The Legend of Blood Castle

Jorge Grau's "Ceremonia sangrienta" (called "The Legend of Blood Castle" in English) is one of many movies telling the story of sixteenth century Hungarian countess Erzsebet Bathory, who reportedly bathed in the blood of young virgins so as to maintain her youth and beauty. This one has less nudity than I've come to expect in Euro-horror flicks; I think that they wanted to focus on the plot more than anything, and they did a worthwhile job. The nude scenes, so to speak, are the scenes where she lets the blood run all over her body.

The only other Erzsebet Bathory movie that I've seen is "Countess Dracula", which I thought was worth seeing (although it was more of an excuse to show off Ingrid Pitt). This one stars Lucia Bose, Espartaco Santoni and Ewa Aulin. Aulin is best known as the title character in Christian Marquand's 1968 psychedelia-fest "Candy". She starred in a cinematic acid trip and in a movie about a sicko countess. Whoa...

Anyway, worth seeing. You may find it under a different title, as often happens with Euro-horror flicks.

This is a painful, cold, unpleasant but ultimately fascinating entry from the Spanish horror boon that is probably the definitive Elizabeth Bathory treatment, making Hammer's "Countess Dracula" look silly and trite in comparison; that film is a period costume romance compared to BLOOD CASTLE. This is a serious movie that lacks a single light hearted moment, and is a great example of the unbearably suffocating sort of period horror suggested by Michael Reeves' CONQUEROR WORM, which uses the conventions of period horror -- castles, nightgowned beauties, foggy wastes -- to con the viewer into thinking that they are going to get the push-up bras and lesbian nuzzling that these movies usually involve.

What you get is actually anti-erotic, much like Reeves' film, unless the idea of watching people suffer is something that gives you a rise. I like this movies' lack of sensationalism, giving us a straightforward almost scientific explanation for the vampirism in question, and providing a sort of tragic Spanish soap opera element to give us the motivations for the murders. The film is indeed slow, but fans of this kind of stuff will be drinking it in, with Jorge Grau's astute eye for period detail, lighting and atmosphere easily putting this on the same plane with films like "Count Dracula's Great Love", "Count Dracula" and the Rollin efforts as amongst the most distinctive films from the Eurohorror boon. No other movie looks quite like LEGEND OF BLOOD CASTLE (or FEMALE BUTCHER, as it is known in it's uncut form), and few have such an unrelenting, claustrophobic air of dread and sheer decrepidness as LEGEND OF BLOOD CASTLE, which completes the CONQUEROR WORM comparison chart by culminating in a series of Inquisitional torture scenes that far surpass the vampire murders in terms of brutality and horror.

So perhaps that is Grau's ultimate comment: yes, the Bathory legend speaks of just awful, depraved atrocities, but nothing is quite as atrocious & barbaric as Man's own inhumanity to their fellow Man, and especially with the hypocrisy of the Church feeding the fires of hate. HIGHLY recommended, but not for those with short attention spans or the squeamish alike.

And word to the third: The cover shown here is NOT the same movie (that's BLOOD CASTLE, not LEGEND OF BLOOD CASTLE) and beware of a recent North American DVD pressing by a company called MYA: They used a nudity free print with a fullscreen transfer. I've got versions of this film in three languages from twice as many countries: You want the Finnish subtitled English language print called BLOODY CEREMONY. Trust me.

7/10

Jorge Grau's "Blood Ceremony" is probably the best and most faithful adaptation of the story of Elizabeth Barthory, the real life Hungarian countess who bathed in the blood of virgins to keep herself young. (The "Barthory" section in Walerian Borozyx's "Immortal Tales" may be technically better, but Grau is more interested in actually re-telling than the legend here than in seeing how many naked, barely-legal French girls he can squeeze into the frame).

