Welcome to Monster Monday with Tabonga, here at The Dungeon!.. Tonite's offering is a flick that Eegah!! and I saw together way back when it first came out. We weren't that impressed, by '63 the whole monster parade we were used to was starting to change, for the worse.
Joseph F. Robertson produced this and two other of our very favorite bad movies, THE SLIME PEOPLE and AGENT FOR H.A.R.M. THE CRAWLING HAND had a budget of $100,000! It was directed by Herbert L. Strock, who had already worked on THE MAGNETIC MONSTER, RIDERS TO THE STARS, GOG, I WAS A TEENAGE FRANKENSTEIN, BLOOD OF DRACULA, HOW TO MAKE A MONSTER and THE DEVIL'S MESSENGER!
The excellent theme music is by the great Mr. Marlin Skiles, Marlin had 151 composing credits and 258 music department credits, and, worked on these films... COWBOY SERENADE, SLEEPY LAGOON, THE LADY AND THE MONSTER, FLIGHT TO MARS, THE MAZE, THE BOWERY BOYS MEET THE MONSTERS, THE DISEMBODIED, QUEEN OF OUTER SPACE, THE HYPNOTIC EYE, SPACE PROBE TAURUS, DR. TERROR'S GALLERY OF HORROR and JOURNEY TO THE CENTER OF TIME!
It's tyme, so, lettuce bring in our fuzzy little Dungeon helper and button pusher, what else, Ralphie The Tarantula! In case you just flew in from Mars, he's here to start our soundclip! Push the big red 'GO' button, located right there next to the big red Destruct button,
now, Ralphie! Here's...
THE CRAWLING HAND!
Here's Peter (SHOCK CORRIDOR) Breck and Dungeon Goddess, Allison (THE UNDEAD) Hayes, they play Steve and Donna. They're working on a government space project and something has gone terribly awry with their astronaut in space.
Steve's with his partner, Dr. Weitzberg, played by Kent (PHANTOM FROM 10,000 LEAGUES/THE DAY MARS INVADED EARTH) Taylor. They're finally back in communication with the astronaut.
But, something out there has taken over his mind and body! To assure that the contamination doesn't get back to Earth, they have to press the destruct button... located next to the 'GO' button.
Syd Saylor plays the crusty old malt shop owner. He gets to deliver the memorable line... 'Eat, drink and be merry!' (for tomorrow, we die!)
Rod Lauren is beach bum, Paul Lawrence. Rod was born in Fresno, California in 1940, and, first appeared as a performer/singer on the BOB HOPE, DICK CLARK and ED SULLIVAN shows! He was also in the films TERRIFIED, BLACK ZOO and THE YOUNG SWINGERS.
Sirry Steffen plays Paul's girlfriend, Marta. Sirry was in 3 episodes of
The Beverly Hillbillies. She asks Paul... What does it mean when someone says... 'You're stacked?'
Paul's fun is interrupted by the astronaut's severed arm that has landed on the beach!
Pretty cool pictures for a newspaper, the one shows a man working on the Moon!
Later that evening, Paul goes back to the beach and picks up the creepy arm, then, stores it in the pantry at the old house where he rents a room from his landlady, Mrs. Hotchkiss.
Mrs. Hotchkiss becomes it's first victim, and, she probably diserved the title... Now, maybe,
she'll shut the Hell up! 
Paul finds his dead landlady and calls Sheriff Towsend, played by the Skipper himself! Paul gets to be his little buddy in this picture...
After the Sheriff leaves, Paul is attacked by the crawling hand, which has a weird effect on him!..
Here's Dungeon great, Tristram Coffin, as Security Chief Meidel. Of course, Tristram was KING OF THE ROCKET MEN and had 243 acting credits! The rocket behind him is a piggy bank!
Paul is so dilerious from lack of sleep, he goes back to the malt shop to settle the score with the crotchity old owner, and, punches him out with 'Surfin' Bird' playin' on the jukebox in the background!!
Paul barely makes it to the beach with the infernal hand, it even attacked him while he was driving there. Then, what does he do?!.. Right,
he let's it get away!!
This is actually funny, the hand trips Paul as he's looking for it!
We can all thank our little feline friends, who end up saving the day! They attack the damn thing as it's trying to scamper away in the dark!
