The Hands of Orlac (Orlacs Hände)

In Brief: Robert Wiene never quite outgrew the shadow of his German Expressionist masterpiece The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920), but in the case of 1924's The Hands of Orlac, he did manage to come close to recapturing the magic of his earlier film. Reteaming with Caligari star Conrad Veidt, Wiene adapted a celebrated French novel about a concert pianist whose hands are crushed in an accident and surgically replaced with those of a deceased killer, only to find that he inherited the man's murderous impulse as well. If that setup sounds familiar, that's because this film was remade as both Mad Love starring Peter Lorre in 1935 and again in 1960 with Mel Ferrer and Christopher Lee, before going on to inspire dozens of other films and TV episodes. This is by far the best version of the story committed to film.