THE CREATURE WITH THE BLUE HAND (1967) + WEB OF THE SPIDER (1971) (Film Masters Blu-ray Review)

THE CREATURE WITH THE BLUE HAND (1967) + WEB OF THE SPIDER (1971) 

Just in time for Halloween cult cinema archivist Film Masters unleash a Klaus Kinski euro-cult double-feature of a German "Krimi" genre mash-up and a Gothic chiller, both  scanned in 4K from original U.S. 35mm archival elements, on a 2-disc Blu-ray release loaded with tasty extras!

THE CREATURE WITH THE BLUE HAND (1967)

Label: Film Masters 

Region Code: A

Rating: Unrated 

Duration: 74 Minutes 18 Seconds 

Audio: English DTS-HD MA or Dolby Digital 2.0 Dual-Mono with Optional English Subtitles 

Video: 1080p HD Widescreen (1:66:1)

Director: Alfred Vohrer

Cast: Klaus Kinski,  Harald Leipnitz, Carl Lange

The Creature with the Blue Hand (1967) aka Die Blaue Hand, was releases in the U.S. by Roger Corman’s New World Pictures and released in the U.S. in 1967, and it was later recut with six-minutes the alternate footage and re-titled The Bloody Dead for release in 1987. The film was produced by Rialto Film, who produced many "Krimi" films based on the novels of Edgar Wallace, this story based on the novel The Blue Hand, and directed by Alfred Vohrer (The Dead Eyes of London). At the start of the film David Emerson (Klaus Kinski, Aguirre, The Wrath of God) is sentenced to the sanitarium  run by Dr. Mangrove (Carl Lange, The Torture Chamber of Dr. Sadism) for the crime of murdering the family gardener Appleton (Richard Haller). He insists that he is innocent, but the evidence is seemingly stacked against him. Regardless, it doesn't seem he spends much time at the asylum, a mysterious figure slips him the key to his cell door and he escapes, returning to the family home, where oddly his twin brother Richard has gone missing, allowing him to pose as his brother to avoid detection, while he attempts to prove his innocence. At the house we have his mother  Lady Emerson (Ilse Steppat, Death in the Red Jaguar), cousins Robert (Peter Parten), Charles (prolific voice-dubber Thomas Danneberg) and Myrna (Diana Körner, Red Sun), and Inspectors Craig (Harald Leipnitz, Marquis de Sade's Justine) and  Sir John (Siegfried Schürenberg, The Devil Came from Akasava), however his identity is quickly exposed by the butler (Albert Bessler, The Thousand Eyes of Dr. Mabuse) who notices a difference in how the brothers take their tea, but when a cloaked figure with a menacing metal gauntlet with knife-claws while he is in the presence of  a witness, proving he is not the current killer running around, so there's a new mystery afoot.. 

This German crime whodunit has plenty of gothic elements and plot twists galore, the mixing of mystery, crime and horror comes together not always easily, but quite entertaining. There's even some humor, the discovery of a corpse hidden in a suit of armor and a needling parrot brought to mind Scooby-Doo. Kinski is terrific in the dual-role. The story is pretty wild, and how it all pans out is a total head-spinner, it's overly convoluted by plenty interesting just the same, and that blade-fingered gauntlet is truly a nasty piece of work, which brought to mind the gialloi like Blood and Black Lace and Death Walks at Midnight. 

WEB OF THE SPIDER (1971) 

Label: Film Masters 

Region Code: A

Rating: Unrated 

Duration: 93 Minutes 15 Seconds 

Audio: English DTS-HD MA or Dolby Digital 2.0 Dual-Mono with Optional English Subtitles 

Video: 1080p HD Widescreen (2.35:1)

Director: Antonio Margheriti

Cast: Klaus Kinski, Anthony Franciosa, Enrico Osterman, Michèle Mercier, Karin Field, Silvano Tranquilli,, Peter Carsten

Web of the Spider (1971) is a color remake of Antonio Margheriti (Battle of the Worlds) gothic black and white chiller Castle of Blood (1964) which was also directed by Margheriti. It's not quite a shot-for-shot remake, but it's pretty much beat-for-beat. In it a cynical American writer Alan Foster (Anthony Franciosa, Tenebre) is visiting London when he has a chance encounter with none other than Edgar Allen Poe, played by a wild-eyed Klaus Kinski (Jack The Ripper) who is having drinks with his friend Lord Blackwood (Enrico Osterman, The Church) at a tavern, telling a frightful tale, which in this version we actually see as a story within a story. There he accepts a wager from Poe to spend the evening in Blackwood's abandoned and supposedly haunted mansion until sunrise, and is warned he will bare witness to those who have died violently at the mansion reliving their deaths. Being a skeptic he does not believe in the supernatural and arrives in the creaky old dark house full of bravado, but throughout the night his skepticism is put to the test, as he sees haunting sights he cannot explain. He meets Blackwood's gorgeous sister Elizabeth (Michèle Mercier, Black Sabbath), and he falls under her thrall, falling nearly instantaneously in love with her, making love to her, but it's a doomed love with tragic consequences, after she reveals to him that she is a ghost! 

Other inhabitants of the house include Julia (Karin Field, The Demons), Elisabeth's roguish lover William (Silvano Tranquilli, Castle of Blood); and her husband Dr. Carmus (Peter Carsten, Dark of the Sun). Throughout the night Foster witness's the ghosts reliving the murders that have trapped them on the grounds for all eternity unaware that they need his blood to keep on keeping on. 

