By TESS HENSEN

"...He sought the ultimate in human agony...with instruments of torture ghastly beyond belief!"

So goes the tagline for one of Mario Bava's more visceral offerings, Baron Blood (a.k.a. Gli Orrori del castello di Norimberga, The Blood Baron, Chamber Of Tortures, The Thirst Of Baron Blood and The Torture Chamber Of Baron Blood).  If you have never believed in such supernatural goings-on like witches' curses and the resurrection of the dead, this film may very well make you change your mind.  So, enter freely with me, and of your own free will, into the madness and pain that is the world of the Blood Baron, Otto von Kleist.

A young ancestor of the bloody baron, Peter Kleist (Antonio Cantafora), is on sabbatical from his studies, and decides to pay a visit to the Austrian countryside where his family lineage has descended, to relax, and more importantly, to investigate the legend of the maligned Baron von Kleist.  Right off the bat, the viewer is thinking to themselves ".why do I get the feeling this is a veeerrry bad idea?"  Because you are absolutely right!  However, we wouldn't have this creepy masterpiece and others like it if there were ever any level-headed characters involved.

Young Peter pays a visit to the Baron's castle, which is being restored and prepared for an auction, where he meets a beautiful antiquities expert named Eva (Elke Sommer).  Eva is the type of girl who knows that men, because of her looks, will react to her one of two ways--either by coming on strong to her, or by not taking her seriously.  She suffers the dismissive attitude of her employer when she expresses concern about a particular part of the castle being changed, she experiences the lame pick-up lines of a co-worker, and she endures a silly prank played on her by the caretaker, Fritz.   She fully expects Peter to flirt with her, and therefore plays very hard to get at first because she wants him to realize that her work is very important to her.

After talking a while to the professor who is in charge of the restoration and Peter's uncle about the changes taking place, and about the legend of the Baron, Peter and Eva are asked back to the uncle's house for dinner.  It is here that we learn about the curse that had been put upon the Baron by a witch whom he had burned at the stake after torturing her. A little bit about the Baron--seems he was a very evil man that delighted in the torture and death of anyone he could lay hands on.  One thing he liked to do was display the corpses of those he had killed, on spikes atop his castle turrets, ala Vlad The Impaler.   Real nice guy, the Baron.  Also seems he crossed paths with a woman by the name of Elizabeth Hawley.  He must have found out that she was a practitioner of magic, and felt threatened by her.  She is the witch that placed a curse upon the Baron, and a nasty one at that.

It is learned over dinner at the uncle's house that Peter is in possession of a particular piece of parchment that contains an incantation that supposedly can revive the bloody Baron.  See, the Baron was also tortured and burned to death, and the witches' curse assures that when he is revived, he will feel the agony of his wounds.  Ouch!    There is also a second part to the incantation that can send him back to the grave.

On a whim, Peter and Eva decide to return to the castle that night, and recite the incantation.  After the words are spoken, a bell chimes twice--two 'o clock in the morning--the hour when the Baron died.  Footsteps are heard, and before the supposed ghost can enter the chamber Eva pleads with Peter to read the incantation that will send him back to his grave, which he does.  All of this is in seemingly good fun, and it is not really taken very seriously.  Fritz is blamed for making the footstep sounds.

The next day while Peter and Eva are exploring the castle, they find a boarded-up chamber, and enter.  They discover that this must have been the room where the Baron was killed.  Peter suggests that they come back that night and read the incantation again, thinking that it had not worked the previous night.  They do, and once more the bells chime twice.  As the footsteps draw nearer, Eva starts to panic and pleads with Peter to undo the incantation.  Too late--the parchment that contains the reversal spell has fallen into the fireplace and is burned to ashes.  Now the bloody Baron has been unleashed, and is free to carry on in his torturous ways.

His first victim is a doctor, who unknowingly helps him by cleaning and bandaging his gruesome facial wounds.  When the doctor insists on calling an ambulance for him, the Baron repays the kindness by stabbing him with a scalpel.  A little later, back at the castle, Eva's employer is killed by the Baron, and when Fritz stumbles in looking for a place to crash and finds the body hanging from a rope, he too is accosted and placed in an Iron Maiden.  Just as he wakes from his unconscious state, the lid is slammed on him, and he dies a hideous death.

The next day, Eva and Peter learn of the deaths, and of the missing Fritz, whose body has not been found.  They are convinced that the Baron has been revived through their incantation and attempt to tell Peter's uncle.  He is more concerned with the auction that is taking place and shrugs it off as coincidence.  At the auction, the castle is bought by a man in a wheelchair named Alfred Becker (Joseph Cotten).  He introduces himself to Peter, Eva and the uncle and it seems he is already aware of the legend of Baron Blood and the witches' curse.  He wants to restore the castle's dungeon, where all of the Baron's instruments of torture still remain, back to the pristine condition of 300 years past.  He invites Eva to stay on in his employ to help with that restoration, which she does.  While she is logging some information about a tapestry she had just purchased for the castle, she hears a sound.  She searches the room with her eyes and finally sees a hideous face peering at her from behind a curtain--it is the Baron!

