The Clutching Hand: Who Is the Clutching Hand? (1936)
1936 · Short film · 30 min
- Mystery
- Crime
- Action
Synopsis
A scientist discovers a formula for making synthetic gold, but before he can reveal the secret to his colleagues at the International Research Foundation, both he and the book in which he has written the formula disappear. Super-detective Craig Kennedy and his partner are called in to find both the scientists and the formula.
Synopsis, reviewed
Details
- Running time
- 30 minutes
Reviews on the Internet Archive
★★★★ · Craig Kennedy Rules! · Shadows_Girl · 2011-02-22
Based on Arthur B. Reeves' series of stories about the character 82 of which appeared in Cosmopolitan Magazine and others in such publications as Detective Story Magazine, Dime Detective, Popular Detective, and so on. It was "The Age of the Pulps" which meant affordable escapist fare for all. He also appeared in 26 novels. He was a "scientific detective" who worked out of Columbia University. ************************************************ Now, having said all that, we must remember that THIS is a "serial". It is intended for an audience that is between 8 and 15 years of age (as all serials…
★★★ · Hey Moe! Why, you knucklehead! · billbarstad · 2009-08-17
This is easily the most nonsensical, poorly made serial I've watched here at IA. I tried to follow the story for the first three chapters, and my mind was reeling. I decided to sit back and enjoyed it just for laughs. Some scenes are like a Three Stooges routine played straight. I'll watch it again sometime soon; I'm sure I missed some of the unintentional humor in the dialog, acting, and action - there's just so much of it. I downloaded the MPEG-4 files. Video and audio are fine.
★★ · Partial sci-fi · polistra · 2011-05-20
Agree with previous comments that it's poor even by serial standards. But it does have some interesting future tech. No attempt was made to look futuristic in general; cars and buildings and clothing are all 1936. In this alternate 1936, for no explained reason, most people communicate by video-phone, and the bad guy tracks a car chase on a video-phone map that looks like a modern GPS setup. TV was a common idea in '36, already in an active experimental stage, but the video-phone and tracking were not common ideas.