Baron Blood (1972)

Having mentioned Baron Blood (1972) in passing yesterday, I thought I'd say a few more words about it today.  Coming from the latter part of his career, Baron Blood isn't the most distinctive of Mario Bava's films, lacking the visual verve of Danger: Diabolik, (1968) the dank atmospherics of Black Sunday(1960) or even the bloody inventiveness of Bay of Blood (1971), instead coming over as a fairly standard continental horror film of the era.  Indeed, Bava only came aboard, somewhat reluctantly, as director after the project had already been developed by others.  The whole thing has a feeling of compromise about it: the big name American lead, Joseph Cotton, has limited screen time as the title character, for instance and another actor is substituted for the Baron's appearances as a rotting walking corpse.  Moreover, the horrific aspects often seem to be played down, as if the film can't quite make up its mind exactly what it wants to be: full on Gothic horror or suspenseful supernatural thriller. The fact that the plot meanders all over the place and seems to take an age to get properly started, combined with an excessive run-time, really doesn't help the pacing, (significantly, or its US release AIP cut ten minutes from the running time, presumably to try and tighten it up).  

The film, nevertheless, is still enjoyable, even if the plot - evil nobleman executed centuries ago is inadvertently resurrected by his descendants and picks up where he left off with the murders and torture - is hardly original.  While not as distinctive as his earlier output, the film is still very nicely shot by Bava, who makes good use of his Austrian locations and is quite stylish looking in a seventies glam sort of way.  Some of the set-pieces are well handled - Elke Sommer being pursued through the fog by the shadowy figure of the Baron is very atmospheric, while Luciano Pigozzi's demise in an iron maiden is suitably gruesome, for instance.  But these are surrounded by far too many talky scenes of exposition, diluting their impact.  Perhaps the biggest problem holding Baron Blood back from making a real impact is that its characters are simply not very interesting.  Even the titular nobleman, for all the talk of how evil and sadistic he was in his first incarnation, seems pretty restrained in his present day activities - Cotton is just too subdued in his performance as the resurrected Baron, (masquerading as a wheelchair bound millionaire restoring the old Baronial castle), to convince us of his evil, even when he drops his disguise and drags everyone down to the dungeons.  Elke Sommer and Antonio Cantafore, (unusually not billed as 'Michael Coby' in the English-language version), as the leads are both decent actors who, elsewhere, have given strong lead performances, but here come over as utterly vapid.  Their characters seem completely hapless, resurrecting Baron Blood pretty much by accident, then trying to ignore the situation before being completely ineffective in doing anything about it.  Thomas Hummel as Cantafora's uncle does his best but, again, his character proves ineffective and seems to exist solely to provide endless exposition.  The most memorable character is Hummel's strange young daughter, who seems to possess some sort of sensitivity to the supernatural, (although this is never properly explored), played by Nicoletti Elmi, who, as a child actress, was a familiar figure in seventies Italian horror films, (including Argento's Profondo Rosso (1975)).

Yet, as previously mentioned, Baron Blood remains a curiously entertaining film, despite all of these problems.  It is best approached, not as a Bava film, but instead as a more generic seventies Euro-horror, on which level, technically, at least, it stands as a slightly superior example.