Blood Bath
Encyclopedia
Blood Bath is a 1966
horror film
directed by Jack Hill
and Stephanie Rothman
. William Campbell
stars as an artist with vampiric
tendencies who kills beautiful women and dumps their bodies into a vat of boiling wax
in his studio
. Also appearing in the cast in supporting roles are Linda Saunders
, Merissa Mathes, Sid Haig
, Jonathan Haze
, and Patrick Magee
.
The film had a convoluted production history, initiating as a 1963 Yugoslavia
-made spy
thriller co-financed by Roger Corman
, who deemed the final product unreleasable. Numerous horror sequences were later shot and edited into the film, first by Hill in 1964, then by Rothman in 1966. Corman approved of Rothman's version and the film was given a brief theatrical release by American International Pictures
, with screenplay
and directorial
credit jointly shared by Hill and Rothman.
boyfriend Max (Carl Schanzer). Walking through the deserted streets, she stops to admire some gruesome paintings in a gallery window painted by artist Antonio Sordi (Campbell), who coincidentally also comes by to look in on his "lost children." After a friendly conversation, Sordi convinces the young woman to pose nude for him that night. At his bell-tower studio, Sordi is possessed by the spirit of a long-dead ancestor and suddenly transforms into a vampiric monster who hacks the screaming Daisy to death with a cleaver. Afterwards, he lowers her mutilated corpse into a vat of boiling wax.
Sordi, in his vampire form, stalks Venice in search of victims; he is able to do so freely at all hours. In the middle of the day, he chases a young woman into the surf at a beach and drowns her. At night, he kills a prostitute in a car while pedestrians stroll by, all of them assuming the pair are lovers sharing an intimate moment. Another victim is approached at a party, chased into a swimming pool, and drowned there after the other guests have moved into the house. The murdered women are carried back to Sordi's studio and painted by the artist, their bodies then covered in wax.
Max wants to make up with Daisy but cannot find her anywhere. Learning that she has posed for Sordi and become the subject of the latest in the artist's series of "Dead Red Nudes," he visits her sister Donna (Sandra Knight) to ask her forgiveness. Donna tells Max she hasn't seen Daisy for days, and is concerned about the recent rash of disappearances. She reads Max the legend of Sordi's 15th-century ancestor Erno, a painter condemned to be burned at the stake for capturing his subjects' souls on canvas. Unable to convince Max that Antonio Sordi might also be a vampire, she confronts the artist at his studio and asks him if he has seen Daisy. He angrily brushes her off. That night, he later follows her through the streets and murders her as she tries to escape from him on a carousel.
The "human" Sordi is in love with Dorian (Linda Saunders
), an avant-garde
ballerina and Daisy's former roommate. At first he tries to protect her from his vampiric tendencies, warning her his studio is a cheerless place and at one point breaking a date with her to spend time gaining control of his feelings for her. When she turns up at the studio unannounced, he believes she is the reincarnation of Erno Sordi’s long-dead mistress Melizza (also played by Linda Saunders), a witch who had denounced him to the ecclesiastical courts in order to protect herself from prosecution, and traps her in a net. He is about to slash her throat with a razor when Max and his beatnik friends finally realize Sordi is a murderer and successfully free her from the tower. Melizza, seen in a painting that Sordi keeps concealed behind a curtain, brings three of Sordi's victims back to life and they dispatch him by forcing him into the boiling wax.
In 1963, while on vacation in Europe, Corman made a deal to distribute an unproduced Yugoslavian espionage thriller to be titled Operacija Ticijan/Operation: Titian. Corman bought the rights to the film for $20,000 and insisted on control over the production to ensure it could be adequately “Americanized”. To this end, Corman provided two cast members, William Campbell and Patrick Magee
, who had appeared together in Corman’s The Young Racers and Francis Ford Coppola
’s Corman-produced Dementia 13
. In addition, Coppola was installed as the production’s script supervisor. The completed film was deemed unreleasable by Corman, although a redubbed, slightly re-edited version was eventually released directly to television under the title Portrait in Terror.
In 1964, Corman asked director Jack Hill
to salvage the film. Hill filmed additional sequences in Venice, California, in order to match the original movie’s European look, and turned the former spy thriller into a horror movie about a crazed madman who kills his models and makes sculptures out of their dead bodies. Campbell was available for the reshoots and insisted on a sizeable paycheck to appear in the film, reportedly angering Corman, who nonetheless agreed to the actor’s demands. Hill added all of the beatnik-related scenes shot with Sid Haig
and Jonathan Haze
, and was responsible for what many fans believe is the single most effective sequence in the film, the hatchet murder of Melissa Mathes. Magee’s role was more or less retained intact in this version. However, Hill’s version of the film, retitled Blood Bath, has never been released, as Corman once again was unhappy with the results.
