Customer Reviews

Baron Blood

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(7)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

The Baron Von Kleist is a vague cousin of Count Dracula, Baron von Frankenstein, Mr. Hyde and this old chap - the Phantom of the Opera-. Yes Sir ! Altogether. It's really a pleasure to find them reunited in BARON BLOOD, directed by Mario Bava in 1972.

The action is set in a castle ( ghosh !) near Vienna, Austria. Nowadays. Elke Sommer - the girl with the mini-skirt - is in love with the american heir of Baron Blood. And, blinded by love and the fog, they set free the bloody Baron and lose the incantation to send him back to hell ( ghosh ! again ).

So the baron, who loves to torture people before killing them, is going to chase the couple but won't bother at all Joseph Cotten, the new owner of the castle.

The copy presented in this DVD presentation is first-class with no white or black spots at all. So you will enjoy the long chase in the fog and the interesting special effects. Of course, you have to be, in the first place, a movie lover who is curious and who won't be afraid of the numerous zooms (forwards and backwards) put in BARON BLOOD, a Mario Bava gimmick by excellence.

A DVD dedicated to the nostalgic ones.

I'm quite new to Mario Bava's films, and thanks to my film historian acquaintance, I have become more well-versed with this director's body of work and have some of his other films at home, for my viewing pleasure. I have to admit that I have watched works of the other Italian horror masters' such as Lucio Fulci and Dario Argento, and found those films to be a bit too much for my tastes, with lots of gore and sexuality, but I've come to really appreciate Bava's earlier movies for their great sense of Gothic atmosphere as well as creepiness, not to mention the attention paid to characterization.

In "Baron Blood", the story begins with a young graduate student, Peter Kleist (Antonio Cantafora) who is visiting his ancestral country, Austria. Peter lives with his uncle and meets an attractive woman, Eva (Elke Sommer) who is helping with the restoration efforts of a castle that used to belong to Peter's ancestor, Baron von Kleist, a 16th century nobleman who was evil incarnate. Peter is obsessed with unearthing the Baron's past, and has brought with him an old scroll which contains an incantation (and counter spell) that will awake the Baron's spirit from its fitful slumber. Peter convinces Eva to go to the Baron's castle and recite the incantation, not realizing that they are about to unleash a malevolent spirit who mercilessly kills the innocent. The rest of the story deals with Peter and Eva's efforts to banish the Baron's spirit to the hell that it came from.

I love Bava's attention to details and atmosphere, something I highly prize in horror movies (a quality that is sadly lacking in many contemporary horror movies) - from the first glimpse of the Baron's castle, a sense of pervasive menace permeates the film, and the viewer knows that sinister forces are afoot. The make-up of the Baron in his monstrous guise may be cheesy-looking, but very reminiscent of older monster movie classics, and I loved the sense of nostalgia evoked by the Baron's horrific visage. Highly recommended for fans of classic horror and Italian horror. And now, I'm off to watch "Black Sabbath" and "Black Sunday"!

Elke Sommer plays Eva Arnold, an architectural student employed on the restoration of Baron von Kleist's creepy castle from the 11th century AD, whose boss introduces her to Peter, Kleist's American nephew, and a real good looker played by an actor who you'd never place as American.

Karl Hummel, the math professor, is played by Massimo Girotti, who stepped off the set of BARON BLOOD and onto the French locations of Bertolucci's LAST TANGO IN PARIS--quite a stretch for our Massimo! Dr. Hummel has a lovely wife, a cottagey-type home in the Austrian village on the outskirts of the castle, and his daughter, Gretchen, a plain-looking redheaded tyke filled with mischief and given to spying. There are so many scenes with Gretchen poking her head through the banister of the staircase, as the grownups talk on downstairs while drinking Austrian wine, that I expected she would get her head caught between the bars. Instead she develops an unexpected acuity and she's the only one who a) can identify Joseph Cotten as Baron Blood and b) can tell Elke Sommer and Peter how to return Baron Blood back to his crypt, from which they have accidentally awoken him. That little girl seems like a nut, and she's ugly as sin, but she's got brains and she's got courage. Later she played an important part in Dario Argento's PROFONDO ROSSO, and still later she was the usher girl in Bava Junior's DEMONS.

BARON BLOOD is a terrifying Mario Bava shocker with a wicked cool performance by Joseph Cotten as the revived Baron von Kleist. In his wheelchair and waxy makeup he seems treacherously close to death. Indeed it's hard to imagine that Cotten himself would be alive for another 20 years after wrapping up his shoot here. His face looks like it's been Botoxed long before anyone had ever heard of the term. And yet his eyes "glow with evil," as little Gretchen notes. She's no dumbkopf that Gretchen. A sinister bond seems to link the little girl with the ageless, cadaverous stranger in town: a takeoff on his role as Uncle Charlie in the Hitchcock-directed SHADOW OF A DOUBT I suppose?

This was the supposed sequel to Lisa and the Devil, Bava's shimmering, near-incomprehensible masterpiece. In Baron Blood, Bava has toned the story line down considerably. One of the overiding themes still is cause and effect; that is, in the world of Bava, our actions that we know are wrong but that we do anyhow can have horrifying consequences. At least in this movie, the repercussions manifest themselves in the lifetimes of the principal characters. The story resolution is much more believable (not to say digestable) than Lisa and the Devil. Unfortunately, by stepping a little more into the mainstream with Baron Blood (less risks are taken with the principle characters this time around), Bava has sacrificed much of the haunting uneasiness that made Lisa so enjoyable. He also doesn't have Telly Savalas in this film either!

