The Crawling Hand

BaronBl00d (baronbl00d@aol.com) wrote on IMDB:

Delightful hokum from the early sixties and the directorial seat of Herbert Strock. A space flight to the moon brings back the dead body of a man who warns his space station to kill him...and the thing that has partially possessed his body. The man is literally blown to bits on his return flight home, but one lone appendage happens to make it intact to the beaches of California. That's right.....THIS is the Crawling Hand! Two teenagers, very well-versed in science and knowing about these manned flights to the moon, come across the hand. Rod Lauren as a teenaged scientist takes the hand home for scientific glory, but soon becomes a pawn in the hand's quest for murder and body possession. This film has many faults and you will laugh your hands off(okay it's a cheap pun) at the film's bad acting, cheap sets, and incredibly inept scientific logic. But make no mistake....this is a fun film to watch and has a lot of charm. The make-up of the people strangled by the hand is pretty chilling and Allison Hayes and Alan Hale(the Skipper) have some fun in their roles. One scene that really stands out is a hand's on strangle of a soda shop owner with a juke box playing menacingly in the backdrop. I'm sure some statement of misbegotten youth was being made.

Jared G. wrote on IMDB:

This is a pretty typical piece of Sci-Fi tripe of the late 50's-early 60's period. With the assistence of the Skipper (Yep, Alan Hale) two scientists track down a rougue body part that takes over the mind of a local teen, Paul. The hand controls him through some "cosmic force" that goes unexplained. The hand/arm strangles the poor lad's toadlike landlady before taking over his mind. Paul is less successful in killing people, as he fails to kill both a sour soda shop keeper and his Swedish girlfriend.

Will Paul be able to defeat his foe? Or will he need the help of alley cats? "Dames like this ALWAYS got beer around".

Aaron1375 wrote on IMDB:

That is the question you will be asking yourself as you watch this sci-fi stinker. The movie obviously takes place before we did any extensive space travel as it involves a kind of force that takes possesion of people. As cool as that sounds the movie is rather dull. Lets just say a rocket blows up after an insane astronaut asks the people to blow it up. His hand ends up on the beach where this dumb guy sees it and wants to wrap it up and put it into storage or something. The hand trys to choke him, then partially tries to control him you know how it goes. Though he does have an attractive girlfriend. And as bad as most of the movies is you still hope the kid doesn't get killed in the end, even if he is a bit dense.