The Crawling Hand
Director: Herbert L. Strock
Company: A Joseph F. Robertson Production
Notable Cast:
Alan Hale as Sheriff Townsend
Kent Taylor as Dr. Max Weitzberg
Allison Hayes as Donna
Peter Breck as Steve Curan
Plot: An astronaut is returning to Earth after a mission to the moon. Mission control gets an odd message from the astronaut, who long ago ran out of oxygen, and he vaguely describes being possessed. He convinces mission control to blow up the spacecraft.
Later Paul and his girlfriend Marta come across the severed hand of the astronaut while on the beach the next day. Paul decides, for whatever reason, to take the arm home with him after the fact.
The hand murders Paul's landlady later that evening and begins to take control of Paul. The space agency come to town when the finger prints on the landlady match those of the dead astronaut. Paul while under the influence of the alien attacks Marta and later the owner of a local diner.
The climax of the film sees Paul try to return the hand to the beach where the authorities find him. Some cats decide to eat the evil hand, I mention this because it was random and funny, and we get our happy ending. Paul returns to normal and the arm is in custody!
The Monster: I guess our main villain here is the Hand that does indeed crawl. Okay, so maybe it's
Your monster is really the possessed Paul. The film does some cool practical effects and when under control of the alien presence Paul and the astronaut have black circles under their eyes. It's actually pretty well done and creepy considering this is a movie with a Hand as the main monster.
Paul as an antagonist works fairly well in the movie. The two primary scenes where he attacks someone are well done and serve their purpose well.
The alien in this movie has the ability to control others. Now, what it grants those it controls isn't super clear in this movie. The astronaut in the beginning is still alive besides being out of oxygen. So we can assume the alien is keeping his brain and body alive by it's will. Paul might have some form of enhanced strength but there is no proof of that.
Thoughts: Sometimes a film has a dumb premise and even worse special effects and still manages to do something good with it. And I am happy to say that this film despite it's numerous flaws is kind of a pretty decent movie. The cast has a lot of seasoned actors in it and they deliver mostly uninspired but acceptable performances.
Where this movie really delivers is the opening moments. The title screen with the credits being delivered by asteroid explosions is really cool. The possessed astronaut begging for them to blow his
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| The possessed astronaut. |
The movie doesn't quite recapture those early moments going forward though. There is a later scene where the possessed Paul attacks an old man in a diner. They battle it out while music plays on the jukebox and lights dancing everywhere. It's cool, it's weird, it's low budget and it's memorable. Likewise, there is some good tension built when the hand attacks Paul's landlady early on.
The hand itself is stupid and the thought that it could strangle someone is absurd and it plays out on screen about as poorly as one would guess. Thankfully or unfortunately depending on your view, the hand itself isn't on screen a ton. Paul kind of becomes the monster as the film progresses so we get more of a possessed madman plot than finding new contrived ways for a crawling arm to find ways to strangle people.
This movie also got the MST3K treatment in the show's first season. I wouldn't recommend it as they were still finding their way with the show at the time.
Verdict: This is a solid film. It's not spectacular in any way. But it does produce a couple of super memorable moments and that's more than a lot of higher budget films can claim. I would feel comfortable giving this ** for delivering an entertaining 90 minutes.
Where to Watch:
Amazon Prime Streaming
Buy the DVD (paid link)
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