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Mystery Science Theater 3000 - The Crawling HandRating:
Release Date: 11 June, 2002 Retail Price: $19.95 OUR Price: $9.99 You SAVE: $9.96! Cast: Complete Cast (10 total) |
Mystery Science Theater 3000 - The Crawling Hand Reviews
Five Fingers of Death!
`Never raise your hand to your kids. It leaves your groin unprotected.' I was at a loss as how to start my review, so I thought I'd go with one of my favorite Red Buttons quotes, which, coincidentally, contains a reference to hands, tying in somewhat to the film The Crawling Hand aka Don't Cry Wolf aka The Creeping Hand (1963). This review is for the non-MST3k DVD version of the film. For those who may be unfamiliar, there use to be a show on cable titled Mystery Science Theater 3000 (if you love bad movies, you need to check it out), whose specialty was presenting humorous running commentary to old, drecky films, actually making many of them bearable to watch. The show is long gone, but legions of fans still enjoy the antics of Joel (or Mike) and the `bots from their well-worn VHS tapes, and also, more recently, the various DVD releases of the show by Rhino Home Video, one of them being the `Mystified' version of this film (on a separate DVD, available on Amazon), which is why you see many reviews making reference to the show. Directed by Herbert L. Strock (Gog, How to Make a Monster, the original 1958 version, not the lame 2001 TV version), The Crawling Hand (boy, with a title like that, you know exactly what you're getting) stars Peter Breck, who also starred in the very good film Shock Corridor released the same year as this film, Kent Taylor (Satan's Sadists, Brain of Blood), and Rod Lauren (The Young Swingers). Also appearing is Alan Hale Jr. (yep, the Skipper, from the television show Gilligan's Island) and Icelandic born actress Sirry Steffen, whom some may remember from her brief appearance on the Beverly Hillbillies, as Marie the Maid.
The film begins with the loss of an astronaut returning from a mission, focusing on Steve Curran (Breck) and Dr. Max Weitzberg (Taylor), both working for the associated space agency, at a loss to explain what happened. What's so puzzling is the circumstances around the loss (this was the 2nd time it happened), as everything was going per plan, but after a mysterious communiqué with the 2nd astronaut, the spacecraft was destroyed (the astronaut appeared on the view screens looking sickly and pleading with mission control to hit the red button, which, apparently is the button used to detonate the craft). The craft was destroyed, but some pieces survived, like the astronaut's severed hand, which ended up on a beach, only to be found by college students Paul (Lauren) and his girlyfriend/exchange student Marta (Steffen). Noting that it might be something of importance, Paul returns later to collect the errant limb, but soon discovers it to have strange powers (no, it's not like a monkey's paw, granting wishes to its' owner) and a appetite for...murder (Paul's landlady finds this out the hard way)! As Paul wrestles with the abomination, he also gets a bad case of the space cooties, and begins trying to murder those around him, but never quite as successfully as the severed limb. Will Steve and Dr. Weitzberg be able to intervene and determine the nature of the evil brought that has arrived on Earth? Will they be able to help Paul before the police gun him down like a mad dog? Will Marta student visa expire before she gets a chance to renew it?
Okay, this isn't a very good film (it lists four, count `em, four writers), but I did get the feeling the original story might have been much better, suffering in translation to the silver screen (it wouldn't be the first time). I didn't mind that the very cheap special effects (the scenes with the crawling hand were often short, but sometimes the shadow of the rest of the body attached to the crawling hand was very evident), but what seemed to drag this film down was the poor writing and the extremely herky jerky pacing (there was a 20 minute scene near the beginning that spent way too much time on the needless development of the characters of Paul and Marta). I did think some of the make-up interesting, especially the characters affected by the space madness, looking like something the somnambulist character from The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. The lighting is also extremely poor, especially the interior shots as shadows often presented themselves in an awkward manner as if the lights were pointing towards the actors at waist level from behind the camera. The acting isn't great, but it is unintentionally funny, especially when Breck, whose character was prone to hissy fits one would expect from a three year old, chewed up all the scenery. Alan Hale Jr., as a small town police chief, was kind of fun to watch (I kept expecting him to finish his sentences with the term `lil' buddy'), but would the police really use a station wagon as a squad car? I suppose they could, but they hardly seem suitable for the high-speed chases (the film does have one, sort of). My favorite characters had to be the ambulance drivers. I loved the part where they arrived to retrieve a dead body (the evil hand at work), and decide to investigate the deceased woman's refrigerator for beer. After finding a prone Paul on the floor (again, work of the evil hand), they have a brief discussion about what to do, as they were only tasked to pick up one body. These guys have to be independent contractors...the end, which couldn't come soon enough, wraps things up a little to conveniently (so, everyone is on board about that whole alien possession thing?) and tries to throw in a completely predictable twist.
The picture on this DVD better than I would have thought, but the audio was awful, often impossible to hear. There are no special features available, but there are chapter stops. I wasn't expecting a lot from this DVD, and that's exactly what I got.
Cookieman108
Sorry
This is a very early episode of MST3K... And even though I knew that the first few seasons weren't very good, I bought it anyway. I did laugh alot... but I barely made it though the movie... It was interesting seeing the old set though. The host segments weren't too funny... The invention exchange wasn't very funny or interesting. The riffs were pretty funny, but they made too many jokes about hands and Gilligan's Island(since the actor that played the skipper is in The Crawling Hand). And as for Josh Weinstein... well, his voice just isn't very funny. And I like Frank!(who doesn't appear in this episode)... Ok, I think that I am done now. Overall, this episode IS good... it's just that I wish that I spent my $20 on an episode from a different season!
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