Hot Picks

- Ready for My Close Up 2019

- Talk of the Dead 2016

- Thirst 2023

- 10/31 Part 3 2022

- Bigfoot Unleashed, Part VII 2023

- The Island of Lost Girls 2022

- Everybody Dies by the End 2022

- Little Heroes 2023

- The City of Dunwich 2023

- Static Codes 2023

- Ariel: Back to Buenos Aires 2022

- Lights Over Montgomery County 2023

- Trauma Therapy Psychosis 2023

- Showdown in Yesteryear 2022

- Failure! 2023

- Million to One 2023

- American: An Odyssey to 1947 2022

- Fck'n Nuts 2023

- What I Meant to Say Was... 2020

- The Curse of Willow Song 2020

- Ex Tentorium Lux 2023

- Psychic Vampire 2022

- Ghost 2023

- The House 2023

- That's a Wrap 2023

- Night of the Caregiver 2023

- Girl Gone Bad 2022

- Clean Up Duty 2023

- Megalomaniac 2022

- Live and Die in East LA 2023

- Insidious Inferno 2023

- On the Trail of Bigfoot: Land of the Missing 2023

- #ChadGets-TheAxe 2022

- Subject 2023

- Zombie Rage 2023

- Into the Spotlight 2023

- I Am Rage 2023

- In Its Wake 2023

- The Finale 2023

- H.I.M 2017

- Stronghold 2023

- Ouija Witch 2023

- Reveille 2023

- Window Seat 2023

- After 2023

- Wolfkin 2022

- Trace Part 2 2021

- Summoning the Spirit 2023

- Garthwaite: A Film by Ben Kurns 2023

- Waking Nightmare 2023

- August Underground 2001

- Lumberjack: The Son Says Hello 2023

- The Coffee Table 2022

- Pareidolia 2023

- First Impressions Can Kill 2017

- A Killer Conversation 2014

- Star Crash 1979

- Strangler of the Swamp 1946

The Clutching Hand
The Amazing Exploits of the Clutching Hand

USA 1936
produced by
Louis Weiss for Weiss Productions
directed by Albert Herman
starring Jack Mulhall, Ruth Mix, Marion Shilling, William Farnum, Yakima Canutt, Rex Lease, Reed Howes, Mae Busch, Bryant Washburn, Robert Frazer, Gaston Glass, Mahlon Hamilton, Charles Locher (= Jon Hall), Franklyn Farnum, Knute Erickson, Henry Hall, Snub Pollard, Milburn Morante, William Desmond, Bull Montana
based on a novel by Arthur B. Reeves adaptation by George M. Merrick, Eddie Graneman, screenplay by Leon D'Usseau, Dallas Fitzgerald, electrical effects by Kenneth Strickfaden, music by Lee Zahler

