Ceremonia sangrienta (1973)

Director:

Jorge Grau

Writers:

Sandro Continenza (writer)
Jorge Grau (screenplay)

Release Date:

October 1974 (USA)

Genre:

Horror

Tagline:

A Nightmare Tale of Depravity!

Plot:

The ageing Countess discovers that the blood of a maid can temporarily restore her youth and great beauty...

Plot Keywords:

Blood | Countess | Nudity | Vampire | Virgin

Cast

Lucia Bosé	...	Erzsebet Bathory
Espartaco Santoni	...	Karl Ziemmer
Ewa Aulin	...	Marina Schneider
Ana Farra	...	Housekeeper
Silvano Tranquilli	...	Doctor
Lola Gaos	...	Carmilla
Enrique Vivó	...	Mayor
María Vico	...	Maria Plojovitz
Ángel Menéndez	...	Magistrate
Adolfo Thous	...	Judge
Ismael García Romen	...	Captain
Raquel Ortuño	...	Irina
María Dolores Tovar	...	Sandra (as Dolores Tovar)
Franca Grey	...	Nadja
Ghika	...	Inge

Also Known As:

The Legend of Blood Castle (USA) (DVD title)
Blood Castle (video title)
Bloody Ceremony
Countess Dracula
Le vergini cavalcano la morte (Italy)
The Bloody Countess
The Female Butcher

Runtime:

102 min | Spain:88 min

Country:

Spain | Italy

Language:

Spanish | English

Color:

Color (Eastmancolor)

Sound Mix:

Mono

Certification:

USA:R

Filming Locations:

Madrid, Spain

Company:

Luis Film

Movie Connections:

Featured in Dusk to Dawn Drive-In Trash-o-Rama Show Vol. 3 (1996) (V)

Best and Most Faithful Adaptation of the Barthory Legend

Jorge Grau's "Blood Ceremony" is probably the best and most faithful adaptation of the story of Elizabeth Barthory, the real life Hungarian countess who bathed in the blood of virgins to keep herself young. (The "Barthory" section in Walerian Borozyx's "Immortal Tales" may be technically better, but Grau is more interested in actually re-telling than the legend here than in seeing how many naked, barely-legal French girls he can squeeze into the frame).

Grau does make some interesting alterations to the legend. The countess is helped by her husband who fakes his own death and pretends to be a vampire to fool the superstitious villagers about the source of the exsanguinations. Barthory (Lucia Bose) is also a surprisingly sympathetic character who is only driven to her crimes by mortal despair and the beguilings of her old crone maid. Grau also doesn't make the same mistake as Hammer's "Countess Dracula" where Ingrid Pitt bathes in virgin blood and is instantly transformed from a withered, old hag into. . . well, Ingrid Pitt. It's left much more ambiguous here whether the treatment actually works--it only seems to transform Bose from an attractive older women to a perhaps slightly younger-looking older woman. This is much more effective and chilling than the Hammer histrionics.

The highlight of any of these films is, of course, when the character actually takes a literal bloodbath. This scene perhaps isn't as "hot" here as Ingrid Pitt's in "Countess Dracula" or Rosalba Neri's in the non-sensical "Devil's Wedding Night", but it's much more effective cinemagraphically following a stream of blood from an unlucky virgin whose throat has just been slit through a drain in the floor to a shower where Bose is waiting naked below.

Besides Bose, the cast also includes Swedish nymphet Ewa Aulin as the gold-digging daughter of the local innkeeper who shares her sexual favors with the count. It's not clear for awhile whether he's going to run off with her or make her another sacrifice to his wife's bloodthirsty vanity. Aulin is a little miscast here and personally I prefer her undubbed (and unclothed), but I guess her natural Swedish accent wouldn't have really worked in Medieval Hungary. The more unknown Spanish actors who play the rest of the villagers are good too. They turn out to be very vindictive and they take a terrible revenge on Barthory at the end (no doubt partially inspired by Edgar Allen Poe's "The Black Cat") that almost makes you feel sorry for her. This is a very good movie and one worthy of a resurrection on DVD.