Here are American and Mexican lobby cards... That American card has got to be one of the worst pieces of crap,
ever!
What with Halloween just around the corner, I need to get some of these spy and thriller flicks out of my hair, so I can concentrate strictly on the scary, and tonight's flick is no exception! Sometimes it gets kinda lonely down here in The Dungeon, so when we get bored, we play a little game called Twofers, where we take two random things and put them together, and make one, like a Randy Savage head on the neck of a plastic lion doll, it's funny how it works, or maybe you just had to be there, but I can't help thinking that's the basic concept behind tonight's film, "Le Samouraï"! 
It's a French film about a modern samurai warrior, i.e. a hitman, or two things that don't make sense when combined, but then again, they do, kinda like me and Tabonga! "Le Samouraï" is the love child of boy genius director Jean-Pierre Melville, whose studio burned to the ground during the same time period that this film was made!
A modern day samurai warrior has to have all the right tools to get the job done right!! Stealing a car when you've got every key combination in the world is a piece of cake!
The average rainfall in Paris, France is 607 - 641 millimeters, or 24 to 25 inches a year!
"Le Samouraï" is stark, it's tough, gritty, and it's very cool! 
All the angles are covered when the warrior is working! After stealing the car, he heads on over to the chop shop to have the license plates changed!
The samurai is always aware of of his surroundings and exactly what time it is if he is going to have the perfect alibi!
Great name for a band, "Hotel Sandwichs"
A Hitman with a code of honor, pretty cool dichotomy!
Alain Delon is Jef Costello!! A man on a mission! This is an awesome role for Alain, cold and calculating! Alain's private life is flled with stories, musically, one of the best is that he fathered a child, Christian Aaron Boulogne, with The Velvet Underground's blond chanteuse Nico! What a pair! Alain is still working at least as of last year! 
This is Cathy Rosier as la pianiste Valérie! Cathy supposedly released an LP in the early 70's called "Cathy Banana!" I'd ask her about it, but unfortunately she passed away in 2004. No credits for the bass player and drummer, they might have been members of her actual performing trio! Any other music you hear was composed by François de Roubaix, an amazing performer who managed to compose for 86 titles before passing away at 36!
All the pieces are in place, now it's time for "Le Samourai" to go to work!
There is only one problem, Jef Costello has been witnessed leaving the scene! 
Serious, but dryly comedic, the very efficient French police don't screw around, and round up 100's of potential suspects in a couple of hours. It definitely works to Jef's favor that his choice of dress is quite common in France at the time!!!
Even though Jef has excuses and witnesses to explain his whereabouts before, after, and during the time of the murder, he is still under a lot of suspicion!! First he was at a poker game, then he was at his girlfriends pad, so what are the cops supposed to do??
The frustration level of the authorities is mounting quickly! While almost virtually unknown in America, François Périer as The Superintendant was very well known to French moviegoers, having worked with all the greats! 
Wow, here's the new candidate for the coolest phone ever!! Ce que le F!?
There's only one way to get out of this mess, and that's for the samurai to dive in head first, the only way he knows how!
Jef Costello's girlfriend was played by his real wife and the Mother of his son, Anthony Delon, Nathalie Delon! Nathalie was also co-writer of the English lyrics for a song used in four movies, "I've Seen That Face Before(Libertango)"!
Now the samurai has the guys who hired him, and the police looking for him! The stupid guy with the gun is just about to get his ass kicked!!
In layman terms "A transmitter using a gallium arsenide FET in a power amplifier and having a biassing circuit for generating a gate biassing voltage for the FET, a first power supply for supplying a first power to the biassing circuit and a second power supply for supplying a second power to the power amplifier, the second power being higher in voltage than the first power and being produced at a time delay from production of the first power at a start condition of the transmitter, wherein the first power is supplied to the biassing circuit through a first diode with a voltage drop to thereby reduce the gate biassing voltage below a normal one so that an undesired signal is suppressed at the power amplifier!!!" Translation: Get that bastard!!
So there you go, the tale of The French Samuari, I hope you dug it as much as I did, which would be a lot, or "un grand nombre!" Le Samouraï" is available from those krazy folks over at Netflix! Do yourself a favor!!
