CREATURE WITH THE BLUE HAND
Color, 1967, 74 mins. 18 secs. / 87 mins. 18 secs.
Directed by Alfred Vohrer
Starring Klaus Kinski, Ilse Steppat,
Harald Leipnitz, Carl Lange, Hermann Lenschau,
Diana Körner, Gudrun Genest, Albert Bessler, Siegfried Schürenberg, Ilse Pagé, Thomas Danneberg, Peter Parten
Film Masters (Blu-ray & DVD) (US RA/R1 HD/NTSC), Leonine (Blu-ray) (Germany RB HD), Tobis (DVD) (Germany R2 PAL) / WS (1.66:1) (16:9), Image Entertainment (DVD) (US R1 NTSC)
WEB OF THE SPIDER
Color, 1971, 93 mins. 15 secs. / 110 mins. 45 secs. / 113 mins. 39 secs.
Directed by Antonio Margheriti
Starring Anthony Franciosa, Michelle Mercier, Peter Carsten, Silvano Tranquilli, Karin Field, Irina Maleeva
Film Masters (Blu-ray & DVD) (US RA/R1 HD/NTSC), Garagehouse Pictures (Blu-ray) (US R0 HD), DigiDreams (Blu-ray) (Germany R0 HD) / WS (2.35:1) (16:9)
By the time the 1960s was 
drawing to a close, onetime character actor Klaus Kinski had progressed to something 
closing in on international stardom. Though he hadn't yet broken through in his watershed Werner Herzog films, his indelible appearances were enough to make even a small role in something like Grand Slam, The Million Eyes of Sumuru, or his Jess Franco/Harry Allan Towers films (Count Dracula, Marquis De Sade's Justine, Venus in Furs) worthy of promoting. In West Germany, Kinski was already a familiar face thanks to his scene-stealing antics in a slew of Edgar Wallace adaptations from Rialto Film (such as Dead Eyes of London, The Strange Countess, The Inn on the River, The Squeaker, and many others), not to mention Wallace knock-off films like The Avenger and The Black Cobra. After exiting the series in 1965, he decided to come back two years later for his first starring role for them (and his first in color): Die blaue Hand, which was dubbed into English and trimmed down for U.S. release as Creature with the Blue Hand. This was Rialto's third Wallace film in color overall and finally found them coming to grips with the stylish possibilities of the format, and the outrageous subject matter made it a fine return to form as well. The U.S. advertising did its best to sell this Krimi (German crime film) as a 
full-on horror shocker, and distributor Sam Sherman decided to fulfill that promise in 
1987 when he got together a few actors in New Jersey to shoot some gory new footage to splice in. The result, The Bloody Dead, is a major exercise in cinematic whiplash, and both versions were eventually compiled on DVD in the U.S. in 2003 from Image Entertainment from dull-looking full frame masters. In 2024, Film Masters reunited the U.S. theatrical cut and that home video curiosity together again on Blu-ray as part of a two-disc Klaus Kinski double feature along with Web of the Spider, itself making its third(!) Blu-ray appearance. So how do both films stack up here? Read on and find out.
Creature with the Blue Hand begins the only way it possibly can: with Kinski losing his mind and screaming at the camera when a judge declares him guilty of murder but so insane he has to be committed to an asylum. Under the care of the extremely sinister Dr. Mangrove (Lange), Dave Emerson (Kinski) is freed soon after his arrival by an unknown benefactor who slips him a key. Dave manages to outwit security and guard dogs to make his way back home where his twin brother Richard (Kinski as well) lives with their mother, Lady Emerson (On Her Majesty's Secret Service's Steppat), and siblings Myrna (Red Sun's Körner), Charles (Danneberg), 
and Robert (Parten). When Richard slips away for reasons unknown, Dave takes his place and only gives his identity away by accident to the family butler, 
Anthony (Bessler). Meanwhile Scotland Yard, represented as usual by the goofy Sir John (Schürenberg) and his bubbly secretary Mabel (Pagé), sends in Inspector Craig (The Sinister Monk's Leipnitz) to investigate -- especially since dead bodies are starting to pile up. The killer seems to be a cloaked figure wielding a medieval weapon from the Emerson estate, a metallic spiked blue hand, with Myrna and her brothers as the primary targets. All of it seems to trace back to Dr. Mangrove and his insidious activities behind closed doors at his asylum, but as usual there's more going on than meets the eye.
Fast-paced and very colorful, this is another clever thriller from one of the best Krimi directors around, Alfred Vohrer, complete with a bouncy organ-heavy score by Martin Böttcher. As usual it's crammed with absurd pulp elements around every corner including multiple assaults involving snakes, a stripper asylum inmate who performs her routine endlessly all day, a heckling parrot, and of course the titular weapon that feels very inspired by Blood and Black Lace. None of it has a lick to do with the Edgar Wallace novel of the same name, and good luck trying to figure out how the final twist at the end works at all with everything you've seen before it. Logic doesn't matter though as long as you want a fun, spooky ride with a cast loaded with familiar genre faces and nutty plot twists. If you're in this for Kinski, you get more than your money's worth as he gets to say lines like "I am Dave" and has lots of screen time. This would be his last entirely German Rialto film, followed later by Rialto's Edgar Wallace Italian co-production, Double Face.