In 1966, Corman made another attempt to create a workable film. He hired another director, Stephanie Rothman
, to change the story as she saw fit. While retaining much of Hill’s footage, she changed the plot from a story about a deranged, murderous artist to a story about a deranged, murderous artist who is also a vampire. Because Campbell refused to participate in yet another reshoot, Rothman was forced to use a completely different actor for the new murder scenes. This meant Rothman now had to provide the Campbell character with the ability to magically transform his physical shape whenever he turned into a vampire, in order to explain why the vampire-killer looked nothing like Campbell. Almost all of the scenes Rothman added, including those with Sandra Knight, were among the most derivative, and therefore the weakest, in the film. This time around, Magee’s role was almost completely excised. He appears as the jealous husband of a nightclub dancer (played by Anna Pavane) who poses for Sordi but is not murdered. He tracks Sordi to his studio and attempts to kill the artist but is pushed into the boiling wax. For reasons known only to him, it was this version of the film that most pleased Corman, and it was subsequently briefly released to theatres by American International Pictures
, retaining Hill's Blood Bath title. Both Hill and Rothman were credited as co-directors. The film's co-feature was Queen of Blood
, which was cobbled together by Corman and co-produced by Rothman.
A fifth version of the film exists. Rothman’s Blood Bath ran 69 minutes, which was deemed too short for television showings. More new footage was added, including a six- minute sequence showing Linda Saunders dancing non-stop on the beach. The film was retitled Track of the Vampire, and it is this TV version that is the most commonly known of all five films today, available in a wide variety of “public domain
” videotapes and DVD
s.
Music for the film was cribbed from scores that composer Ronald Stein wrote for earlier Roger Corman productions, most notably The Undead
and Dementia 13
.
, called Blood Bath “a confusing but interesting horror film with an even more confusing history.” Phil Hardy’s The Aurum Film Encyclopedia
: Horror noted, “Cheap and crude, with echoes of a dozen movies ranging from Mystery of the Wax Museum (1933) to A Bucket of Blood
(1959), this film isn’t unenjoyable." Cavett Binion of Allmovie wrote, "As one might imagine, this is pretty difficult to follow, but there are some good performances — particularly from William Campbell as the haunted shutterbug — and some fairly suspenseful scenes."
In 1991, Video Watchdog
magazine devoted lengthy articles in three separate issues fully detailing the production history of the film. These articles included interviews with Hill and Campbell, the latter of whom expressed shock when he was told that the film he had shot so long ago in Yugoslavia
had been turned into five individual movies.
The Trouble With Titian, Video Watchdog
, Issues #4, 5, and 7 (1991)
1966 in film
The year 1966 in film involved some significant events.-Events:Animation legend Walter Disney, well known for his creation of Mickey Mouse, died in 15 December 1966 of acute circulatory collapse following a diagnosis of, and surgery for, lung cancer...
horror film
Horror film
Horror films seek to elicit a negative emotional reaction from viewers by playing on the audience's most primal fears. They often feature scenes that startle the viewer through the means of macabre and the supernatural, thus frequently overlapping with the fantasy and science fiction genres...
directed by Jack Hill
Jack Hill
Jack Hill is an U.S. film director, noted for his work in the exploitation film genre. Despite this, several of Hill's later films have been characterized as feminist works.Hill was born in Los Angeles...
and Stephanie Rothman
Stephanie Rothman
Stephanie Rothman is a film director, producer and screenwriter, known for her low-budget independent exploitation films made in the 1960s and 1970s. She was the first female to be awarded the Directors Guild of America fellowship...
. William Campbell
William Campbell (film actor)
William Campbell was an American actor who appeared in supporting roles in major film productions and also starred in several low-budget B-movies, including two cult horror films.-Career:...
stars as an artist with vampiric
Vampire
Vampires are mythological or folkloric beings who subsist by feeding on the life essence of living creatures, regardless of whether they are undead or a living person...
tendencies who kills beautiful women and dumps their bodies into a vat of boiling wax
Wax
thumb|right|[[Cetyl palmitate]], a typical wax ester.Wax refers to a class of chemical compounds that are plastic near ambient temperatures. Characteristically, they melt above 45 °C to give a low viscosity liquid. Waxes are insoluble in water but soluble in organic, nonpolar solvents...
in his studio
Studio
A studio is an artist's or worker's workroom, or the catchall term for an artist and his or her employees who work within that studio. This can be for the purpose of architecture, painting, pottery , sculpture, scrapbooking, photography, graphic design, filmmaking, animation, radio or television...
. Also appearing in the cast in supporting roles are Linda Saunders
Lori Saunders
Lori Saunders is an American film and television actress, probably best known for her role as Bobbie Jo Bradley in the television series Petticoat Junction , appearing in 147 episodes. She also appeared as Betty Gordon, one of Mr...
