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Released by: Film Masters
Released on: October 22nd, 2024.
Director: Alfred Vohrer, Samuel M. Sherman/Antonio Margheriti
Cast: Harald Leipnitz, Klaus Kinski, Carl Lange, Anthony Franciosa, Michele Mercier
Year: 1967/1971
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Creature With The Blue Hand / Web Of The Spider – Movie Review:
Film offers up another double-feature release of vintage horror films starring the late, great Klaus Kinski with their latest double feature.
Creature With The Blue Hand:
Directed by Alfred Vohrer and based on a story from Edgar Wallace, 1967’s Creature With The Blue Hand stars Kinski as David Emerson, a man locked away in an insane asylum after he’s accused of killing his family’s gardener. He isn’t locked away for long, however, and soon enough he’s made his escape from the asylum, with some help from a mysterious stranger, and is hiding out at the massive old family castle owned by his identical twin brother, Richard (Kinski again), who, strangely enough, has disappeared.
While David, who takes up Richard’s identity, tries to prove his innocence and keep the inspectors at Scotland Yard and that pesky Inspector Craig (Harald Leipnitz) at bay, someone is skulking about the estate in a black robe and hood with a massive, metal glove – complete with razor sharp finger tips - killing off pretty much anyone who gets in his way.
Decent in its pacing and beautifully shot, Creature With The Blue Hand, which doesn’t actually feature any creatures, isn’t an unsung classic but it’s a really good looking film with a lot of fantastic atmosphere that really helps to make the movie a solid watch. The score, from Martin Böttcher, helps here as well, even if it is a bit over the top in some spots. Vohrer keeps things moving nicely, however, throwing in a few fun plot twists along the way and getting some pretty solid performances out of his cast (though the English dubbing on this version is, shall we say, a little hokey).
Still, hokey dubbing or not, Kinski does a great job in his dual role. He’s got some obvious enthusiasm here and stops just short of chewing the scenery. The cinematography from Ernst W. Kalinke does a great job of framing him just right, using some stark lighting to accentuate his unique facial features in some genuinely striking moments.
There are moments where some of the comic relief that’s inserted into the movie, mostly involving a goofy butler and some very ineffectual police inspectors, doesn’t quite suit the tone of the rest of the movie but overall, Creature With The Blue Hand proves to be a pretty entertaining thriller with some solid suspense and a really good turn from Kinski in the lead.
Web Of The Spider:
Antonio Margheriti's Web Of The Spider revolves around a man named Alan Foster (Anthony Franciosa), a not so famous journalist who, after meeting up with a drunken Edgar Allan Poe (Klaus Kinski), makes a wager with his friend, Lord Thomas Blackwood (Enrico Osterman), that he cannot spend one night in his family's haunted castle on All Souls Eve.
Foster, no coward, accepts the wager. Soon enough, it's off to Castle Blackwood for him, where over the course of the night he encounters the ghostly inhabitants of the old building. One of these inhabitants in particular makes quite an impression on him and eventually falls head over heels in love with Elisabeth (Michele Mercier), the lovely and unfortunately, dead sister of Thomas. In fact, he even has a carnal encounter with the foxy ghost! Soon enough, Foster learns that the spirits haunting the castle seem to be reliving what happened to them just before they died - and not only that, they require human blood to survive!
Essentially a color remake of Margheriti's own Castle Of Blood, Web Of The Spider isn't as good as the original version but it's still worth seeing for anyone with an interesting in classic Italian gothic horror. Featuring a solid score from Riz Ortolani and some impressive cinematography, the film is a good-looking effort. Having said that, the picture loses something in color. While the sets and locations used for the production all work, the shadowy atmospherics of the black and white original are lost and that is to the detriment of the storytelling. We do, however, get a bit of nudity in this version and that counts for something.
Performances are decent. While no one here makes an impression quite as strong as Barbara Steele did in Castle Of Blood, Kinski is pretty great as Poe. How much of his performance was scripted compared to how much he might have improvised is probably questionable, but Kinski being Kinski throws himself into the role, ranting and raving in the opening scene where Poe is trying to prove the presence of the ghost. His wide eyed, manic acting style isn't subtle, but it is fun to watch. Enrico Osterman is fine in his supporting role and Michele Mercier quite fetching as the undead love interest in the film (she bears a slight resemblance to the aforementioned Ms. Steele). Karin Field as Julia, the mansion's other female inhabitant, is also quite good. Unfortunately, Anthony Franciosa, the film's lead, is the picture's weak link. He doesn't quite look the part and his acting is a bit wooden at times. He lacks charisma and just isn't that interesting to watch.
The movie is interesting, however, and not just because it's a late period gothic horror. Again, the visuals are impressive, all the more so in this presentation which restores the proper widescreen aspect ratio allowing us to better take in the compositions and production values.
