BARON BLOOD
Visually striking hokum, comic book- style. The title and smart ballyhoo ads should lure above-average response from action crowd, kids and monster fans in exploitation and drive-in dualler playoff. Rated PG.
The horror film is the genre most closely allied with comic books, and the films of Italian director Mario Bava, with their garish colors and classic plots, look like vintage American horror comics come to life. BARON BLOOD is a prime example, very like the stuff Bava used to turn out for AIP in the early ’60s—all scary faces, iron maidens, cobwebbed corridors and screaming girls. Plenty of fog, col- ored lights and a stupendously atmospheric Aus- trian castle resplendent in Technicolor blues and reds compensate amply for the usual flat, lifeless dialogue scenes and a deceptively limp opening. The screenplay, credited to Vincent Fotre, is a cheer- fully juvenile affair which merely serves as an ex- cuse for the director to indulge himself in weird pictorial effects—such as the first telephoto shot of Joseph Cotten’s face gliding through a crowd like a wraith; only later do we see he’s in a wheelchair. The evil Baron Otto Von Kleist, mad witch- torturing ancestor of Rex Reed-type hero Antonio
Cantáfora, is resurrected via an incantation thoughtfully left by one of his victims. The Baron resents plans to turn his beloved castle into a modern hotel, and soon thereafter its refurbisher is found hanging in a stairwell. Fritz, the cackling caretaker who delights in scaring heroine Elke Sommer out of her wits, gets stuffed into an iron maiden. Miss Sommer finds herself pursued through multi-colored mists by a loping, caped monster just like Vincent Price in HOUSE OF WAX. It comes as no surprise that Cotten, the castle’s new owner, is the monster Baron, and he speed- ily straps Miss Sommer and friends into his dun- geon torture racks. Luckily, Miss Sommer’s magic amulet falls onto Fritz’ punctured corpse, which rises along with other victims to polish off the Baron in the nick of time, as it were. The cast is generally dreadful (Cotten performs as if still in
shock from his last assignment, LADY FRANKENSTEIN), but the visuals are terrific. Despite the advertised warnings disclaiming responsibility for “apoplectic strokes, cerebral hemorrhages, car- diac seizures or fainting spells during the shock- ingly gruesome scenes in this film,” the gore is held to the usual PG level.
1972. American International (Leone International- Cinevision Films). Technicolor. 90 minutes. Joseph Cotten, Elke Sommer, Massimo Girotti, Rada Rassimov. Produced by Alfredo Leone. Directed by Mario Bava.
Available on VHS and DVD from Image Entertainment.
A magic amulet raises “Alan Collins” aka Luciano Pigozzi from the dead, a little the worse for wear, in Mario Bava’s BARON BLOOD.
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