The original West German version of the film clocked in at 86 minutes and has never been released that way in any other country. German label Tobis issued it on DVD as part of its multiple Wallace sets, followed by a Blu-ray release from the label that it morphed into, Leonine. The transfer on the latter is gorgeous and correctly framed, featuring DTS-HD MA German mono audio with optional German subtitles. Neither release is English-friendly, but there are ways around that if you're reasonably tech savvy and have a player that cooperates. The Film Masters release is touted as a 4K scan 
from archival 35mm elements; whatever that means, it's a lot better than the ancient master used for the U.S. DVD but has a much cooler, teal-hued look for much of the running time. It features the DTS-HD MA mono English sub (with a Dolby Digital option tossed in as 
usual) with English SDH subtitles. Unlike many giallo classics, Krimis really lose a lot in their English-language versions since the voice talent (usually in Canada) wasn't up to the same standard and the films themselves were very rarely shot in English in the first place. As for what's missing form the U.S. cut, it amounts to a fair amount of plot exposition with Sir John and, most significantly, the entire backstory for Lady Emerson and her questionable marriage to her wealthy embezzler husband who may or may not have fled overseas. Stephen Jones and Kim Newman contribute a new commentary here that functions as a companion of sorts to their Wallace-themed one earlier for The Secret of the Red Orchid, along with lots of info about the cast (evidently they're not big Venom fans!) and insights into the impact Wallace had on British crime fiction and the West German moviegoing world.
Also included here in its full frame entirety is The Bloody Dead (80m13s), featuring the extra gore scenes in much better quality than before. The extra scenes can also be played in a separate 9m21s raw footage reel, completely opened up in a scan with the optical sound visible as well. In "A Man of Mystery: Inside the World of Edgar Wallace" (13m34s), writer Pete Atkins covers Wallace's literary rise to stardom and his pop culture impact around the early 20th century as well as his influence on cinematic and literary thrillers that lingered for decades. In "Kinski Krimis" (17m42s), C. Courtney Joyner covers the actor's evolution in the Krimi cycle from supporting roles as twitchy thugs to a more prominent presence in films like the non-Rialto Circus of Fear (a.k.a. Psycho-Circus) and Five Golden Dragons. The crazy U.S. trailer (which "introduces" the "exciting new horror star, Klaus Kinsky") is also included. As usual, all the bonus features and the commentary are English-subtitled as well, an always welcome touch.
A 
mere seven 
years after helming his Barbara Steele-starring horror gem Castle of Blood, director Antonio Margheriti remade that black-and-white Gothic tale (falsely advertised as an Edgar Allan Poe adaptation) as a scope film in color with a bigger budget and a flashier cast. The result, Web of the Spider (or Nella stretta morsa del ragno, "In the Grip of the Spider"), has been regarded as an inferior retread for years, not helped by the fact that it was often stuck with shoddy, terribly cropped, and usually unauthorized home video releases for decades. Fully restored to its original, very widescreen luster, it's easier to appreciate as a moody, sometimes sumptuous little mood piece that would be Margheriti's penultimate excursion into Gothic horror, followed by Seven Deaths in the Cat's Eye. Margheriti himself regarded the film as a mistake (especially shooting it in color), but if you take this on its own terms, there's plenty of atmospheric amusement to be had.
After a delirious experience in the crypt of the foreboding and supposedly haunted Blackwood Castle, writer Edgar Allan Poe (Kinski) finds his tales of real-life supernatural occurrences falling on disbelieving ears at a tavern where he crosses paths with reporter Alan Foster (Tenebrae's Franciosa). One thing leads to another and Alan
ends up accepting a dare to spend a night at the castle, with a cash reward waiting if he makes it out with his life and sanity intact at dawn. Over the course of the chilling 
evening, Alan makes his way from the graveyard outside into the house where he encounters an uncanny cast of characters including the mysterious and alluring Elizabeth (Black Sabbath's Mercier, most famous for her Angelique series of films), whose past is directly tied to the string of horrific occurrences in the castle's history.