I absolutely loved Castle of Blood, and I liked this color remake well enough, it still has the ghostly inhabitants reliving their violent deaths, there's some bloodsucking, a creepy painting, and a wonderfully spooky old castle dripping with cobwebs, it looks good, not unlike a Hammer film of this era, but somehow the color of it all spas it of it's eeriness, the cobwebbed corridors, creaky doors and fog-shrouded cemetery are not as effective as the stark black and white, plus it's over lit, eliminating the mystery of the shadows. It's also missing the original films real secret ingredient, the haunting beauty of Barbra Steele herself, her presence is sorely missed. Sure, we get Michèle Mercier who is lovely by any standard, but she is no Barbara Steele. The color doesn't really improve anything other than to modernize it a bit, now the blood is red, but it's superficial. Speaking of which, lead Anthony Franciosa feels like he's in a completely different movie, his character and his wardrobe look and sound too modern for this period Gothic, taking me right out of the film severely times with his mannerism and stagey acting, which didn't do it any favors. Also not helping, the odd fuzz-guitar accented score by Riz Ortolani (Day of Anger) who scored the superior original film with a superior score, what we get here is not awful but it's too modern sounding. 

If I was not such a fan of the original film I would probably like this more than I do, and I do like it, it's just a pale (though in color) remake of a better film that largely lacks the atmosphere and eeriness that made the former such a Gothic masterpiece, though we do get some nudity, so there's that. Still Web of the Spider (1971) is a solid Gothic tale, a spooky tale well worth enjoying this Halloween season, it's just no Castle of Blood, but so few films even come close to that high standard, even this color remake by the same director. 

Audio/Video: Both films arrives on Blu-ray from Film Detective in 1080p HD widescreen, The Creature with the Blue hand in 1.66:1 and Web of the Spider in 2.35:1 widescreen. Both films are scanned in 4K from original U.S. 35mm archival elements, looking to my eyes like film prints that have been restored. Colors are pleasing, there's a bit of softness to it at times but generally colors are well-saturated and look solid. Grain is nicely exposed, though there are time that look like they applied some filtering to it, but textures and detail are still solid, it has not been scrubbed to death by any means. Black levels are also solid, grain is more evident in the darker scenes, and it gets a bit milky looking for sections of Creature with the Blue Hand, but overall, I thought both flicks looked quite good in HD, about what I would expect from print sourced transfers. 

Audio on both come by way of English DTS-HD MA 2.0 or Dolby Digital 2.0 dual-mono with optional English subtitles. The tracks sounds about what I'd expect from low-budget flick from the late '60s early '70s, range is limited, the sound stage is thin, the dubbed dialogue can be boxy, but it's clean and dialogue is never a chore to discern, though there are some minor distortions here and there, but nothing awful. 

This 2-disc release is well stocked with bonus content as well, we get Audio Commentaries on both films from authors and film historians Stephen Jones and Kim Newman. We also get two new Ballyhoo Motion Pictures produced featurettes, the 14-min A Man Of Mystery: Inside the World of Edgar Wallace with Author/Screenwriter Peter Atkins, and the 18-min Inside the Rialto Film Adaptations with C. Courtney Joyner, that shine a spotlight on Edgar Wallace who it seems is woefully under-known these days considering how prolific he was in his era, and on Rialto Films and their deep pool of "Krimi" films which were largely based on the works  of Wallace having licensed his entire catalog early on. 

That's not all, we get a bonus film, that being the Alternate Version of Creature with the Blue Hand re-titled The Bloody Dead that was prepared for home video in 1987 that runs 80-min and change, with six-minute of new gory footage added to it. We get it in HD with Dolby Digital audio and subtitles, which is super-cool. We also get an Archival Audio Commentary by producer Samuel M. Sherman for The Bloody Dead!

We also get 9-min of The Bloody Dead Raw Footage & Behind-the-Scenes, the 2-min Original 35mm 1967 Film Trailer for Creature with the Blue Hand; a 2-min Re-Created Trailer for Creature with the Blue Hand using restored film elements, a 2-min New 2024 Web of the Spider Trailer and the 2-min Original English Castle of Blood Theatrical Trailer. 

The s-disc Blu-ray release arrives in a standard keepcase with a single-sided sleeve of artwork. Inside there's a 24-Page Illustrated Booklet with liner notes by Nick Clark for Creature with the Blue Hans, and liner notes by Christopher Stewardson for Web of the Spider. 

Special Features: 

The Creature with the Blue Hand 

- New 4K transfer of The Bloody Dead, the alternate version of Creature with the Blue Hand (80:13)

- Ballyhoo Motion Pictures produced featurette A Man Of Mystery: Inside the World of Edgar Wallace with Author/Screenwriter Peter Atkins (13:34)

- Ballyhoo Motion Pictures produced featurette Kinski Krimes: Inside the Rialto Film Adaptations with C. Courtney Joyner (17:42)

- Audio Commentary by authors and film historians Stephen Jones and Kim Newman for Creature With the Blue Hand

- Archival Audio Commentary by Samuel M. Sherman for The Bloody Dead

- The Bloody Dead Raw Footage & Behind-the-Scenes (9:21) 

- Original 35mm 1967 Film Trailer for  Creature with the Blue Hand (1:49)

- Re-Created Trailer for Creature with the Blue Hand using restored film elements (1:48) 

Web of the Spider 

- Audio Commentary by authors and film historians Stephen Jones and Kim Newman for Web of the Spider

- New 2024 Web of the Spider Trailer (1:56)

- Original English Castle of Blood Theatrical Trailer (1:42)

- Illustrated Booklet with liner notes by Nick Clark for Creature with the Blue Hans, and liner notes by Christopher Stewardson for Web of the Spider