The secret weapon of ‘The Addams Family’ is a severed hand

Nothing in “The Addams Family” is as creepy and kooky or as mysterious and spooky as Thing, the hand. 

He’s an autonomous limb with a mind of his own, but no body or speaking voice — just five fingers and a palm.

But, before the 1991 movie based on Charles Addams’ New Yorker cartoons, poor Thing was trapped in an enclosure and unable to leave. 

Allowing him to finally escape on the big screen was a lightbulb moment for the film’s director Barry Sonnenfeld.

“One of the first things I wanted to do was to get Thing out of the box,” Sonnenfeld, 70, told The Post of his feature directing debut.

And get him out, he did. In the family movie and its 1993 sequel, “Addams Family Values,” Thing runs and jumps, opens doors, plays chess and taps out Morse code with a spoon. 

Today, it’s hard to imagine the iconic character — who lives with the macabre Addamses: Gomez, Morticia, Wednesday and Pugsley — so confined like he was on the 1960s TV series. 

Viewers of Tim Burton’s recent “Addams Family” Netflix series “Wednesday” can clearly observe that he took his cue from Sonnenfeld’s popular movies by allowing Thing to roam around and do similar shtick. 

But freeing Thing wasn’t as easy as snapping your fingers.

“We had to figure out what Thing looked like outside the box,” said Sonnenfeld, a stylish and creative director who also helmed the “Men In Black” trilogy.  

The big question was how to make a roving hand — which would perform alongside Raul Julia, Anjelica Huston and Christopher Lloyd — not appear to be the result of a bloody amputation.

“There were many debates,” he said. “Lots of drawings of his wrist, and how you end a disembodied hand. Because we didn’t want him to be gruesome. We didn’t want him to be dragging around tendrils and veins, but we needed some sort of ending.”

So, Sonnenfeld and producer Scott Rudin ultimately decided on a flat, crisp, flesh-colored seal at his wrist. 

But there was another problem: How do you cast a flippin’ hand?

“At first I thought, ‘I’ll get a magician,’” Sonnenfeld said. “I thought a magician would be great to play Thing.” 

Sonnenfeld, who wanted his “Addams Family” to be built on sophisticated visual bits rather than hokey verbal punchlines, dreamed of Thing doing clever gags like rolling a quarter off his knuckles. 

But what he discovered was that the skills that make for an awe-inspiring magic trick do not necessarily translate to screen acting.

“Apparently with magicians, they’re all about sleight of hand,” he said of their ability to conceal what their mitts are doing to fool an audience. “So they were very ungraceful with their movements. They’re designed to do things quickly and all that, so none of the magicians were any good for hand movement.”

When that strategy didn’t pan out, Sonnenfeld almost gave the role the silent treatment.

“I said to the casting person, David Rubin, ‘I never thought I’d say this, and I hope it doesn’t come to this … but let’s bring in the mimes.’”

The director quickly added: “But if any mime comes in and starts walking against the wind, get him out of the room!”

They auditioned about 50 mimes for the part, but Sonnenfeld realized he couldn’t bear the thought of 20 weeks of working with one. 

Finally, a magician named Christopher Hart did the trick.

“His hands were elegant,” the director said of the final choice to play Thing. “They’re very long, they’re very good looking — and he understood what we needed.” 

Sonnenfeld estimated that 95% of Thing’s performance in the first film is Hart’s remarkably expressive hands that make viewers completely forget they’re attached to a real person. The actor returned not only for “Addams Family Values” but also 1998’s totally separate “Addams Family Reunion.”

His turn was so well regarded that for a while he carved out a unique niche in Hollywood. In the 1999 teen horror film, “Idle Hands,” Hart played The Hand. And in a 1999 episode of “Angel” he was cast as The Hands.

But it all started with a liberated Thing.

“Thing was great because it helped stylize the movie,” Sonnenfeld said. “Which is so much of what I wanted to do with both ‘Addams Family’ and ‘Addams Family Values.’”