The horror genre had undergone some seismic changes by the time this film came out, most notably with Night of the Living Dead and Rosemary's Baby upending American horror and The Bird with the Crystal Plumage pulling Italian horror into the '70s. As a result, this film felt very out of step when it opened, keeping that dusty, cobwebbed '60s horror aesthetic with only a slight increase in the level of eroticism and essentially no boost in violence at all (apart from the tiny bit of bloodshed now being in bright red color). The actors are all perfectly well cast with Franciosa making a good impression as the lead, though Mercier can't help but suffer compared to Steele with her blonde hairdo in particular doing her no favors. Also returning from the 
prior film is composer Riz Ortolani, who gives the film its most modern twist with a wild score highlighted by some anachronistic but fun fuzz guitar touches. All told it's a perfectly 
spooky and enjoyable chunk of Italian horror geared to fill out horror double and triple bills, best enjoyed divorced from its predecessor in your mind if at all possible and a stylish coda of sorts to a period in filmmaking already on the verge of extinction.
As mentioned above, video versions of this have generally been truly shabby and complicated by the fact that the film was prepared in several different versions with a wide variety of running times. The Garagehouse Blu-ray from 2017 features the longest English-language cut of the film, clocking in at 93 minutes and presented here in a fine presentation from the negative with a nice emphasis on red and gold throughout. Anyone who wrote this one off on the basis of old video versions will be startled to see how much more enjoyable it is here, with the spacious compositions no longer confined here to actors' eyeballs and noses. The DTS-HD MA English track also sounds robust without the distortion and hiss you may be used to hearing with this film. Two new audio commentaries are included, the first with DVD Drive-In's George Reis and The Bloody Ape's Keith Crocker; the latter admits to not being much of a fan of the film, but they do point out the merits of the production and spin off a lot of trivia about Margheriti's career (including a tangent about his controversial directing credit in Italy for Flesh for Frankenstein) and noting the attributes of the actors, including Franciosa's notorious temper. The second track by Stephen Romano (who also designed the striking new cover art) is much lighter and 
more freewheeling as he chats very quickly and enthusiastically about how to approach Italian films within this budget range made during the time period, with some particularly giddy (and hilariously profane) comments about Kinski peppered in as well. Next up in standard def is the much longer Italian cut of the film (which was never prepared in English apparently), 
with optional English subtitles. It looks watchable enough and is also presented letterboxed, albeit without as much info on the sides; this won't be the go-to versions for most viewers as the extra wandering around and chit chat just makes the film feel a lot longer, but it's a great viewing option to have and should satisfy the curiosity of those wondering about the much-discussed extended cut. A "deleted scene" (4m2s) from the German release is basically an alternate, sexier version of the barnyard passage from the film mainly notable for some extra nudity and an attempted sexual assault not in any English version; it's presented here letterboxed as well with optional English subtitles. An art gallery features a host of international posters and lobby cards, followed by a two-part B&W German Super 8 condensed version (16m49s and 16m33s). On the trailer side you get the German trailer, an Antonio Margheriti trailer reel (two versions of Castle of Blood, Lightning Bolt, The Wild Wild Planet, The Stranger and the Gunfighter, The Squeeze, Killer Fish, Yor - the Hunter from the Future, and Code Name: Wild Geese), and bonus Garagehouse trailers 
for The Intruder, The Dismembered, The Satanist, Trailer Trauma, Trailer Trauma 2, and Ninja Busters.
A year later, German studio DigiDreams issued its own Blu-ray edition as part of its "Platinum Cult Edition" line featuring the 93-minute cut from the exact same master (with German and English audio) as well as an interesting wrinkle, the longest possible version of the film (113 mins.) adding back the longer German barnyard scene and dropping in English-language footage as much as possible with subtitles filling in the rest of the gaps. This version also sports the German credit sequence as Dracula im Schloß des Schreckens, which obviously promises something the film doesn't deliver! Extras include a 
German trailer, six galleries, an option to play the LP version of the soundtrack, and the film's German Super 8 version in two parts (15m44s and 16m1s).
The Film Masters presentation on the second disc is advertised as a new 4K scan, and the difference is dramatic here with a major improvement in color timing and detail. It's much richer here and really lovely to behold, with the film itself identical in terms of running time. One oddity here is that the main titles have been digitally recreated including a correction of the spelling of Kinski's name (which was "Kinsky" on the U.S. prints). As usual, the DTS-HD MA English mono track sounds fine with the usual Dolby Digital track and subtitles. Jones and Newman appear for another commentary here, and it's a very strong one as they dive into Italian Gothic, comparisons to the previous version, the trend of working Poe into films all over the place for a decade to that point, and lots more. Also included is a newly created theatrical trailer, while the package comes with an insert booklet featuring an essay by Nick Clark about the evolution of the Krimi starting in 1959 and an essay by Christopher Stewardson about Margheriti's dual takes on the same material.
CREATURE WITH THE BLUE HAND (Film Masters Blu-ray)
CREATURE WITH THE BLUE HAND (Leonine Blu-ray)
WEB OF THE SPIDER (Film Masters Blu-ray)
WEB OF THE SPIDER (Garagehouse Blu-ray)
Reviewed on September 25, 2024
