THE CRAWLING HAND in '60s Horror and Sci-Fi Forum

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THE CRAWLING HAND

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vayapues	THE CRAWLING HAND	Lead	[-]
Oct 23 07 5:22 PM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	OK, just because I am bringing this up doesn't mean I approve of it. I'm......ambivalent. What else is new? A prolific, veteran TV writer/actor, William Idelson, is intriguingly credited as the partial author of this film, & when I emailed him about it (he had a link, which I can't find now, to his own site about teaching television writing), he didn't answer. I guess I wasn't that surprised: CH is positioned at more or less the beginning of his writing career, although he is also credited with the wonderful Twilight Zone episode "Long Distance Call" two years previous, as well as, oddly enough, The Flintstones. Now that's a writer honing his chops. Anyone know about Mr Idelson's involvement in this project? It struck me, & I asked him, about the fact that the film sported two pre-release titles that evidence a good writer's sensibility at work (Don't Cry Wolf, a reference to the Rod Lauren character's elusive predicament, & Tomorrow You Die!, a venerable dinking expression that poor soda shop jerk Syd Saylor quotes in the film a little before Lauren throttles him) -- & I wondered how much stuff of quality had been jerked around by Herb Strock &/or Joseph Cranston. Or maybe it was all Idelson's fault from the get-go. Either way, film historians need to know! P.S. Another writer credited on a Flintstones episode web site is none other than Joanna (Plan 9, Brain Eaters) Lee.
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Paul Haight		#1	[-]
Sep 5 10 8:48 PM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	“Montese Crandall is an unknown writer living in the Arizona desert in the year 2025...Crandall takes a job writing the novelization of the remake of the B-movie The Crawling Hand, called The Four Fingers of Death...” http://www.observer.com/2010/culture/rick-moody-strikes-back
vayapues		#2	[-]
Sep 6 10 8:55 PM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	Thx Paul, on 2 distinct counts: one, for having found this wistful little crawling hand of a post that I shot into space almost 3 centuries ago, &, two, your amazing link -- in which Rick Moody is shown to prove conclusively that (Shatner voiceover) "ART.......imitates art!" Shortly after making that old post I found that William Idelson had recently passed away (not, I trust, as a result of that CRAWLING HAND connection having been excavated). Flashing forward to 2010, I wonder what his & Joe Cranston's heirs will make of Rick Moody's new novel. Will they roll over & go back to sleep? Will they yank Moody off to court for pilfering elements of the original, conveniently overlooking its (probable) public domain status & praying that litigation is a statistically likelier road to riches than playing the lottery? Might we suppose that this is all a plot on the part of Alan Hale Jr's heirs to draw attention away, at last, from the actor's eternal association with Gilligan's Island by paying off Moody to write a hypothetical literary masterpiece that invokes -- however indirectly -- one of Hales' most authoritative pre-Gilligan supporting roles? Or might this novel just be, at least in part, another of those rare attempts to pierce the wall between so-called low and high art, to pass thru the strange doors that half-heard motifs in half-forgotten old movies open onto human experience? Why not, CHFBers? -- gotta be a whole lot cheaper than paying for therapy.

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