THE CRAWLING HAND (1963)
Directed by Herbert L. Strock
Rhino DVD
Reviewed 04.21.05
Review by Joseph A. Ziemba

THE FILM
Here’s the sitch: the filmmakers took the spark of a well-intended junk-fi opus and made a bona fide mess out of it. We, as dedicated viewers, must pick up the pieces. Lucky us!

I had high hopes for The Crawling Hand. Really, I did. Coming from the slightly schlocky hands of director Herb Strock (How To Make A Monster), I was at least hoping for a bit of early 60s fun. What little semblance of delight that exists is overtaken by a tar-paced script that just can’t get it on. Step on it! Give ‘em a little elbow grease! But nope, Strock and company just aren’t listening, content with throwing several ideas up on screen and letting the chips fall where they may. Prepare for holes the size of meatballs and an extra side of talk to match. At least there’s a little weirdness thrown in for good measure.

During the first 25 minutes, we witness the explosion of an annoying astronaut’s space ship, lots of mind-numbing scientific word vomit, a gritty ice cream shop owner (“Tomorrow you die!”) and some beach frolics with James Dean rip-off Paul (Rod Lauren from Terrified) and his g-friend Marta (Sirry Stefan from nothing you’d ever care about, but what a name!). Paul and Marta find an amputated arm on the beach, obviously left over from Mr. Space Cadet. Paul inexplicably takes the arm home and hides it in his landlady’s cupboard. Just like that, it comes to life and strangles the old bag, but not before she turns on the light and gets out of bed five times over. After an attempted strangulation on Paul, the arm disappears until the end of the film. In its wake, Paul becomes some kind of black-eyed zombie and gets all kinds of authority figures on his back, including Alan Hale (Gilligan’s Island) and bad film buddy Kent Taylor. Three sittings later, I finally made it to the gory climax, which quickly switches places with a comic relief ending. For shame.

If you can place aside the nonsense script and nil explanation, The Crawling Hand isn’t half bad. The tone is overly dark and the film is peppered with strange occurrences; Paul’s wake-up-freak-out in the back of an ambulance, a flashing kill scene up against a jukebox that squeals “B-b-b-bird’s the word,” and some violent portable tape recorder destruction. Unfortunately, that’s not enough for 87 minutes. Useless talk by generic actors overpowers the pace of the film, making for a disappointing whole. Considering the elements that were at hand, that’s a downright stinker.

AUDIO AND VIDEO
Like the other films in Rhino’s budget-minded horror series, The Crawling Hand looks cool, about what you’d expect from a film of this vintage. The full frame print is nicely chiseled, but a bit dark at times. Scratches are present and the blacks are a little muted. The mono sound fared a little rougher, fluctuating in volume and wading through a sheet of fuzzy hiss.

EXTRAS
Twelve, count ‘em, twelve whole chapter stops.

FINAL THOUGHTS
Lopping off twenty minutes or so would have made for some A-1 black and white trash. As is, The Crawling Hand will keep you company for a few minutes, but you'll probably forget all about it the next day.

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Arm charm