MonsterHunter

Baron Blood tells the tale of an American guy with 70s wardrobe, hair, and sideburns going to Austria while taking some time off after finally getting his master’s degree. It seems that his ancestors are from there and he wanted to check out some of the family in the old country. He meets up with an uncle, a professor of something, played by Joseph Cotton. Apparently they couldn’t get Vincent Price, so they had to “settle” for Joseph Cotton. Cotton was just some guy who was also in Citizen Kane , The Magnificent Ambersons, and Touch of Evil , among other pictures. Vincent Price starred in The Fly.

So you can imagine the director’s disappointment when they had to go with Cotton. Cotton and the kid, Peter, decide they have a little time to check out the old family castle and see what’s shaking there. When they get there, they run into Elke Sommer who is some type of advisor on the castle’s restoration. Apparently the castle is going to become a creepy version of the Holiday Inn for tourists. Only for tourists, though, because the locals know the history of Baron Blood!

I can hear what you’re saying, “oh brother, another awful Italian movie about a creepy castle, and it aint even directed by awful French director Jean Rollin!” Well, it turns out that this isn’t your standard creepy castle. For one thing, the story is actually pretty straight forward. There’s not a lot of pointless camera shots of the actors seeing themselves or jumbled images of horrific things that make no sense, or completely stupid and out of place scenes like a horny spider attack. Mario has a story to tell and he does a pretty good job of staying on task.

Later, that evening after they check out the castle, Cotton, Peter, and Elke are over at Cotton’s house having dinner. This is the exposition scene where you get to hear all about the “sadistic nobleman” the locals called Baron Blood. It goes like this: Baron Blood liked to torture and kill people in his castle. A witch put a curse on him that he would suffer the fate of those he tortured at their hands. This also applied if he was ever resurrected. Now, I thought it was pretty ingenious of that witch to think of that, because if I cursed someone, I never would have thought to make it binding in perpetuity like that.

So Peter hears this tale and he says, “yeah, Uncle that’s pretty good, but I ah got this parchment here, says I can bring the Baron back if I just say these magic words.” Now, the uncle is no dummy, he’s a college professor you know, so he goes, “do not mess with the occult.” Those are always great words of wisdom in these kinds of movies and those great words of wisdom are always ignored in these kinds of movies.

So the uncle goes up to bed because he’s an old coot who can’t go with the big dogs no more and Peter flashes his sideburns (he calls ‘em Elkegetters) at Elke and says, “hey sweet thing, what say you and I go to the castle at midnight and do some incanting.” She moons back at him, “with those sideburns? Anything you say!” So, quicker than you can say, “Klaatu, Veratu, Necktu” they’re at the castle with the ancient parchment. (You can tell it’s ancient because it’s the color of a tobacco leaf and very creased.)

So Pete does the incantation and they hear spooky noises and think, “whoa, not such a good idea!” They then do the reverse incantation to send the Baron back. Whew! That was a close one! Then they look up at each other and realize they’re only 35 minutes into a 100 minute movie, so she slaps him upside his fool head and says, “you sent him back too early you dope!” So they come back later and do the incantation again, because they want to see exactly what those spooky noises were. This time there’s more spooky noises and blood starts to ooze out the bottom of an old oaken door! Elke spazs and I’m thinking, “hello! His name is Baron Blood !”

They don’t see anything else, so they leave to tell the professor what they have done. Oh yeah, the parchment that tells how to send him back? A mysterious wind blew it into a fireplace and incinerated it. That’s one of those times where you furrow your brow and muse, “that didn’t just happen, did it?” Then you haul ass out of the castle and go back to the States and pretend like your last name isn’t von Kliest!

One of the effective things about this movie was that they didn’t shove the titular monster down your throat every five minutes. You also never got a real good look at him either. This made his appearances all the more exciting (okay, maybe exciting is a stretch, I mean he’s not Bono!) whenever he did appear.

He also had a pretty good gimmick. When he was killed it was by being burned alive so when he came back, his face and hands looked like hot pizza and blood is still oozing everywhere. Watching him scurry about the countryside was cool too because he was wearing a long black overcoat and a wide brimmed black hat. He looked like a pilgrim that came straight out of hell. And to complete his gimmick, he was still completely sadistic!

One of my favorite conventions of the horror movie is the doctor who helps the injured nutjob in the middle of a dark and spooky night. I’ve never quite figured out why, when a creature that scares the bejeezus out of everyone single other character, shows up at the doctor’s house in the middle of the night looking like roadkill, the doctor says, “oh, you poor creature, come in and let’s see if we can’t get you fixed up.” This happens with the Baron. The doctor gets the bleeding to stop, but then in an moment of some irony, the doctor’s bleeding begins.

Showing no signs of being rusty, the Baron then embarks on his master plan of terror and sadism and the first step is to buy back his castle! That’s right! Baron Blood’s castle is on the auction block. I didn’t quite understand that, because I thought the beginning of the movie said it was being turned into a swank hotel.

The Baron taps his secret stash of jewels and the next scene shows a guy named Becker in a wheelchair buying the castle. Didn’t anybody wonder why a guy in a wheelchair would suddenly purchase a 500 year old castle? Didn’t anybody wonder when this guy announced the renovations were complete, that he didn’t build any elevators or ramps? You would’ve thought he would at least put in an elevator to the basement torture chamber.

I won’t give you a blow by blow account of the ending, but you get your medium contacting the dead witch for an alternative way to kill the Baron, you get the big scene where Becker gets out of his wheelchair (it’s a miracle!) and is revealed, you get a few scenes in the torture chamber, and the Baron gets cornholed back to the 1500s where his type belong!

Mario Bava did a good job with the photography on this one. So often, some hack thinks that all you need is a fog machine and a cheesy dungeon set for these efforts. Much of this movie took place during the day under blue skies. Fog was used, but effectively, particularly during a scene where the Baron chases Elke through the streets of town in the middle of the night. Bava used a variety of colored lighting to enhance the scene and give it a nightmarish quality. There was hardly any music in that scene so the only sounds you heard were footsteps and Elke’s heavy breathing. Points are also given because Elke never fell down while being chased. I can’t stand when these bimbos trip and then crawl like one of those freak catfishes that can walk on land.

For the guys out there, Elke goes through several costume changes involving miniskirts and tight sweaters, but I must warn you that she also shows up in a few getups that involved pant suits and headscarves, immediately bringing to mind everyone’s least favorite TV character in history - Rhoda. But even Rhoda couldn’t spoil this one.

The funniest bit was where the Baron is way out of control and they finally figure out how to send him back and Peter says something like, “maybe we shouldn’t send him back without talking to him. We could learn a lot about 16th century history from him.” At that point, the professor and I were thinking that Peter cheated his way to his master’s degree.

© 2008 MonsterHunter