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.

While by no means a classic, this slow-moving, but atmospheric Spanish/Italian co-production from director Jorge Grau (of LET SLEEPING CORPSES LIE fame) is at least a well-made and mature attempt at gothic horror.

Lucia Bose (very good, considering the uneven English-language dubbing) stars as the legendary "Blood Countess" Erszebet Bathory, who killed "610 Nubile Virgins!" and bathed in their blood to stay eternally young... and to impress handsome nobleman Karl Zimmer (Espartaco Santoni), who seems more interested in bedding the innkeeper's daughter Marina (Ewa Aulin) than anything else. Zimmer eventually helps out the countess by seducing women, slitting their throats and letting the blood leak out through a hole to fill a bathtub downstairs. Of course, the townspeople eventually catch on, and the bad Countess finds herself in a Edgar Allan Poe-ish situation at the conclusion.

I'd be lying if I said the film didn't lose me from time to time (American pre-released cutting may be the culprit), but it is still fairly interesting, has an authentic period setting (good sets, costumes, great-looking castles, lots of fog, etc) and is a bit more restrained (the most graphic gore is a scene when falcons eat another bird, which was probably real and not faked) than I expected. Worth a look, but I would give the Hammer film COUNTESS DRACULA (1970) with Ingrid Pitt the slight upper hand as far as Liz Bathory movies go.

Score: 5 out of 10

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!

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

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.