A Criatura da Mão Azul

Creature with the Blue Hand AKA: The Bloody Dead is a fun, breezy film. It's short and sweet and gets right down to business. If you've seen any of Vohrer's other films, you'll find that this is basically his greatest hits album. Creepy mansion with secret passages? Check. Creepy asylum run by a powerful, corrupt man? Check. Creepy truck driven by villain in creepy fog at night? Check. Creepy visually impaired character? Check. And the list goes on. It's fun and doesn't take itself seriously. I liked the soundtrack too!

On the other hand, it felt a bit too formulaic. Some of the scenes were so contrived as to be almost like a parody.

The DVD I watched had both the Bloody Dead and the original Creature with the Blue Hand versions on it; I watched the latter. Presumably the latter isn't exactly the original since it has English language titles and dialogue. Additionally, during the opening credits there are twelve gunshots and twelve bloody stains that appear on the screen. In The Video Watchdog Book, it's mentioned that krimis begin with that and the letters E D G A R W A L L A C E appearing out of the blood. However, those letters don't emerge on the version on the DVD, though they're clearly arranged that way.

Dave (Kinski) is committed after being found criminally insane for the murder of the family gardener. He later escapes, and people are murdered by a figure dressed in black wielding an iron blue glove with retractable knives. His twin brother, two other brothers, mother and sister are all concerned about his escape. The police investigate. Lots of secret passages and a sinister doctor is in charge of the asylum.

Enjoyable, but the ending seemed sort of contrived. Still, I'd like to see more krimis and even read some Edgar Wallace.

One of his betters though it still don't beat Schizoid or Venom. You get 2 Kinski's for the price of one. The classic one bad brother and one good. Kinski in an asylum? Perfect for the schizophrenic nymphomaniac actor. He's always a favorite goon to watch.

Good acting and an exciting story with a good tempo. However, it shows the cliché, scary mental sanctuary.

(Blood splattered everywhere in the first scene, mopped up by the janitors?) Kinski escapes from an asylum and hides out at his family's nearby estate, and assumes the identity of his twin brother, just as a series of murders begin, committed by a man in a black cloak with an iron glove and razor fingers.

How is that, for contrived and convoluted? And quick: this was filmed in February and March 1967, and released already in West Germany in April 1967!

Almost the entire film is bound to the family estate, a setting which allows for plenty of surreal images and vivid colours and soft photography and cracks of lightning in the night, and a few well done stalking scenes, but also limits the film, and makes it feel like a photographed stage-play. A slow moving and somewhat dull stage-play, with an abrupt and dodgy ending.