Back in the 1970's, shortly after the blockbuster of "Jaws" was released, some music editor took the hit songs of the past and edited it into a conversation with the shark where one of the cracks was "Wouldn't you give your hand to a friend?". That tongue-in-cheek commentary goes perfect with this wonderfully dreadful science fiction/horror turkey that really goes arm in arm with some of the worst movies ever made. The surprising thing about the film is that as bad as it obviously is, it is totally entertaining! Rod Lauren is the hero, a young college student with ambitions of being a great scientist, is on the beach one day with his girlfriend (Sirry Steffen), frolicking a la Troy Donahue and Sandra Dee, and all of a sudden, her screams alert him to the presence of a disembodied hand. So like any good future mad scientist to be, what does he do? Go back later and collect it of course! An altercation with his landlady (Arline Judge, a forgotten "B" actress of the 30's) leads to the revelation that the arm has a mind of its own (or at least a brain in its pulse) and is not incapable of violent acts, including murder. Poor Lauren begins to physically change a la Jekyll and Hyde (basically he looks like he has a black eye) and begins to think he's the one committing all this violence. With the aid of NASA scientist Peter Breck and the local law (lead by Alan Hale, no less!), Lauren must prove his innocence which leads to a show-down in a junk yard of old cars and wild house cats.Totally fun with so many unnecessary plot elements (Steffen's professor father objecting to his daughter's romance with Laurence even though he's the professor's favorite student), a babbling old man who runs the soda shop spouting as if he was John Carradine, "Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow you die", etc.), the focus on the cult song "The Bird is the Word" by the Rivington's (not "Family Guy's" Peter Griffin who would constantly break into this forgotten ditty) and Steffen's Gidget like scenes with best pal Beverly Lunsford. Then, there's Allison Hayes whom I did not actually recall seeing in this movie until realizing that she had one scene at the very beginning and pretty much disappears. I researched her character and could not find any mention of her, making her participation in this totally forgettable. I guess with her large hand swooping down in "Attack of the 50 Foot Woman", she didn't want to upstage the crawling one here.And what about the two cats fighting over the crawling hand in the film's climactic scene? Would they find it purr-fect and give it two paws up, or would they hiss and scratch their way out of the litter box this seems to have crawled up from?

I wonder if I could make it through The Crawling Hand if it weren't for the Mystery Science Theater 3000 guys along for the proverbial ride. It's a wonder if this could be made entertaining at all... then again in 1987 in Evil Dead 2 one would see what mayhem and fun could be had with a demonic hand. But in the case of this film, the plot is thin save for some "watch out for, um, radiation fall-out from space" scare-messages, and the characters are practically non-existent types. Or rather, they do exist, but you wonder where the character parts 'went'.But there are some moments of hilarity, even without the commentary from MST3K There's the guy on the TV screen out in space who is first affected by the radiation (he really goes so far into banana-land that he makes Shatner look like Olivier) and whose hand becomes THE hand that lands on the beach and attacks those by lunging for the throat. The way the hand lunges from its point of attack is also quite funny, how it creeps up and jumps off in such a manner that you're all but waiting to see the other hand that through that hand at the actor's throat! Some of the wooden acting is fun too; Peter Breck, who the same year this came out legitimately wowed me with his turn in Sam Fuller's Shock Corridor, is given little do but act and talk serious at a, (haha), crawling hand that when it attacks someone they get up and, uh, become the hand themselves! I'm sure that when this came out some of the scare scenes were possibly scary. Today it can't be helped that it's all very tacky, and despite an attempt at a shocking climax at a junkyard, where cats are the ones who really can get the most credit in doing the most damage, its a tacky sci-fi B movie in a mostly dull kind of way. But, as mentioned, MST3K comes in to save the day if one is so inclined to watch with it (i.e. any reference to 'smoking').

Itinerant hand somehow flies down from space and strangles people; and people also become paranoid and violent. There is supposed to be a connection between the two phenomena, although I couldn't figure out what is was. The space program in the movie sent a man to the moon, he was killed, and the program just sent another without bothering to find out as to what happened to the first.Oh yes, and a flowsy landlady carries around a large, cocked pistol with a hair-trigger, throws it down on table and somehow does -not- blow a hole in her wall. Overly long scenes with no point. Cute Swedish chick is included, as is a *very* poor man's version of James Dean in Steve Curan. Best acting is done by Jackson the Cat. Please, if you have to watch one of these B-movie scholckfests, watch "The Brain that Wouldn't Die" instead. It isn't boring and there is a lot more potential for cuttup material. And that is why we watch these movies, isn't it?

I saw this movie on the Saturday night "Sci-Fi Movie" when I was a kid in the mid to late 60s. It scared me then. I had to find a copy and watch it again almost 40 years later. Upon this second viewing, the part that scared me the most is that there may have been people who took this seriously! I can't believe grown men (OK people for the PC world we now live in) could actually invest time and money on a project like this but I'm glad they did because I must admit that I am a fan of "bad horror movies." They don't get much worse than this so of course I enjoyed it. As another reviewer pointed out, there is almost no acting. Also, there isn't much of a plot, the special effects are terrible, if not, non-existent. All of which adds up to one of the best bad horror movies I've ever seen. Very entertaining in that regard.