The Crawling Hand + The Slime People

♫ “Slime People got, no reason …
Slime People got, no reason to Lii-iive !  ♫ 

The Slime People was produced in partnership with ’40s film actor Robert Hutton, who seized on the opportunity to direct. As the film could afford no sets, he talked a relative into letting him shoot in his butcher shop. Hutton may also have had a contact at KTTV studios as well, as a number of scenes are filmed on the famed Metromedia Lot, in screening rooms, etc. That entire property was torn down in 2003, to become a new High School.

The Slime People is a prime example of a commercial monster show cobbled together with a minimum outlay of cash. A small group of people drive about in cars and sit together worrying about an outbreak of hideous slime monsters from beneath the Earth. These gab sessions are interrupted by intermittent Slime Men attacks. The storyline indicates a need for elaborate optical effects, of which there are essentially none. But Robertson did commission the construction of three rather good monster suits. They look quite good in stills, but only from a single camera angle.

The filmmakers knew they couldn’t sell their show based on merit. To woo potential distributors, the film’s opening strings together several random shots of the monster suit at its slimy best, duplicated from later in the movie. The plan must have been to be to get the critters on screen right from the get-go, to keep drive-in patrons from heading for the exit.

The story goes that the three Slime Man costumes cost so much that little money was left to film anything. Pros Hutton, Robert Burton and Les Tremayne are the older folk, while future A.I.P. beach bunny Susan Hart and Judee Morton  (Experiment in Terror) make coffee, act nervous and arrange to get themselves captured by the monsters. The show itself seems to exist in a twilight zone of self-contradiction. Pilot Hutton is forced down by a terrible storm, and lands in a deserted Los Angeles. The entire city is supposed to be covered by a huge dome that we never really see. This dome is said to be made of solidified air (not smog). Yet when Hutton lands the skies are clear and visibility is unlimited.

We never for a minute buy the flaky giant dome concept. Smoke pots are used in a few scenes, and a lot of the movie uses a decent optical with a misty overlay effect: they must have fainted when they got the lab bill for that one. Little attempt is made to put anything more than the bare minimum of exposition into scenes. The two ‘romantic couples’ begin kissing a few minutes after meeting, leaving the actors marooned in unplayable scenes. You’re actors, just act natural!

We’re told that the Slime Men have overrun the entire city, but we see no city, mostly some undeveloped brushy hills. One shot takes advantage of the Bel Air fire, showing the film’s vehicles driving past a row of burned houses. The action scenes are laughable. The clumsy, rubbery creations engage our heroes in pitiful hand-to-hand combat. The humans prevail even when outnumbered three to one. And these things killed the entire population of Los Angeles?

Just the same, one-on-one monster fights were just what young boys wanted in their movie fare. Bullets don’t work, a given in most any monster show. But a slime guy crumples when stuck with a hollow spear that allows all of his precious slime gook to spill out. I know it’s stupid, but we 12 year-olds made special note of details like that. The drama was interactive — we figured out the way to ill-kay the onsters-may on our own!

Nobody comes off well, although everyone but newcomer William Boyce is a competent player. Apparently asked to appear as a favor (or because he lost a bet), notable actor Les Tremayne enters carrying a goat. Not much later, he exits screaming as the Slime Dudes skewer him but good. Of course, Tremayne must first sit still and wait so his cumbersome attackers can catch up with him.

The Crawling Hand
1962
Starring: Peter Breck, Kent Taylor, Rod Lauren, Alan Hale Jr., Allison Hayes, Sirry Steffen, Arline Judge, Richard Arlen, Tristram Coffin, Ross Elliott, Stan Jones.
Cinematography: Willard Van Der Veer
Filmed on real film with a real camera
Special Effects: Charles Duncan
Composer: Martin Skiles
Allison Hayes gowns designed by: Christian Dior
Screenplay by Wm. Idelson, Herbert L. Strock original story by Idelson, Joe Cranston, Robert Malcolm Young
Produced by Joseph F. Robertson
Directed and Edited by Herbert L. Strock

Joseph F. Robertson’s second horror effort, possibly filmed first, is 1963’s The Crawling Hand. Although more professionally shot, the show has a weak storyline and a ‘non-monster’ wearing black makeup around his eyes. Yet the show is now considered Psychotronic gold. In the ranks of Triple-Z movies, it is multiple clicks above the nadir of Z Sci-fi,  The Creeping Terror. Oh, for an incredible remaster of that blessed turkey.

Robertson’s professionally connected partner here is Herbert L. Strock, a former editor and TV director who helped Ivan Tors on several features and directed  GOG,  I Was a Teenage Frankenstein and  Blood of Dracula. Strock may have provided the contacts that brought in veteran actors Kent Taylor, Alan Hale Jr. Arline Judge, Richard Arlen, Tristram Coffin and Ross Elliott. He may even have found star Peter Breck and wangled the brief appearance of cult actress Allison Hayes. It’s a small part but Hayes does look good. Her hairstyle reminds us of Anne Bancroft in several recent pictures.

The lumpy plot stretches with filler scenes to give the guest stars something to do. Space agency executives Peter Breck and Kent Taylor fret when yet another moon rocket explodes on re-entry. Their boss Richard Arlen is eager to send the nation’s last two surviving astronauts up even though it’s likely they’ll be killed as well. Seen on TV, astronaut Lockhart (Ashley Cowan) exhibits a zombie-like appearance before he begs mission control to remotely destroy his space capsule. From this scant evidence Taylor theorizes that an outer-space organism has invaded Lockhart’s body, making The Crawling Hand yet another unacknowledged offspring of Nigel Kneale’s  The Quatermass Xperiment.

Science student Paul (Rod Lauren) finds Lockhart’s severed arm on the beach and inexplicably hides it away in the cellar. Energized by the alien entity, it comes to life and starts strangling people. A victim of second-hand possession, Paul periodically turns into a murderous killer, with sunken zombie eyes like those of the dead astronaut. The space agency people and the local sheriff (Alan Hale Jr.) must track Paul down before he kills his girlfriend, Swedish exchange student Marta (Sirry Steffen).

Marginally more competent than The Slime People, this show isn’t that much more interesting. The deadly hand is animated in the obvious way — we either cannot see all of the arm, or an unconvincing wind-up arm is used. The business with Paul’s possession by the alien spirit doesn’t amount to much. It’s the kind of film that we kids would accidentally land on while spinning the TV dial, and watch for a while in the hope of seeing a monster. Someone wearing sunken-eye Halloween makeup didn’t qualify.

The one campy twist is the inclusion of the hit single Surfin’ Bird, better known as The Bird Is the Word — not The Trashmen’s version with the driving machine beat heard in Kubrick’s  Full Metal Jacket, but the R&B original by  The Rivingtons. Unfortunately, The Crawling Hand uses the song only as source music from a juke box. Had it been heard during the murder scenes, the show’s cool factor would have been magnified tenfold.