The Crawling Hand (1963)

Ok time for another Public Domain movie, this time however I did not encounter it on those movie packs, either it will be in the near future (thanks to this review of course) or it is not certain that the movie is in public domain. (but it probably is).

• Year of release: 1963
• Director: Herbert L. Strock
• Genre: Horror, Sci Fi
• IMDB Page

The Crawling Hand AKA Don't Cry Wolf AKA The Creeping Hand is by the hand of Herbert L. Strock. Who you will know from classic movies like euhm, ok well you won't know him (unless "I Was a Teenage Frankenstein" is more popular then I thought).

This was the most terrifying scene from the movie.

The movie starts with two scientists wondering why they didn't heard back from the astronaut they where monitoring. When he interrupts him in the middle of their conversation (the arrogance). Now because they are scientist they immediately notice that something is not right, not hard considering he has black rings around his eyes without being a goth and o yeah, he died because he ran out of oxygen. Since scientist become scientist so they can blow shit up, they blow him up, destroying this abomination of nature. Or not? For some reason one of the scientist gives us a lecture about why they blew him up, but to be honest I wasn't paying attention cause it was extremely boring and goes on for forever. It's like they needed 7 more minutes of playtime and decided to instead of just showing us a black screen or anything else at least a bit entertaining they let one of the actors play my old math teacher.

I'm like so into goth-rock.

Apparently the scientist was blown up in pieces with his arm (with hand intact) lands on a random beach on earth. Now around this time the movie actually gets interesting. That's because around this time we are introduced to the lovely Marta, played by Sirry Steffen a former miss Iceland winner.

Why couldn't the whole movie be like this, forget about the man-killing hand.

Besides Marta we get to be introduced to Syd Saylor, who owns a soda shop where everybody is dancing on The Bird's the Word, making this one of the best soundtracks of all the 60s sci-fi movies. Sadly this was the last movie Saylor did before he died, that's right after being in movies and on tv over 400 times, THIS was the movie that finally killed him.

Watch the crawling hand, YOU will believe a HAND can CRAWL.
It's like the beast with five fingers, but from SPAAACE.

Marta and her boyfriend Rod come across the arm of the astronaut and for some reason Rod secretly sneaks it home. As aspected the hand then starts killing people and influences Rod turning him into a goth himself. The rest of the story really is nothing special, hand kills people, rod almost kills people, the people killing hand was no match against some cats and some of the worst paramedics ever (who, I kid you not, steal beer from a death woman's fridge). The same paramedics who later in the story are given the key to a chest where the hand has been locked in (smart move).
Instead of elaborating the story, just watch the best scene from the second part of the movie:

In conclusion, this movie is not good, for better hands killing people watch "The Beast With Five Fingers" or "The Hand", the acting is often just over-the top bad (but not in a good way) and the movie is just to boring to like it. There are some good moments (all involving either Syd Saylor or Sirry Steffen) but not enough to cover for the other parts. There are to many sci-fi movies from that era to watch em all, and I suggest you just skip this one.

Score: 3/10