The Legend of Blood Castle

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.

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 "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.

When a vain countess is accidentally splattered with droplets of her nubile female servant's blood, she notices a more youthful quality to the appearance of her skin where the blood had been...thus begins the horror of THE FEMALE BUTCHER, and it's not just another tawdry, matter-of-course Liz Bathory digest fraught with obligatory lezvamperotica. This is a great looking and attentively directed Gothic mini-classic, purposeful in its treatment of a grim story involving a pontifical, influential madwoman's rabid lust for virgin blood. It's vividly delineated, and acquaints the viewer with stimulating, aptly-played characters. It should also be noted that this expounding of the Bathory legend is purportedly truest to the 'de facto' circumstances.

A subtly composed Euro-chiller, perhaps even a tad overmuch so, but quite jarring, nonetheless...this is high priority viewing for horror fans of every stripe.

7.5/10