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

ADDITION: Kino Blu-ray (March 2022): Kino have transferred Robert Siodmak's The Devil Strikes at Night to Blu-ray. It looks very pleasing on a single-layered disc with a supportive bitrate. The 1080P image has no speckles or marks of any kind and only weakness in the stock footage briefly used. It's sharp with excellent contrast, occasional depth and a bit of gloss. Unfortunately, I see no prominent grain and it may reflect of the transfer process and obvious restoration with some less-noticeable digitization. There is an inherent softness and while it doesn't support texture - the tight image is consistent.

NOTE: We have added 66 more large resolution Blu-ray captures (in lossless PNG format) for DVDBeaver Patrons HERE

On their Blu-ray, Kino use a DTS-HD Master dual-mono track (24-bit) in the original German language. The Devil Strikes at Night has only a few aggressive moments and they have modest depth. The score is by Siegfried Franz (William Dieterle's Die Fastnachtsbeichte), building tension and suspense in subtle ways via the lossless transfer. Like the video it is clean and dialogue all audible. Kino offer optional English subtitles on their Region 'A' Blu-ray.

The Kino Blu-ray offers a commentary by film historian Imogen Sara Smith (author of In Lonely Places: Film Noir Beyond the City). She discusses the real-life story that it is based of Bruno Lüdke who was connected to at least 51 murder victims, mainly women, killed in a 15-year period - his potential innocence and possibly coerced confession. He was never given a trial. She shares how The Devil Strikes at Night is ripe for rediscovery and rarely seen. She eloquently makes the case that this is a noir, war film, horror or all. She talks about the return of Siodmak to Germany to make The Devil Strikes at Night and how it was a departure from the director's Hollywood dark-cinema classics - with no classically noir lighting or expressionist effects, how it has 'stripped down realism' and how the first murder is an homage to Weimar era crime or horror films with shadows of the stairway, splinters of light in the darkness etc. She compares it to other films essentially about the battle between truth and lies also showing common soldiers resistance to Nazism, where we were historically when this film was released etc. and the Oberhausen Manifesto - a call to arms to establish a "new German feature film". She describes the careers of some of the performers and a lot on Siodmak. She is always excellent to listen to and this is no exception. The commentary is strongly recommended to Noir fans. There are no trailers nor other extras.

Robert Siodmak's The Devil Strikes at Night is brilliant. A serial murder-drama cum-detective thriller but expressed in a unique and fascinating way. It makes a subtext of indictments to the war, Nazism, good Germans who resisted - all with Noir sensibilities at its core. It evokes Fritz Lang's 'M' and I thoroughly enjoyed my viewing gaining even more from indulging in the valuable Imogen Sara Smith commentary on the Kino Blu-ray. Strongly recommended to Noirists, Siodmak devotees or German cinema fans. This is fabulous.

Gary Tooze