BARON BLOOD (1972)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *poor*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *drama*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTIONS: *metaphysical*

I began watching BARON BLOOD on streaming without remembering much about it except a vaguely unfavorable memory of seeing it on some TV broadcast. I missed the credits and so didn't remember that this was one of the seventies films of famed Italian director Mario Bava. Now, I haven't seen every film Bava made since his 1960 breakthrough with the classic BLACK SUNDAY, but in my current view BARON BLOOD is the worst film from his oeuvre I've ever seen. 

Some of the Wiki-data on the film's genesis suggests that it was just a routine job to Bava, and that his writing-credit was trumped up, as the script was almost totally the product of one Vincent G. Fotre. This writer's most enduring credit, produced in collaboration with another scripter, was 1958's MISSILE TO THE MOON, which at least offered rudimentary entertainment even though it was a remake of an earlier movie. If that's true then both Bava and Fotre were just trying to churn out a standard Gothic thriller with some name actors and a colorful setting in a real Vienna castle.

Cutting through tons of dull exposition, a dim-witted young American named Peter Kleist (Antonio Cantafora) comes to Austria to meet his uncle, and he encounters a pretty young thing named Eva (Elke Sommer). Peter is fiercely curious about his ancestor Baron Otto Von Kleist (aka "Baron Blood"), who killed dozens of his subjects. He made the mistake of burning a witch named Elizabeth, who cursed him to death. However, as if anticipating that someday the Baron's ancestor would be a curious idiot, the ghost of Elizabeth leaves behind a written incantation so that Blood can be resurrected. So Peter and Eva do so, though at first they don't see any effect of their spell. 

(I oversimplify a little; Dead Elizabeth really wants Blood revived some day so that she can kill/torture him again, even though in the film proper, the witch also has to be summoned in order to exert any power over the nasty nobleman. How was she going to exact Second Vengeance if no one knew how to summon her? Quien sabe?)

Of course the murders start, and they seem to be fairly random, committed by a deformed looking fellow. This is a form assumed by the Baron, which I guess he uses so that he doesn't expose his double identity as a local guy named Becker (Joseph Cotten). When did wheelchair-bound Becker show up in this Austrian city? I may have missed that detail, because I was bored out of my mind by all the tedious exposition.

So after a handful of pointless killings, which spur Peter, Eva and the uncle to research baron-killing, the film eventually trundles to its climax, in which Baron Blood reveals himself, tortures his enemies a little, and then gets killed when the witch's power revives the Baron's dead enemies.

Though Fotri and Bava produce dull work, some spirited performances might have saved the film. I can't fault the aging and ailing Cotten, who isn't in the film very much, but Cantafora and Sommer are just phoning things in. There's a quirky perf from child-actor Nicoletta Elmi, who seems to psychically sense the Baron's presence even before he's revived. But the only actor to fully invest in a role is Rada Rassimov, playing an intense modern-day psychic who helps the young dunderheads summon a powerful talisman from Elizabeth.

While there were still a lot of "traditional" horror films that were popular in this period despite the more "avant-garde" flicks like ROSEMARY'S BABY, I honestly can't see why BARON BLOOD did good business anywhere.