I have this weird memory of a foreign movie (?) I saw on Finnish TV back in the early 1980s.
The scene I can recall is one with the protagonist — or possibly two protagonists (male and female) — escaping a surreal place which has a smallish cavern/basement with dozens of forearms/hands jutting straight up from the floor (!), spaced tightly enough it is hard to walk through them. While the protagonist(s) are walking/running across this field of arms/hands, the said arms are reaching for their legs and trying to grab them.
These strange disembodied limbs may not necessarily be human arms/hands but maybe something artificial, akin to robotic arm/hand mechanisms wearing long (yellow? white?) rubber gloves.
As I recall, the styling of the scene was somehow very 1970s “disco funky” (the cavern could have had a disco ball hanging from the roof or a small stage at the side, or heavy velvety drapes) or 1960s surreal comedy tropey and resembled either the 1978 Goldie Hawn / Chevy Chase / Dudley Moore comedy thriller Foul Play, or maybe something that would happen in an episode of Get Smart. The last time I checked Foul Play, I could not find such scene in it, though.
Was it in English – or an Anglo-American production at all? I think so, but cannot be sure. Could possibly have been French as well.
Barbarella (just a guess)
Thanks, that was an excellent suggestion and gave me an excuse to watch this (in)famous flick for the first time.
The set design in “Barbarella” is right in line with the scene I remember — but alas, still no dice. Despite some crazy scenes — and all the free-spirited eye candy goodness that Jane Fonda brings into it — there were no situations with floor-bound arms grabbing people’s legs. (But there _could_ well have been!)
While reading some background information on Barbarella, I came across some references to a bit earlier movie by the same producer (Dino De Laurentiis) called “Danger: Diabolik” (1968), where the titular character Diabolik (played by John Phillip Law) is a somewhat remorseless anti-hero mastermind thief with Jame Bond-esque resourcefulness and a Batman-esque luxury-design underground lair which he shares with his girlfriend and partner-in-crime Eva (Marisa Mell). I decided to watch that one as well. The underground lair scenes also had some resemblance to what I remember about the general “feel” of the scene in question — maybe in a bit less funky way, though — but still, the scene was not to be found in this movie, either. So the search goes on… but thanks in any case!