I saw this movie as a child. It came in 1963, but as I saw it on television, it must have been later. Whatever age I was, my brother was three younger. I can remember, after watching the movie, creeping my hand towards him from around corners, down from the top of the bunk-bed, etc. It always got a scare. But I don’t remember much about the movie itself. Since tonight is Halloween, and since I tried watching a modern low-budget slasher and got bored, I decided to pull this up on Hulu.
I’ll write this up as it goes. The first section involves an overdue astronaut, coming back from the moon. They make it clear that this is the second mission, the first one ended in disaster. The second one is starting to go the same way. The sets are minimal, but the film-makers didn’t try and show whole command centers, so it works well enough. Then there’s a scene where the astronaut makes contact, twenty minutes after they know his oxygen must have run out. He is pleading with control to kill him, use an auto-destruct button. He cannot do it himself, because his hands won’t obey him. The scene is nicely done, nothing low-budget of badly acted here. You actually do feel the agony of the decision the scientists on the ground have to make. So far so good.
Also, Alan Hale will be in this one. I love Alan Hale. He turned in a pretty great performance in The Giant Spider Invasion. For those who don’t know, he is the skipper in Gilligan’s Island, the ultimate prototype sit-com.
We get introduced to the small town in a scene set in a cafe. Some kids are dancing, the owner keeps telling them: “no dancing”. Meanwhile, two girls, obviously main characters, are chatting. They also have a cage with rats in it on the table. One is wondering how the other managed to “snatch” the young med student as a boyfriend. Apparently a dozen other girls have failed. Actual dialog:
“I’m not saying you’re not stacked, he’s just not with it.”
That leads to a romantic interlude that, at whatever age I was then, probably went over my head. Which is for the best. The characters are weak 60s style teens, and the whole thing gets a little painful until it’s finally relieved by the arrival of the hand. That section of the movie seems as if it were directed by someone else as well. A second team director, maybe? The angles are often wrong, people who are supposed to be conversing are staring off into space, and the presence of the back-screen is clear.
But when the action starts up again, it is kind of tense. Moreso than with “Shredder,” a 2003 movie I tried watching earlier, but had to bail on as boredom swept in.
Now that Paul is going half-zombie, the quality of the movie starts plunging. People keep acting strangely. I think even as a child, I understood that things weren’t making sense. The arm doesn’t seem very threatening, and the infected Paul seems to be more likely to go Emo than actually kill anyone. But the movie is still fun.
It’s black and white, cheesy, and full of wooden acting, bad camera angles, and difficult to swallow plot points. The central danger isn’t that credible, except when people are pretty near wasted. But there are a few creepy scenes, and the overall cheese factor makes it fun.
