Nostalgia Kinky

Joined at the bloody hip since 1963, The Crawling Hand and The Slime People are now available on Blu-ray from VCI. Restored in 4K from original film negatives, this campy duo has never looked better on home video. Containing archival and new extras, this new Blu-ray edition is sure to please fans and is available now directly from VCI or MVD.

Decades before he directed The Crawling Hand, Herbert L. Strock cut his teeth as a teenager working for Fox Movietone News. He knocked around the film industry for a bit, eventually transitioning to television in its earliest years. His career as a director started fittingly enough with the 1953 science-fiction film The Magnetic Monster. By the time his third feature, Gog (1954), came out, Strock was solidified as a director of ultra-schlocky, ultra-cheap chillers, thrillers, and space-age adventures. He’s probably best known for his I Was A Teenage Frankenstein (1957), one of his American International Pictures directed films.

The Crawling Hand marks the end of Strock’s ‘golden period’, as it is. Extremely silly but undeniably fun, this 1963 film concerns a possessed astronaut’s detached arm causing havoc in a sleepy California beachside community. Overlong at nearly 90 minutes and beyond nonsensical, The Crawling Hand oozes low-budget charm, although it is far from a genre classic.

Producer Joseph F. Robertson brought both The Crawling Hand and The Slime People to theaters as a double-bill in 1963. The Slime People features direction from actor and one-and-done feature filmmaker Robert Hutton, who also appears in the film. Scripted by Robertson, this concerns a group of pissed-off slimy sea monsters who terrorize the (earlier film’s) same California community with dense fog and latex-powered punches.

I like The Slime People better than The Crawling Hand, although the latter is probably a ‘better’ film. Running a much more ideal length for this kind of cheesefest, 76 minutes, Hutton’s film makes good use of The Fog, and the costumed monsters of the title have a really cool, fun retro vibe.

Robertson and Hutton are clearly aware of what the audience for a film called The Slime People wants. The film just kind of begins with a shrug to any sort of proper narrative buildup or flow. It opens like a follow-up to an unmade first film, and it is bizarrely hilarious.

Neither The Crawling Hand nor The Slime People resembles anything close to ‘good’ films but, come on, we know what we’re getting here. For fans of fifties/sixties drive-in titles, these new restorations will be most welcome.

Considering neither The Crawling Hand nor The Slime People is all that visually compelling, VCI’s new restorations are just fine. A big upgrade over older clips of these I’ve seen, these new Tiffany L. Clayton authd HD transfers offer a nice presentation of two very cheap-looking films. Supplement-wise, VCI offers a newly visualized, nearly one-hour-long 2010 interview with actress Susan Hart that I believe was found on the original DVD version. This Tom Weaver interview also features some newly recorded sections, meant to operate as a partial commentary for The Slime People.

The collection’s main supplement is a feature-length Crawling Hand commentary by artist and historian Robert Kelly, who also provides the slipcover’s new artwork. What a fun commentary this is, filled with laughter and nostalgia. Kelly clearly appreciates this period and type of cinema, and he shares much information about both on this delightful track. Save for a thankfully very brief AI-created featurette that detracts from a solid release, VCI has done a good job here on these two hard-to-resist films.
Good goofy gooey stuff.

-Jeremy Richey, April 2026-