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9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
PHANTOM OF THE CASTLE, April 21, 2000
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.
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Atmospheric chiller, October 30, 2009
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"!
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Bava Gothic Shock Horror, September 19, 2006
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?
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