Classic Horrors Club

We’ve previously discussed Frankenstein’s Bloody Terror (1968), and you can click here to refresh your memory. However, watching it in 3D on the recent Kino Cult Blu-ray is a new experience and I want to make a few comments about that.

First, I enjoyed it immensely! I sat back in my chair and placed the cardboard glasses over my regular glasses. The 3D effect worked far better than I would have expected. Sure, there’s sometimes a red tint over everything on screen, but that’s appropriate, don’t you think?

There was no moment when the 3D failed. Every scene had something in the foreground. What surprised me most was what was two levels behind. If characters were talking in the “middle,” and another walked up behind them, it appeared that they were entering from yet another “dimension.”

With such consistent display, there was hardly need for trickery such as objects flying off the screen into the air in front of the television. However, two or three times when someone grabbed a rifle and swung it around, it was like it was sticking out of a flat surface.

As for the movie itself, the 3D presentation didn’t make me like it any better or worse. It’s not a bad movie, but there would be so much improvement as Paul Naschy continued to tell and re-tell the story of Waldemar Daninsky and his furry alter ego.

There were a couple of plot points, especially at the beginning, that didn’t align with my notes from the first time I watched it. Overall, they are not significant, although the original version made it clearer to me who the characters, and what their relationships, were.

When I say, “original version,” I’m speaking of La Marca del Hombre Lobo, which was filmed in Hi-Fi Stereo 70 3-D format. Sam Sherman was looking for a second film for a double feature and when he learned this, he invested in converting it to 35mm prints for American release. Unfortunately, for its premiere, inadequate equipment was used for projection, and the failure meant it was subsequently shown in 3-D only in Germany.

Although promised for years, a home video release couldn’t surpass the obstacle of obtaining the rights for the original 70mm negatives in Spain. Then, a complete 35mm “over-and-under” print was discovered in the United States and scanned for the Blu-ray. If all this doesn’t excite you as much as it does me, the disc also contains the regular old 2-D version.