Grau does make some interesting alterations to the legend. The countess is helped by her husband who fakes his own death and pretends to be a vampire to fool the superstitious villagers about the source of the exsanguinations. Barthory (Lucia Bose) is also a surprisingly sympathetic character who is only driven to her crimes by mortal despair and the beguilings of her old crone maid. Grau also doesn't make the same mistake as Hammer's "Countess Dracula" where Ingrid Pitt bathes in virgin blood and is instantly transformed from a withered, old hag into. . . well, Ingrid Pitt. It's left much more ambiguous here whether the treatment actually works--it only seems to transform Bose from an attractive older women to a perhaps slightly younger-looking older woman. This is much more effective and chilling than the Hammer histrionics.

The highlight of any of these films is, of course, when the character actually takes a literal bloodbath. This scene perhaps isn't as "hot" here as Ingrid Pitt's in "Countess Dracula" or Rosalba Neri's in the non-sensical "Devil's Wedding Night", but it's much more effective cinemagraphically following a stream of blood from an unlucky virgin whose throat has just been slit through a drain in the floor to a shower where Bose is waiting naked below.

Besides Bose, the cast also includes Swedish nymphet Ewa Aulin as the gold-digging daughter of the local innkeeper who shares her sexual favors with the count. It's not clear for awhile whether he's going to run off with her or make her another sacrifice to his wife's bloodthirsty vanity. Aulin is a little miscast here and personally I prefer her undubbed (and unclothed), but I guess her natural Swedish accent wouldn't have really worked in Medieval Hungary. The more unknown Spanish actors who play the rest of the villagers are good too. They turn out to be very vindictive and they take a terrible revenge on Barthory at the end (no doubt partially inspired by Edgar Allen Poe's "The Black Cat") that almost makes you feel sorry for her. This is a very good movie and one worthy of a resurrection on DVD.

It's weird that this flick is still unavailable on DVD. Through my years in the genre I was able to get me an English spoken version and full uncut. The parts taken out and now available on this version were taken from a Norwegian VHS copy. It wasn't bloody scenes that were taken out but nudity parts. It really is a masterpiece, there isn't that much blood in it and it isn't scary at all but it is the atmosphere that makes this flick. Some people will be offended by the fact that there is real animal cruelty in it and some child abuse in the form of cutting the child with a piece of glass. It's all about vampirism and the real story of Elisabeth Bathory. All actors are really believable and the editing and lighting for an Italian movie is really nice. The sound of the churchbells all around the movie makes it also a bit frightening. This movie proofs that blood isn't always necessary to make a real good horror movie, try to catch the restored full uncut version at ZDD, a real good shop.

Blood Ceremony is another film based around the Elizabeth Bathory legend. Unfortunately, despite the fact that this legend makes for a great story and is one of the backbones of the horror genre's overall influence, there hasn't really been a good film about it; and Jorge Grau hasn't changed that with this film. I really hoped that this would be good and I wanted to like it as Blood Ceremony has a lot going for it in terms of atmosphere and set design, but the story really isn't strong enough to hold the audience's attention despite the fact that it features vampirism and a countess bathing in blood. As you would expect, the countess discovering that bathing in human blood makes up the backbone of this story, but there's also a vampire theme running throughout. This is brought directly into the story when the countess' husband plays into the villagers' fears of vampires by faking his own death in order to give himself cover to bring young women to wife, so she can preserve her beauty...

The film is directed by Jorge Grau, who is of course most famous for his Video Nasty zombie flick masterpiece 'Let Sleeping Corpses Lie'. The two films have a great atmosphere in common and it's clear that this is important to the director. As you would expect given the plot line, the film features a fair amount of blood, which is good to see. The film's main contender is probably the Ingrid Pitt lead Hammer Horror film 'Countess Dracula', and comparisons are always likely to be made between the two. To be honest, while it was not Hammer's finest hour; I have to say that I preferred Countess Dracula, as it was overall the more interesting of the two films. Lucia Bosé is good in the lead role, though she doesn't really have the screen presence of Ingrid Pitt, which is another reason why I feel the Hammer film is the better of the two. Blood Ceremony is not really a bad film; the atmosphere is great and the film always looks nice; but for my money the plot didn't really work well and I found myself getting bored a couple of times too often. Could have been better!