A reasonably enjoyable film, enhanced by the presence of sexy Elke Sommer and talented Joseph Cotten. Although "Baron Blood" has the characteristic failings of horror films of that era, particularly the non-U.S. ones, I would say that it's superior to most of the others of that time, which tended to be inept and cheaply made.

We first saw this movie at the local drive-in (remember them?) We were teenagers; it was a horror movie double, and on the way home I had to get out of the car in the dark to open the gate at our farm's entrance!

The movie scared the living daylights out of every I knew.

Quite a good story. The plot centres around a Baron Von Kleist (known as 'Baron Blood'), dead for some 300 years. The Baron was legendary for his brutality and sadistism. A young couple go into the Baron's supposedly haunted castle, and utter an incantation which, they are told, will bring the Baron back to life (how many plots in movies hinge on people doing dumb things!!!!!)

Hearing creepy noises, they realize the Baron has come back to life. They decide to utter the words of recantation. But too late, they realize a puff of wind has blown the piece of paper into a fire they've lit. The rest of the movie features the Baron (whose body and face is rotted and horrible) running amok, murdering people, stunning others and placing them in spiked coffins (the black virgin) or impaling them on spikes.

The Baron is finally defeated when they turn to a witch for help. The witch is a reincarnation of one of the Baron's long-dead victims, and she takes great delight in extracting her revenge.

Many years later I saw it again. Although It made nothing of the impact it made on me in my teens, I thought it still measured up well.

A malevolent supernatural force is unleashed, in director Mario Bava's Baron Blood (1972), a suspense thriller with some tense moments, a few nasty kills, and some atmospheric and stylish cinematography. The film marks the first collaboration of Bava and producer Alfredo Leone, who would go on to make three other films in about a three year period

Peter Kleist (Antonio Cantafora) comes to visit his uncle Dr. Karl Hummel (Massimo Girotti) in Austria. Peter has an interest in the Kleist family's notorious ancestor, Baron Otto von Kleist (Joseph Cotton), who because of his proclivity for inflicting torture, was known as `Baron Blood'. Young Kleist immediately gets together with Eva Arnold (Elke Sommer), an architectural student who as access to the old castle where the Baron once lived. It takes a couple of tries, but by reciting some incantations, the pair succeeds in calling forth the spirit of the long dead Baron, who rises from his grave. After a little medical attention, the hideous looking Baron begins to take lives.

Joseph Cotten appears in a dual role as Alfred Becker, a wealthy man bound to a wheelchair, who purchases the castle at auction. Much of the middle part of the film is spent building up suspense, as the Baron takes a break from killing, and Becker begins restoring his castle. Eva and Peter get clues how to send the Baron back to the dead, with the help of a medium named Christina Hoffman (Rada Rassimov), and a perceptive little girl. The resolution to the tale is a little cheesy, and because it could easily have been more graphically violent, slightly disappointing.

Bava's cinematic talents are highlighted, when a terrified Eva scampers through the castle, and then in a tense and spooky nighttime chase sequence, Elke Sommer does some serious running through the foggy streets and alleys of the town. Unfortunately there aren't too many moments like this. Utilizing some cool locations and spooky settings, combined with his cinematic expertise and creative camerawork, Bava attempts to give the film a dark atmosphere. It works in some places, as Baron Blood kind of has the vibe of a 60's Hammer horror film. The grotesque killer is pretty effective in the beginning, while operating in the shadows. Ms. Sommer overdoes the screaming a bit, but is not too bad in her first horror film. Joseph Cotton, 67 at the time, gets a chance to be a little evil and sadistic at the finish.

The widescreen presentation is a little soft in places, and features some rich saturated colors, typically an important component in a Bava film. The uncut European version contains extra scenes, and runs 98 minutes, and is included as one of the eight films in The Bava Box Set, Vol. 2. One of the later efforts in Bava's long career, Baron Blood is rather dated and perhaps not among his best, but did lead to further collaboration between Bava and producer Alfredo Leone on the films Four Times That Night (1972), Lisa and the Devil (1974), and Rabid Dogs (1974).

I don't really understand the hype around this director. His work is nothing like Alfred Hitchcocks and the only thing that made me add a star to this movie was the sets which were very good at least for this movie. I couldn't stand the wooden dialogue and found the acting rather poor much like Argento's work. Some of my friends talk none stop about Italian horror but I find it to not be that good with the exception of Fuchi.

Baron Blood is another Mario Bava movie...Bava was an Italian horror director whose movies had MAJOR influence on American horror movies of the late 70's and 80's (including "Friday the 13th" and "Alien"). "Baron" may not be one of Bava's most well regarded but is one that falls under the better "late-night" horror fare by today's standards. It is defintitely low budget and cheesy in parts - in other words clearly a "B-move" - but it combines elements of both being genuinly creepy at times, and at others being so bad it's good." Some of the shots of the castle inside and out and the Baron are very creepy! The movie also stars the legendary Joseph Cotton!

Baron Blood is a good example of Mario Bava's later directorial attempts,mediocre plot & story/ excellent production & film work.It lacks the scariness & atmosphere of earlier gems,The Mask of Satan(Black Sunday) & Black Sabbath.The movie is still pretty cool though & is a must for Bava fans.