Cleveronix A different way of telling a story

Mabel Munoz Just intense enough to provide a much-needed diversion, just lightweight enough to make you forget about it soon after it’s over. It’s not exactly “good,” per se, but it does what it sets out to do in terms of putting us on edge, which makes it … successful?

Mischa Redfern I didn’t really have many expectations going into the movie (good or bad), but I actually really enjoyed it. I really liked the characters and the banter between them.

Ezmae Chang This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

Scott LeBrun This viewer was hoping to enjoy "The Crawling Hand" more than he did. It's got enough absurdity at times to make it diverting, but the whole premise is boringly handled by director Herbert L. Strock, who makes us wait too long for the "good" moments. The actors do their best at looking dead serious, which naturally helps to make things funnier. The special effects, surprisingly, aren't that terrible, and the movie actually does have a sense of humour in some scenes. All in all, this does go on longer than it really should. It gets off to a great start with its opening credits, promising more fun than it eventually delivers.Astronaut Mel Lockhart (Ashley Cowan) goes crazy while in space, and crash lands in California. Turns out, the alien intelligence that possessed him still resides in his severed arm & hand, and it commits a murder, and soon exerts an evil influence over dopey medical student Paul Lawrence (Rod Lauren). Paul struggles to regain control of himself while the local sheriff (played by The Skipper himself, Alan Hale Jr.) believes him to be guilty of the killing.The cast also includes a hammy Peter Breck as ill-tempered Steve Curan, Kent Taylor as his associate Dr. Max Weitzberg, the 50 foot woman (otherwise known as actress Allison Hayes) as Donna, cute Sirry Steffen as Pauls' girlfriend Marta, Arline Judge as landlady Mrs. Hotchkiss, and Richard Arlen as Lee Barrenger. They're all entertaining to watch, and the movie, even if not that funny, does possess a certain low budget bad movie charm that's hard to resist. The ending is the best part; it's pretty damn amusing.Schlock devotees will likely have a reasonably good time with this.Four out of 10.

Diana Schlocky entertainment about an astronaut who apparently gets some kind of weird radiation poisoning, and so his hand becomes murderous and possessed and wants to kill, a la Evil Dead. This is pretty much a huh? statement, but there it is. The astronaut begs NASA to kill him, which they do pretty readily. Did they have such a surplus that they could so casually blow up a qualified and trained astronaut? He could have had a nasty space virus; they really had no idea what was wrong with him.Oh, well. Onward we go. The two scientists who were in charge of the launch(since when does NASA put scientists in charge of space launches?) go looking for the pieces of the astronaut who fell to Earth. One of these guys would later play the greasy middle brother in The Big Valley; fortunately, they didn't give him a tepid romance in this film, or I would have lost my lunch. Weren't most of these 50's and 60's films the wet dreams of science geeks? Studly and know-it-all scientist saves the day and gets the beautiful girl? Like that ever happened in real life.Getting back to the dull movie, two teenagers are out ofr a walk on the beach and find what's left of the astronaut. The boy later comes back with a bag(a hand bag?) to collect the arm of the astronaut. I wasn't sure why he took just the arm, but really I suppose this movie didn't have to make much sense.The kid's landlady is attacked by the semi-mobile killer hand. In swoops the Skipper, playing a chunky cop. Well, at least he didn't call NASA 'Nasau', like he did as the sheriff in Giant Spider Invasion. he thinks the kid offed his landlady, and is very suspicious of his story. And who wouldn't be? You and she were the only ones in the house, but you swear you didn't strangle her? Yeah, right, kid. He lets it go, and the kid is attacked by the hand and gets a good dose of the radiation poisoning, turning him into a killer in the making. There goes a double huh? Two idiot ambulance attendants take the kid as well as the body of the landlady, intending to cart him off to the hospital. He escapes from the ambulance, and goes on a murder spree of epic proportions-well, no he doesn't. He attempts several murders, but even infected with whatever it is he has he's a dud as a strangler. There are some long, slow scenes, and then some weird bit with some cats who attack the crawling astronaut hand and eat it or something. Wouldn't they have gotten the disease, too? Just wondering. The cop and the scientists find the kid, and then Alan Hale is going to do us a favor and off the annoying kid, but once the hand is consumed by the cats the boy is released from the spell? Disease? Whatever, and they take him to the hospital, where we're very much afraid that he'll recover. What's left of the hand is wrapped up good and taken away-by those same two idiot ambulance drivers! One of these dopes is curious about what's in the box they're supposed to be transporting, so he opens it. End of movie, leaving us wondering if there was supposed to be a sequel of some kind. Thank God that one was never made. Let's give a huge hand to whoever nixed that project.

thehardyboyz2043 (Possible spoilers) not many people may know this but "The Crawling Hand" was an early MST3K episode from about '89, I think. Personally, I don't feel this was anywhere near being the worst movie they ever did, but it was still pretty bad. The story consists of an astronaut (whose lines consist mainly of "Push the red button" and "Kill" during which he sounds like a William Shatner wannabe) who is blown up and his remains, but mainly his hand are discovered later on a beach by a frolicking couple, a Swedish chick who has to read cue cards and a James Dean clone. For some reason the "James" guy goes on a killing or a dutch rub spree for any one whose seen the film all the while to NASA scientists (I think) and a dumpy sheriff (Alan Hale Jr., whose surprised)are trying to track him down. It's not really a very good movie, though the MST version was quite funny, for an early episode.

zmaturin This was made back in the day when you could open a movie with twenty or thirty minutes of nondescript office types talking in offices about space stuff, before switching gears to the main story. The main story here stars a kid named Paul, who looks like Sal Mineo but acts like James Dean. A day of frolicking on the beach with his big-chinned but hot Swedish girlfriend is interrupted by the discovery of an astronaut's severed hand (not unlike the ear in David Lynch's remake "Blue Velvet"). Of course, the hand is possessed by space germs or something and with Paul's unwilling help they go about killing people, like Paul's hard-drinking, gun-toting, triple-chinned landlady and a crabby soda jerk (One would wonder why the germs would go through the trouble of traveling all the way to Earth just to strangle the elderly, but who am I to question this movie?). Eventually Paul drives to the city dump, where the hand is eaten by some cats and Paul's own high fever kills the germs, which can't survive in high temperatures (then how did they survive the astronaut's explosion and subsequent crash landing?). Despite the inherent goofiness of the story, the presence of Alan Hale, jr, and the typical trappings of the mid-fifties teen sci-fi horror movie, this manages to inject some nice moments into the otherwise dull tale. The scene where the astronaut begs to be (and then is) blown-up is great, and there's a moderately chilling scene where Paul wakes up in the back of an ambulance next to a corpse. Also, the part where Paul attacks the soda jerk while weird lights flash and the Rivington's "Surfin' Bird (Papa Oom-Mow-Mow)" plays is pretty terrific. So I didn't totally hate this movie, although I came close many times.