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').
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').