She flees the castle and Peter pulls up outside and rescues her.  He drops her at her flat in the small town where she thinks she is safe.  She isn't.   The Baron has followed them and is now in her apartment!  She flees again, and he chases her through foggy streets until she finds the house of Peter's uncle and seeks shelter there. Because Alfred Becker seems to know so much about the legend, and because he hints at wanting to actually revive the fears of the surrounding countryside regarding the Baron, it is supposed by Eva and Peter that Mr. Becker is actually the resurrected Baron von Kleist.  The next day they visit the castle where Becker happily points out one of his more gruesome restoration projects - he has taken the bodies of the doctor he killed and Eva's employer, and displayed them on spikes on the castle's turrets.  Of course, he plays it off and tells them they are merely dummies.  Eva and Peter aren't so sure and now they are convinced that Becker surely must be the Baron.

Since the half of the scroll that would send him back to the grave was destroyed in a fire, Peter and Eva must think of another way to destroy the Baron.  Peter's uncle suggests they visit a local medium to see if she will help.  At first she is very cautious, and not wanting to help them because she can sense what will happen to her.  At last, she agrees and she channels the spirit of Elizabeth Hawley, who gives them information, albeit cryptic, regarding how to destroy the Baron.  They have dinner at the uncle's house that night, and try to decipher what the message meant.  The very precocious daughter of Peter's uncle suggests that maybe the power to kill the Baron lies in the amulet of Elizabeth Hawley that Eva has in her possession.

The next night they are invited to the castle by Becker to view the restored dungeon and torture chamber.  It is decided that they will attempt to destroy the Baron that night.  At first it all seems innocent enough, but soon Becker's intentions are revealed as he rises from his wheelchair, and with otherworldly powers, captures Eva and Peter.  In the dungeon he has tied Peter up to a torturer's cross and is readying the pliers and stakes in the fire.

Eva wakes from her unconcious state and struggles to her feet, realizes she still has the amulet and remembers what the witch said while the medium was channeling her--only those whom the Baron has destroyed can destroy him.  Eva sees that she is next to the open Iron Maiden in which Fritz was killed, and which still contains his body, swoons, and drops the amulet on him.  He immediately revives, along with the other poor victims of the Baron, and, while she frees Peter from the cross,  they descend upon the Baron with torturous glee.  Not only has the witches' curse been fulfilled, but the Baron will also be tortured for an eternity!  Peter and Eva flee to the sounds of the Baron's scream, and the chant of Elizabeth Hawley as she begs to be the one to "...cut into his heart!"

If some of the scenes I've described to you in this film sound familiar, it's because they are!  I don't know whether it was Bava's idea, or the writer, Vincent Fotre's, to make this film sort of an homage to the classic chillers, but whomever it was--kudos!  I really loved the reference to some of the old Universal and Hammer "Mummy" films with the parchment that could revive the Baron.  The difference here, though, is that the Baron couldn't really be controlled like the Mummy, but he could be sent back to the grave.

Another classic horror film send-up is character of Fritz, the caretaker.  How many cinematic Fritz's have there been in the creepy classics?  Too many for me to count.  The scene where Peter and Eva resurrected the Baron for the second time and lose the reversal scroll in the fire is borrowed heavily from the 1963 film The Haunting.  As the Baron tries to enter the chamber, the door bows inward, just like in a scene in the aforementioned creeper!

And finally, the scene in which the Baron is chasing Eva through fog-choked streets is almost a direct copy of the scene in House Of Wax (1953), where Vincent Price is chasing Phyllis Kirk.  It almost looks like the same narrow streets, and the Baron's garb looks just like the clothes Price's character was wearing!  It's too much of a coincidence to think that these scenes just happened to be similar--I think they were intended as an homage, and for me, it works.

The direction of Mario Bava on this film is, well, just plain fantastic.  The film was released in 1972, (1973 for the American version), so his visual style is more reminiscent of something like his Bay Of Blood instead of his earlier, more gothic films like Black Sabbath.  A lot of the film was shot outside the castle, so the tones are more natural and not as shadowy as some of his earlier outings.

There are still a couple of scenes that scream "Bava." though--the stalking scenes through the foggy streets is backlit in that eerie blue color that Bava favors so much, and there are a couple of scenes in the castle that utilize the famous red and blue combination that is so prevalent in many of his films.  I also noticed that in this film he liked to shoot the characters from above--over their heads, so to speak.  It gave me more of a claustrophobic feeling, because he also combined these shots with close-ups, usually of faces reacting in terror.  Very effective.

I viddied the Anchor Bay release of this film, which is unrated.  The box says a run time of 90 minutes.  I didn't really pay any attention to the clock, so I don't know if this is correct, but if it is--then this is actually the cut version.  An uncut Italian release runs at 98 minutes and supposedly features more gore scenes.  The gore in the version I watched is minimal, although the Baron's makeup is certainly hideous enough.

I would highly recommend this fun little film to anyone who is a fan of that stylish Italian-style cinema, and to those who are fans of those lurid American creepers from the Fifties and Sixties.  This film is an American Internation (AIP) release, and it fits right in there with the other, sometimes over-the-top AIP releases of the same period.   Check it out!

Thanks, Tess!  Baron Blood is a nice, stylish tip of the director's hat to the classic horror films and is also an highly original work in itself.  Of course, now Bava himself is the classic horror director that others seek to emulate...

Article copyright © Tess Hensen

Return To Archives Page