That was an excellent one.

Best movie ever!

This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

The film creates a perfect balance between action and depth of basic needs, in the midst of an infertile atmosphere.

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.

Watching The Crawling Hand tonight all I could think of was The Addams Family and The Thing which was guest starring in this film. The Thing should have received top billing.It's hard to believe that so many name players were desperate for work to sign on to this film. An astronaut dies on a mission, but his severed hand takes on a life of its own and starts strangling people. And it possesses the mind of young Rod Lauren who is starting to show some homicidal tendencies.People like Alan Hale, Jr. Peter Breck, Syd Saylor so many I know from many films just look downright embarrassed to be in this thing. And in the end, the security of NASA leaves something to be desired.It's not even funny bad, just bad.

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.

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.