Cheap Terror Creatures from the Grave (DVD) (Barbara Steele) Price

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Customer Reviews of Terror Creatures from the Grave

Oh, The Terror! The Terror!
A lawyer (Walter Brandi) receives a letter from a strange client named Jeronimus Hauff, who wants a will drawn up. Upon his arrival at the dark castle of Jeronimus (complete with a glass case full of mummified hands), the lawyer finds out that Hauff's been dead for a year! It seems that Mr. Hauff was dedicated to the supernatural, especially raising the dead. His castle was once a hospital where plague victims stayed and died. It is of course, cursed. You see, five men (along with Mrs. Hauff) circulated a petition to have Hauff run out of town, so Jeronimus gathered them together and threatened to expose the bad things he knew about each of them. One of the five killed Hauff to the collective glee of the others. Jeronimus cursed them all with his dying breath. One year later, the five men are turning up dead, covered in icky sores. One of them commits suicide by impaling himself on a sword. The lawyer falls in love with Jeronimus' beautiful daughter and must figure out how they can stay alive. There are some interesting sequences in between stretches of dullness. Barbara Steele plays Jeronimus' cheating wife. Her huge eyes are definitely a high point. There's a nice bathtub scene with, alas, too many bubbles. Her Morticia-esque looks and perma-frown are perfect for the gloomy happenings. I just wish it had been more frightening! I mean, a glass case full of mummified hands comes to life, only to wiggle around a little bit? Not even one nice strangulation scene?? Sheesh...

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Wretchedly Poor DVD Transfer
This Alpha Video DVD release of an impressively moody and generally underrated Italian horror yarn is a wretched, unwatchable mess. The image is blurred and smeary, and appears to have been taken from a murky fourth-generation bootleg videotape transfer. The horribly garbled sound renders nearly all of the dialogue unintelligible, and absolutely ruins Aldo Piga's score. This is one of the absolute worst legitimate DVD releases I've ever seen, easily on par with Madacy's hideous TRACK OF THE VAMPIRE/NIGHTMARE CASTLE combo. Barbara Steele and Euro-Horror fans are strongly advised to steer clear of this one, despite the tantalizingly cheap list price.

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Great Movie, presentation could be better
The Movie:

This is quite a little, silly, gothic zombie movie with all the right ingredients to keep you hooked. Beautiful Barbara Steele in a bath tub, severed, crawling hands, zomies, murders, guts and beautiful landscape photography.

Set in 1913, a laywer recieves a letter to come to a lonely castle to record the will of a dying man. Arriving there he finds out that this guy is already dead and only his beautiful widow and daughter (from the first marriage) are living there. As this movie actually is a murder mystery and a zombie flick thrown together, the plot twists and turns to keep both lines going. In the end, the movie therefore becomes quite mixed-up. Pretty gory for its time (and even now), this is for mature audiences.

The DVD: The movie was shot in b/w, with the american export version having 82 minutes (this is the one on the DVD, although the cover sais something about 61 min running time ...). The italian version is longer on plot-explaining scenes but misses nearly all the gruesome stuff included here. It looks like the video source was a pretty good vhs tape, so this is not as bad as some Alpha-DVDs, but not something you could watch on anything bigger than 51". Switching the TV to b/w with high contrast and black values, it becomes watchable. Extras, you can't expect for that price, but a nice little trailer is also on the disc.

Verdict: Good value for money. The movie is 4 stars, the transfer 2 (I've seen worse, but not many).