part dunnit?" The film is a little slow throughout, with more mystery elements than horror, but the end offers some nice new plot points. The DVD itself has no extras, but the film quality is nearly flawless, and also includes a surround system-worthy 5.1 audio track.