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S E A R C H    D V D B e a v e r

(aka "Die blaue Hand" or "Creature with the Blue Hand" or "The Bloody Dead" or "The Blue Hand")

 


(aka "Nella stretta morsa del ragno" or "Web of the Spider" or "In the Grip of the Spider")

 

Creature With The Blue Hand aka The Bloody Dead (1967) + Web Of The Spider (1971) [2 X Blu-ray]

 

For those craving a taste of "Euro-Kinski," two of Klaus Kinski's European features are now available in one creepy package. Presented for the first time in Blu-ray, Creature with the Blue Hand (1967) is a mystery-thriller about a series of grisly murders. It's one of several German films based on the novels of Edgar Wallace, many adaptations of which starred Kinski. This time he plays an escaped mental patient who might be the killer.

Meanwhile, Web of the Spider (1971) is a classic haunted house tale from Italian maestro, Antonio Margheriti, with Kinski as none other than Edgar Allan Poe! It's a diabolical double dose from one of cinema's most controversial and unique figures!

***

Scotland Yard is after a homicidal maniac called The Blue Hand, which is what he uses to kill his victims...

 

In Web of the Spider, Alan Foster, a professional American journalist, travels to London to meet with Edgar Allen Poe for an interview. While in London, Alan soon finds himself in the company of Lord Blackwood, and Alan accepts a bet to spend a night in his castle...

Excerpt from B+N located HERE

Posters

Creature With the Blue Hand

Web of the Spider

Theatrical Release: April 28th, 1967 - August 26th, 1971

Reviews                                    More Reviews                              DVD Reviews

 

Review: Film Masters - Region 'A' - Blu-ray

Box Cover

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Bonus Captures:

Distribution Film Masters - Region 'A' - Blu-ray
Runtime Creature With The Blue Hand: 1:14:18.454
The Bloody Dead: 1:20:13.517
Web Of The Spider: 1:33:15.840        
Video

1.66:1 1080P Dual-layered Blu-ray

Disc Size: 347,842,442,644 bytes

Creature With The Blue Hand: 21,769,586,688 bytes

The Bloody Dead: 20,472,588,288 bytes

Video Bitrate: 34.98 / 31.98 Mbps

Codec: MPEG-4 AVC Video

Web Of The Spider:

2.35:1 1080P Dual-layered Blu-ray

Disc Size: 28,590,539,107 bytes

Feature: 27,292,655,616 bytes

Video Bitrate: 34.97 Mbps

Codec: MPEG-4 AVC Video

NOTE: The Vertical axis represents the bits transferred per second. The Horizontal is the time in minutes.

Bitrate Creature With the Blue Hand Blu-ray:

Bitrate The Bloody Dead Blu-ray:

Bitrate Web of the Spider Blu-ray:

Audio

Creature With the Blue Hand:

DTS-HD Master Audio English 1565 kbps 2.0 / 48 kHz / 1565 kbps / 24-bit (DTS Core: 2.0 / 48 kHz / 1509 kbps / 24-bit)
Dolby Digital Audio English 192 kbps 2.0 / 48 kHz / 192 kbps / DN -27dB
Commentary:

Dolby Digital Audio English 192 kbps 2.0 / 48 kHz / 192 kbps / DN -27dB

The Bloody Dead:

Dolby Digital Audio English 192 kbps 2.0 / 48 kHz / 192 kbps / DN -27dB
Commentary:

Dolby Digital Audio English 192 kbps 2.0 / 48 kHz / 192 kbps / DN -27dB

Web of the Spider

DTS-HD Master Audio English 1563 kbps 2.0 / 48 kHz / 1563 kbps / 24-bit (DTS Core: 2.0 / 48 kHz / 1509 kbps / 24-bit)
Commentary:
Dolby Digital Audio English 192 kbps 2.0 / 48 kHz / 192 kbps / DN -27dB

Subtitles English (SDH), None (and optional English subtitles for all three commentaries - see samples below)
Features Release Information:
Studio:
Film Masters

 

Edition Details:

• Creature with the Blue Hand full length commentary track by Kim Newman and Stephen Jones
• A Man of Mystery: Inside the World of Edgar Wallace featurette (13:34)
• Kinski Krimis: Inside the Rialto Film Adaptations featurette (17:42)
• Original 1967 trailer for Creature with the Blue Hand (1:49)
• Re-created trailer for Creature with the Blue Hand (1:48)
• The Bloody Dead bonus film (1:20:13)
• The Bloody Dead with Archival Commentary featuring Sam Sherman

The Bloody Dead raw footage & behind-the-scenes (9:21)

 

• Commentary by Kim Newman and Stephen Jones on Web of the Spider
• Reimagined trailer for Web of the Spider using restored elements (1:56)
• Castle of Blood Trailer (1:42)

Booklet


Blu-ray Release Date: October 22nd, 2024

Standard  Blu-ray Case

Chapters 9 / 9 / 9

 

 

Comments:

NOTE: The below Blu-ray captures were taken directly from the Blu-ray disc.

ADDITION: Film Masters Blu-ray (October 2024): Film Masters have transferred Alfred Vohrer's Creature With The Blue Hand, Samuel M. Sherman's The Bloody Dead version plus Antonio Margheriti's Web Of The Spider to 2 dual-layered Blu-rays. The 1080P image quality of all three films have inconsistencies and Creature With The Blue Hand can look quite soft for about the first 5-10-minutes and have a green/blue leaning throughout. The Bloody Dead looks about the same and Web Of The Spider may be the best of the three, although most of the image doesn't carry significant depth, have shifting contrast and smack of a video-ish appearance. They can be soft but are watchable with reasonable colors and sporadic detail in close-ups. Imperfect but certainly passable.

