Format: Streaming video from Tubi TV on Fire!
I have not been shy about my issues with Italian-style horror on this blog over the past decade or so. There are plenty of genres, directors, and performers who I have grown to appreciate or even like the more I have been exposed to them. When I started this blog, I didn’t understand the appeal of Bette Davis, nor did I care at all for Colin Farrell, and I’ve seen the light on both of them. The same cannot be said for giallo films or Italian horror in general, so every time I decide to cross another one off the list, I sigh inwardly, hoping that this might be the one that changes my mind. Baron Blood (or the far more fanciful Gli orrori del castello di Norimberga in the original Italian), another film from Mario Bava, will not be the one that convinces me to change my mind.
True to what seems to often be the case with films of this stripe, we’re going to have an Italian-style horror film from an Italian director taking place in another part of the world, Austria in this case. We’re also going to have a pretty standard plot on the surface. Peter Kleist (Antonio Cantafora) arrives in Austria from the U.S. to look up some family history. It turns out that Peter is the descendant of Baron Otto Von Kleist, who was very much a Vlad the Impaler-style sadist who tortured and murdered his villagers, hence his nickname of Baron Blood. One of these was a witch named Elizabeth Hölle, who cursed him with a spell that would allow him to be raised from the dead so that she could revenger herself on him again and again.
Peter is met at the airport by his uncle Karl (Massimo Girotti), who tells him that the castle of his ancestor is being turned into a tourist resort. At the castle, Peter meets the man making the renovations and, importantly, his assistant Eva (Elke Sommer). We’re also going to discover the real reasons that Peter has shown up in Austria. It turns out that he has an incantation that can bring the Baron back to life if it is read at midnight in the castle.
You know what’s going to happen, right? Peter and Eva go to the castle and read the incantation because this is a horror movie and they’re kind of stupid. And so the Baron emerges from his grave and starts going on a killing spree because that’s exactly what a sadist does when they are resurrected after a few centuries. One of his victims is Dortmundt (Dieter Tressler), the man doing the hotel renovation. With him gone, the property goes up for sale, evidently immediately, and it’s purchased by a man named Alfred Becker (Joseph Cotten).
What I’m going to say next is going to come across as a spoiler, and technically it is a spoiler, but only if you’ve never seen a cheesy horror movie before. It shouldn’t be a shock to anyone who has seen a movie at all in the past 10 years that Alfred Becker is the reincarnated Baron Blood, who has bought the castle so that he can once again have a reign of terror. The problem for Peter and Eva is that they don’t have a way to get rid of him—the incantation that is supposed to make him vanish was burned in a fireplace thanks to a bit of errant wind.
There are a few problems with Baron Blood. One is that it’s incredibly predictable. It’s not hard for us to figure out who the bad guy is. In fact, it’s evident the moment he shows up, so the “big reveal” that eventually happens feels inevitable, not shocking. The movie is also populated with idiots. The plot requires that the Baron come back, so we’re given someone who decides to literally try an incantation designed to do so. At least in movies like Black Sunday, the villain is resurrected by accident, through a confluence of events. Here, we need the dumbest possible way to get him back.
And, beyond this, the Baron starts wantonly killing. I know he’s a sadist, but even a sadist should be able to figure out that straight-up murdering everyone he comes across will eventually get him caught.
Getting Joseph Cotten to play the bad guy in this was a major coup for Mario Bava, and getting Elke Sommer to play the ingenue was probably significant as well. But Cotten is wasted in this. It’s such a drop from the kind of roles he used to play—it brings up the question of who had the steepest career drop—Cotten, Ray Milland, or Joan Crawford.
Anyway, if you don’t love gialli and blood that looks like it came fresh out of a can of Sherwin-Williams, this one is probably skippable.
Why to watch Baron Blood: Joseph Cotten!
Why not to watch: Not even Joseph Cotten can save this.
