I have searched and searched online, and I keep coming back to “The Hand” in 1981, but I know this isn’t the right movie because it’s too late.
When I was growing up, they showed horror movies every Saturday morning. One of the horror movies I saw then still gives me nightmares today, well at least once scene.
It’s a black and white film, and the scene I remember is a dismembered hand crawling on its own. I think there was also a still living dismembered head that would command the hand (I might be combining two movies).
I would’ve been between 4 and 6 I think, and yeah, I know it was a movie and not the Addams Family (or at least I’m pretty sure it was a movie). I’m still Googling too, but I’m not sure what term I can use. I’m not even getting Addams Family hits using dimembered hand crawling on its own.
If it helps to jog your memory, here’s Thing from The Addams Family.
It was always a bit comical (it was a comedy), but I could see thinking the show was scary to a 4 year old, especially looking back on it years later trying to figure out what you were watching. It’s a long shot, I’m just tossing it out there.
Other crawling hand movies I can recall are And Now the Screaming Starts (although this was in color) and Attack of the the Eye Creatures/Invasion of the Saucer Men (one in color, the other in black in white).
Hammer Films Doctor Terror’s House of Horrors included a segment with a disembodied hand in pursuit of Christopher Lee, and Hammer films were always on Saturdays when I was a kid.
Could it be The Hand starring Michael Caine as a cartoonist who loses his hand in a car crash? After the accident, the disembodied hand starts following Caine’s character around.