serial
Craig Kennedy

review by
Mike Haberfelner

Quick Links

Abbott & Costello

The Addams Family

Alice in Wonderland

Arsène Lupin

Batman

Bigfoot

Black Emanuelle

Bomba the Jungle Boy

Bowery Boys

Bulldog Drummond

Captain America

Charlie Chan

Cinderella

Deerslayer

Dick Tracy

Dr. Mabuse

Dr. Orloff

Doctor Who

Dracula

Edgar Wallace made in Germany

Elizabeth Bathory

Emmanuelle

Fantomas

Flash Gordon

Frankenstein

Frankie & Annette Beach Party movies

Freddy Krueger

Fu Manchu

Fuzzy

Gamera

Godzilla

Hercules

El Hombre Lobo

Incredible Hulk

Jack the Ripper

James Bond

Jekyll and Hyde

Jerry Cotton

Jungle Jim

Justine

Kekko Kamen

King Kong

Laurel and Hardy

Lemmy Caution

Lobo

Lone Wolf and Cub

Lupin III

Maciste

Marx Brothers

Miss Marple

Mr. Moto

Mister Wong

Mothra

The Munsters

Nick Carter

OSS 117

Phantom of the Opera

Philip Marlowe

Philo Vance

Quatermass

Robin Hood

The Saint

Santa Claus

El Santo

Schoolgirl Report

The Shadow

Sherlock Holmes

Spider-Man

Star Trek

Sukeban Deka

Superman

Tarzan

Three Mesquiteers

Three Musketeers

Three Stooges

Three Supermen

Winnetou

Wizard of Oz

Wolf Man

Wonder Woman

Yojimbo

Zatoichi

Zorro


Via television, professor Gironda (Robert Frazer) announces to the board of the corporation he works for that he has deviced a way to chemically produce gold, & he is prepared to hand the formula over to them. Before that can happen though, the professor is attacked & kidnapped by a person or persons unknown, the formula stolen, & journalist Walter Jameson (Rex Lease), fiancé of the professor's daughter Verna (Marion Shilling), gets beaten up for his attempt to save the professor. Finding himself witless, he calls in master detective Craig Kennedy (Jack Mulhall) for investigations, who soon uncovers that the crime was indeed committed by the Clutching Hand, master criminal & arch enemy of the super sleuth, & whose true identity is of course unknown.

But the Clutching Hand failed to bring the whole formula into his possession, now devicing many a way to get the missing pages as well to lead Kennedy & Jameson off his trail, possibly kill them. He uses radio controlled cars & bombs, has the Gironda-household bugged, abducts Gironda's secretary Sheila (Ruth Mix) to find the formula & & speaks to his henchmen via television (!).

& then there's also ex-con Mitchell (Robert Walker), who has some sinister dealings with Gironda's wife (Mae Busch), & who turns out to be her ex-husband blackmailing her, some con-men who want to steal her jewels & in the end turn out to have nothing to do with the gold formula, a mysterious captain Hansen (Knute Erickson) whose ship is used in many a sinister plot of the Clutching Hand plus everyone on the corporation's director's board & Gironda's attorney, wanting to get their hands on the gold formula.

The Clutching Hand though - is Gironda himself, who never really invented the gold formula in the first place but made up the whole plot to obscure this fact, plus to make an enormous amount of money at the stocks market. In the end though, he dies when gone half crazy & accidently electrocuted in his own lab.

 

Old fashioned (even back then) mystery serial that relies more on its whodunit plot-elements than on action - which is unfortunate since the story is vastly overpopulated, with most of the characters not properly introduced into the story & seemingly just there to act suspicious for a few minutes in order to keep the audience guessing, before disappearing from the story again altogether. When in the end it is revealed who the Clutching Hand really is, you might probably have lost interest - & furthermore, the solution is not all that credible anyways.

The character of Craig Kennedy - the scientific detective -  is largely forgotten nowadays, but in the 1910's, 20's & 30's was a popular pulp character, appearing in his creator Arthur B.Reeves' many novels about him, serials (The Perils of Elaine [1915], The Radio Detective [1926] & this one) as well as feature films (Unmasked [1929], also produced by Louis Weiss, for Artclass).

 

review © by Mike Haberfelner

 

Feeling lucky ?
Want to
search
any of my partnershops yourself
for more, better results ?

The links below
will take you
just there !!!

Find The Clutching Hand
at the amazons ...

USA  amazon.com

Great Britain (a.k.a. the United Kingdom)  amazon.co.uk

Germany (East AND West)  amazon.de

Looking for imports ?
Find The Clutching Hand here ...

Thailand  eThaiCD.com
Your shop for all things Thai

Something naughty ?
(Must be over 18 to go there !)

x-rated  find The Clutching Hand at adultvideouniverse.com


Thanks for watching !!!

 

 

Robots and rats,
demons and potholes,
cuddly toys and
shopping mall Santas,
love and death and everything in between,
Tales to Chill
Your Bones to

is all of that.

 

Tales to Chill
Your Bones to
-
a collection of short stories and mini-plays
ranging from the horrific to the darkly humourous,
from the post-apocalyptic
to the weirdly romantic,
tales that will give you a chill and maybe a chuckle, all thought up by
the twisted mind of
screenwriter and film reviewer
Michael Haberfelner.

 

Tales to Chill
Your Bones to

the new anthology by
Michael Haberfelner

 

Out now from
Amazon!!!

 

 

 

On the same day
a Burglar wants to kill you
and your Ex wants
to make up ...
... and for the life of it,
you can't decide
WHICH IS WORSE!!!

 

A Killer Conversation

produced by and starring
Melanie Denholme
directed by
David V.G. Davies
written by
Michael Haberfelner
starring
Ryan Hunter and
Rudy Barrow

out now on DVD