MST3K: 106 - The Crawling Hand

Joel Robinson is trapped in space and forced to watch bad movies by a pair of mad scientists.  His only companions are the robots he made from some of the spare parts.  A cult classic of the 90's, this is Mystery Science Theater 3000.

Original air date: December 16, 1989

The weather's started getting rough, let's get home.

Now this show is starting to look like it's maturing a little.  Sure, it's only five (yes, I said five) episodes in, but now the show begins with a short scene with Joel instead of the Mads.  There are buttons on the desk, and unless I am mistaken, this is the first appearance of Magic Voice!  In the opening, Joel explains just what the heck is going on here.  It's straight and to the point, and not particularly funny.  We will see this happen a few more times this season before they decide they don't really need to explain the concept of the show.

Joel cheats during the invention exchange!  I've watched this episode several times in the past, and it never occurred to me until now.  Instead of actually investing anything, Joel pulls a prank on the Mads by pretending to cut off his fingers.  Cheeky!   The Mads invention, the Arm Extender, is cute, but it's rather easy to see that Trace's hand is what is coming out of the end of the tube.

The experiment is The Crawling Hand, a 1963 sci-fi movie.  It is long enough that there is no time for a Radar Men from the Moon short.  In the film, an astronaut on is way back from the moon appears to go insane.  In reality, he has been infected with some sort of extraterrestrial life.  He begs for his ship to be set to self-destruct, and NASA physician Dr. Max Weltzberg (Kent Taylor) obliges.  However, the disembodied hand of the dead astronaut is found by college student Paul Lawrence (Rod Lauren).  The hand kills Mrs. Hotchkiss (Paul's landlady) and then possesses Paul, who begins attacking others.  Steve Curan (Peter Breck), chief of the NASA mission, and Dr. Weltzberg  are tasked with stopping the attacks.  Joel and the Bots see Peter again in the season 4 experiment The Beatniks.

Alan Hale Jr., who played the Skipper in Gilligan's Island, has a role as the town's sheriff.  Hale appears in two more movies shown in the show. Tristam Coffin, who was just in the previous experiment, plays NASA's security chief.  While Coffin's character is mentioned, we never see him on screen, which leads me to believe his scenes were cut for time in the episode.  The voluptuous Allison Hayes (of Attack of the 50 Foot Woman fame and appears in three other films in the show) plays Donna, Steve's secretary.

The first host segment is rather weak.  Joel and the Bots are bowling, but Joel decides he wants to play Murder Ball (did he really mean wheelchair rugby or something else?).  When the Bots balk on that idea, Joel suggests rock-paper-scissors (which is intrinsically unfair based on the bots inability to move their fingers).  There really wasn't much more to the bit that than.

The second host segment, in which Joel and the Bots imitate William Shatner getting choked, is rather funny.  My only problem is that I don't recall an episode of Star Trek where Kirk gets choked almost to death.  I'm sure there is one, it just doesn't come to mind.

"Dames like her always keep beer around." is a line from this movie and becomes a recurring riff through the rest of the series.  The line is originally uttered by an EMT, when they decide to have a drink before transporting Mrs. Hotchkiss's body .  You are a poor excuse for an EMT (and/or an alcoholic) if you think it's OK to drink a dead woman's beer.  On top of that, when they find Paul unconscious, the same man tries to weasel out of helping him.  That dude should be fired (I bet he was, and ended up being the surgeon that screwed up my gall bladder surgery).

There is one riff about Steve working on"O-rings", and it was quite harsh.  This was late 1989, the Challenger disaster was only about four years earlier.  Too soon, J. Elvis, too soon.  It's not something that younger audiences now would necessarily catch, but I was in fifth grade when the Challenger exploded and remember the day distinctly.

The third segment is a bit weak.  Joel does bring some humor to the situation with his explanation about how a disembodied hand could potentially be dangerous.  But, in general, the bit just falls flat.  Gypsy dressed as a giant hand in the end is just... strange.

The final host segment contains a letter, which is the first time we hear a letter read during season one.  This is also the first time Servo reads the address for the fan club (is it sad I have it memorized?).  This becomes a normal part of the show for at least several seasons.

Beside having The Skipper and the origin of "Dames like her always have beer around," this was not really a memorable episode.  The riffs was decent, but the host segments were weak.  An average episode for season one.

Favorite Riffs:  "Hey, Joel, did they do these titles on a typewriter?  No, that's the Helvetica Constellation we're looking at here.", "Sure wish I had that amount of command of my arms." (poor Servo).  "Oh, and I suppose next you'll tell me there's rings around Uranus.", "Look, it's Ed Begley Sr.", "Did he just offer his hand in marriage?", "I don't think it's freezer wrap, I think it's a hand bag.", "I recognize him, he used to be with Def Leppard.", "Hey, wait a minute!  Stop, or I'll say 'Hey!' again.", "If he sings Maria right now, I'm going to lose it, you guys", "You will believe a hand can crawl.", "Cats can't resist the cosmic treat.  They're eating right out of his hand.", "This was no boating accident."

This episode can be bought on DVD from Rhino, and is also available on YouTube and the Digital Archive Project.