NOTE: We have added 110 more large resolution Blu-ray captures (in lossless PNG format) for DVDBeaver Patrons HERE

On their Blu-ray, Film Masters use a DTS-HD Master dual-mono track (24-bit) in English language DUBs. The Bloody Dead has lossy Dolby. Creature With The Blue Hand has aggressive moments that come through via screams and the score by Martin Böttcher (The Treasure of Silver Lake), sounding ominous and creepy in the lossless transfer. The DUB'ing is both transparent and fairly weak. In Web of the Spider, most of the tension comes from the memorable score by mondo, giallo, horror, and 'pasta' film composer Riz Ortolani (Castle of Blood, How To Kill a Judge, Lightning Bolt, Killer Crocodile, The Pyjama Girl Case, The Valachi Papers, Seven Deaths in the Cat's Eyes, The McKenzie Break, Day of Anger, Il Sorpasso, Woman Times Seven, Cannibal Holocaust, The Voyeur, Mondo Cane) and it adds some Gothic horror atmosphere - an important part of the viewing experience. Film Masters offer optional English (SDH) subtitles on the features (for all three commentaries, as well) on their Region 'A' Blu-rays.

The Film Masters Blu-ray offers commentaries by the pairing of Kim Newman (author of Classic Monsters Unleashed) and writer/editor Stephen Jones (author of The Art Of Horror Movies: An Illustrated History) for Creature With The Blue Hand and Web of the Spider. They discuss Edgar Wallace and the German "Krimi" films, what has been cut (mostly comedy and some snippets of gore) from the German version, the entire series (comparing it to the Hammer franchise) and how they were rehashing plots and themes, The Dark Eyes of London (a "Krimi" of which they have also done a commentary on Network's Blu-ray) and they tell us to go to the Edgar Wallace pub if visiting London, England. Plus plenty on Antonio Margheriti's Web Of The Spider  including the cast; Anthony Franciosa, Michèle Mercier, Klaus Kinski, Peter Carsten etc. They are full of information and enthusiasm. It's always great stuff by the pair. The Bloody Dead has an achival commentary featuring Sam Sherman who re-shot this version and he shares plenty of details that they used to make it more bloody and gory - shot in East Orange, New Jersey in 1987. He tells the story of how and why. A Man of Mystery: Inside the World of Edgar Wallace is a 1/4 hour featurette directed by Daniel Griffith, discussing the career of the man who wrote King Kong, with screenwriter/film historian C. Courtney Joyner (The Savage B's: A Tribute to B-Horror) and Pete Atkins. Kinski Krimis: Inside the Rialto Film Adaptations is an 18-minute featurette with Joyner discussing the many Krimi series films with Klaus Kinski. Kinski's roles spanned multiple genres, languages, and nationalities, including Spaghetti Westerns, horror films, war films, dramas, and Edgar Wallace Krimi films. His life was complicated by a history of mental illness. There are an original 1967 trailer for Creature with the Blue Hand and a re-created trailer for the film plus ten minutes of The Bloody Dead raw footage & behind-the-scenes roll. The package has a 24-page booklet with essays by Nick Clark (Germany's Undersung Branch of Genre Cinema) and Christopher Stewardson comparing Antonio Margheriti's Castle of Blood to Web Of The Spider.  

Alfred Vohrer's Creature with the Blue Hand was based on the 1925 novel The Blue Hand by Edgar Wallace. Gregory reviewed Edgar Wallace Mysteries Volumes 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 and 7. The Bloody Dead was Samuel M. Sherman's 1987 re-edited version with new gore inserts. They are housed on the first Blu-ray. Klaus Kinski plays twins Dave and Richard Emerson in both and also portrays Edgar Allan Poe (who partially narrates) in Antonio Margheriti's Web of the Spider (a color remake of Margheriti's 1964 film Castle of Blood) that is on the second Blu-ray of the Film Masters package. Creature with the Blue Hand has a police investigation of an asylum-escaping insane criminal (murdering the family gardener,) mystery-shrouded twin brothers and retractable knives via a heavy iron blue glove. It's doesn't carry much of the Krimi (German crime thrillers - many had a major influence on the Giallo) charm for me. If ghosts of the murdered inhabitants in a haunted mansion in Margheriti's (Battle of the Worlds, Seven Deaths in a Cat's Eye, Lightning Bolt, Cannibal Apocalypse) Web of the Spider, isn't enough for Web of the Spider - they reveal themselves to vampires with supernatural powers, requiring blood to maintain existence. Quite cool. The Film Masters package brings these curious Euro-culty horrors (the other connection is Klaus Kinski) to Blu-ray with great extras from the appreciated commentaries to the featurettes to the booklet essays. Genre fans should strongly consider.

Gary Tooze

 


Menus / Extras

 

Web of the Spider


CLICK EACH BLU-RAY CAPTURE TO SEE ALL IMAGES IN FULL 1920X1080 RESOLUTION

 

Creature With the Blue Hand

 

 

Commentary Subtitle Sample

 

 


 

 


 

 


 

 


 

 


 

 


 

 


Web of the Spider
 

 

Commentary Subtitle Sample

 

 


 

 


 

 


 

 


 

  


 

More full resolution (1920 X 1080) Blu-ray Captures for DVDBeaver Patreon Supporters HERE

 

Creature With the Blue Hand

 

Web of the Spider

 

 
Box Cover

CLICK to order from:

  

Bonus Captures:

Distribution Film Masters - Region 'A' - Blu-ray


 


 

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