The Catalyst helpers in Handel versions before 0.21 have a problem creating files from within the __DATA__ sections on *nix. This is due to a bug in Catalyst::Helper in addition to the fact that the CPAN dist was made on my machine using XP;causing LF/CRLF issues. 
A fix has been commited to the Catalyst trunk. To make things easier for the common man, I’ve also set the svn:eol-style to LF for all of the Catalyst helpers in the Handel svn repository and uploaded Handel version 0.21 to CPAN. This version contains updated Catalyst helpers with Unix line endings that should work on Catalyst 5.33 and below.
A big thanks to Andy Grundman and Bernard FRIT for the help tracking this problem down.