Creature With The Blue Hand / Web Of The Spider – Blu-ray Review:
Film Masters bring these two films to Blu-ray for the first time with the AVC encoded 1080p transfers on two separate discs, with both movies presented in AVC encoded 1080p high definition. Picture quality is similar for both movies in this set. Colors are a bit faded and picture quality is a little soft but there’s a reasonable amount of detail in most scenes. Minor print damage – small white specks and the like – show up from time to time but there isn’t anything that most viewers should find too upsetting here. Blacks can sometimes look more like a dark grey and some minor noise reduction looks to have been applied here, smoothing things over a little bit and eliminating some, though not all , of the grain that you’d expect to see some film print sourced transfers.
Both films get English language 24-bit DTS-HD 2.0 Mono mixes with optional English subtitles. Audio quality is a little flat but for a pair of older low-budget B-movies, they sound fine. Expect a bit of sibilance here and there, but the scores generally sound pretty strong and the dialogue is always easy to understand and follow. Alternate Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono tracks are also provided.
Creature With The Blue Hand gets a full length commentary track with Stephen Jones and Kim Newman that offers up a lot of biographical information on writer Edgar Wallace's life and times and the significance of his work and the many film adaptations that were made from them, the use of color in this particular entry, details on the cast and crew that worked on the film, influences that worked their way into the film, thoughts on the performances and direction in the picture, the film's release history, how the movie is "full of Germans pretending to be Brits," similarities to The Avenger (the British TV series with Steed and Peel, not the Marvel movies), the influence of old dark horse stories and some of the James Bond stories, how Wallace's work compares to that of Agatha Christie, some of the murder scenes in the film and the plot twists evident in the film's finale.
A Man Of Mystery: Inside The World Of Edgar Wallace is a fourteen minute piece with author/screenwriter Pete Atkins that goes over the writer's background, his insane popularity in the early twenties, the countless adaptations that have been made of his work in various media formats over the years, the traits inherent in his work, how he began his writing career in South Africa despite being born in England, his early work as a journalist, his move into writing novels, the explosion in popularity of his mystery and 'krimi' films and writers that have been influenced by him over the years, including Thomas Harris.
Kinski Krimis: Inside The Rialto Film Adaptations is an eighteen minute piece with C. Courtney Joyner that goes over Klaus Kinski's work in various ‘krimi’ films during the heyday of the Rialto Films Edgar Wallace adaptations. It covers how Rialo wound up with the Wallace library, the different roles that Kinski played in these films, how successful many of these films were in Europe, Kinski's increasing popularity during this period, thoughts on the effectiveness of some of these pictures, popular films that Kinski was making during this period outside of the Wallace pictures and some of the films that these movies have influenced since being made.
Film Masters have also included, in its entirety, The Bloody Dead. This is basically the same movie albeit with some addition blood and carnage added to the proceedings by Sherman and company, most noticeably in the opening segment where some gore is cleaned up at an insane asylum and some added bits with a nurse and some cannibal inmates, which definitely up the horror and exploitation factor when compared to the original version. This version runs 1:20:13 (versus the original version at 1:14:18) and is presented in high definition with optional English subtitles.
On top of that, we also get an archival commentary for The Bloody Dead courtesy of Sam Sherman. He talks about adding reshoots to Creature With The Blue Hand, the film's German origins, Edgar Wallace's source material, where new material was added to the movie and why it was added, when the material was shot, casting the additional scenes, releasing the film with this added material to the home video market, his partnership with Al Adamson, cashing in on different exploitation trends, rebuilding some of the sets from the original movie by using frame blowups and more. This track runs for forty-six minutes.
There's also a selection of raw footage and behind the scenes footage from the reshoots for The Bloody Dead version of the movie. There's nine minutes of material here and it’s interesting to see it on its own, outside of the context of the feature material.
Finishing up the extra on the first disc are an original 1967 trailer and a recreated trailer for Creature With The Blue Hand.
Extras for Web Of The Spider start off with a full length commentary track, once again, with a commentary track from Jones and Newman. This discussion covers Klaus Kinski's presence in the movie as well as thoughts on his character and the "meta" aspects of this, the quality of the visuals, Riz Orotlani's score, cast and crew details, where Kinski's career was at during this period and his tendency to appear in Italian films, whether or not this is a vampire or ghost movie, some of the film's more questionable wardrobe choices, Margheriti's directing style, the possible influence of Hammer Films on the picture, thoughts on some of the stand out sequences in the movie, how the era in which the movie was made influenced it and lots more.
Finishing up the extras on the second disc is a re-imagined trailer for Web of the Spider using restored elements and a Castle Of Blood trailer original English language trailer.
Included inside the keepcase is a full color insert booklet containing an essay by Christopher Stewardson and Nick Clark titled ‘Creature With The Blue Hand And Germany’s Undersung Branch Of Genre Cinema’ and a second essay titled ‘Cobwebs And Castles: Comparing Antonio Margheriti’s Castle Of Blood And Web Of The Spider’ by Christopher Stewardson, both of which are informative and worth reading.
Creature With The Blue Hand / Web Of The Spider - The Final Word:
Film Masters’ double feature Blu-ray release of Creature With The Blue Hand / Web Of The Spider offers up two Kinski-starring Euro-cult items in decent presentations and with a nice selection of extra features. Fans of krimi pictures, Italian gothics or just Kinski himself should find much to appreciate here.