, Merissa Mathes, Sid Haig
Sid Haig
Sid Haig is a American actor. His roles have included acting in Jack Hill's blaxploitation films of the 1970s as well as his role as Captain Spaulding in Rob Zombie's horror films House of 1000 Corpses and The Devil's Rejects...
, Jonathan Haze
Jonathan Haze
Jonathan Haze is an American actor. He is best known for his work in Roger Corman films, and especially for the black comedy cult classic, The Little Shop of Horrors.-Early years:...
, and Patrick Magee
Patrick Magee (actor)
Patrick Magee was a Northern Irish actor best known for his collaborations with Samuel Beckett and Harold Pinter, as well as his appearances in horror films and in Stanley Kubrick's films A Clockwork Orange and Barry Lyndon.-Early life:He was born Patrick McGee in Armagh, County Armagh, Northern...
.
The film had a convoluted production history, initiating as a 1963 Yugoslavia
Yugoslavia
Yugoslavia refers to three political entities that existed successively on the western part of the Balkans during most of the 20th century....
-made spy
SPY
SPY is a three-letter acronym that may refer to:* SPY , ticker symbol for Standard & Poor's Depositary Receipts* SPY , a satirical monthly, trademarked all-caps* SPY , airport code for San Pédro, Côte d'Ivoire...
thriller co-financed by Roger Corman
Roger Corman
Roger William Corman is an American film producer, director and actor. He has mostly worked on low-budget B movies. Some of Corman's work has an established critical reputation, such as his cycle of films adapted from the tales of Edgar Allan Poe, and in 2009 he won an Honorary Academy Award for...
, who deemed the final product unreleasable. Numerous horror sequences were later shot and edited into the film, first by Hill in 1964, then by Rothman in 1966. Corman approved of Rothman's version and the film was given a brief theatrical release by American International Pictures
American International Pictures
American International Pictures was a film production company formed in April 1956 from American Releasing Corporation by James H. Nicholson, former Sales Manager of Realart Pictures, and Samuel Z. Arkoff, an entertainment lawyer...
, with screenplay
Screenplay
A screenplay or script is a written work that is made especially for a film or television program. Screenplays can be original works or adaptations from existing pieces of writing. In them, the movement, actions, expression, and dialogues of the characters are also narrated...
and directorial
Film director
A film director is a person who directs the actors and film crew in filmmaking. They control a film's artistic and dramatic nathan roach, while guiding the technical crew and actors.-Responsibilities:...
credit jointly shared by Hill and Rothman.
Plot
In Venice, California, student Daisy (Merissa Mathes) leaves a club alone after having an argument with her beatnikBeatnik
Beatnik was a media stereotype of the 1950s and early 1960s that displayed the more superficial aspects of the Beat Generation literary movement of the 1950s and violent film images, along with a cartoonish depiction of the real-life people and the spiritual quest in Jack Kerouac's autobiographical...
boyfriend Max (Carl Schanzer). Walking through the deserted streets, she stops to admire some gruesome paintings in a gallery window painted by artist Antonio Sordi (Campbell), who coincidentally also comes by to look in on his "lost children." After a friendly conversation, Sordi convinces the young woman to pose nude for him that night. At his bell-tower studio, Sordi is possessed by the spirit of a long-dead ancestor and suddenly transforms into a vampiric monster who hacks the screaming Daisy to death with a cleaver. Afterwards, he lowers her mutilated corpse into a vat of boiling wax.
Sordi, in his vampire form, stalks Venice in search of victims; he is able to do so freely at all hours. In the middle of the day, he chases a young woman into the surf at a beach and drowns her. At night, he kills a prostitute in a car while pedestrians stroll by, all of them assuming the pair are lovers sharing an intimate moment. Another victim is approached at a party, chased into a swimming pool, and drowned there after the other guests have moved into the house. The murdered women are carried back to Sordi's studio and painted by the artist, their bodies then covered in wax.
Max wants to make up with Daisy but cannot find her anywhere. Learning that she has posed for Sordi and become the subject of the latest in the artist's series of "Dead Red Nudes," he visits her sister Donna (Sandra Knight) to ask her forgiveness. Donna tells Max she hasn't seen Daisy for days, and is concerned about the recent rash of disappearances. She reads Max the legend of Sordi's 15th-century ancestor Erno, a painter condemned to be burned at the stake for capturing his subjects' souls on canvas. Unable to convince Max that Antonio Sordi might also be a vampire, she confronts the artist at his studio and asks him if he has seen Daisy. He angrily brushes her off. That night, he later follows her through the streets and murders her as she tries to escape from him on a carousel.
The "human" Sordi is in love with Dorian (Linda Saunders
Lori Saunders
Lori Saunders is an American film and television actress, probably best known for her role as Bobbie Jo Bradley in the television series Petticoat Junction , appearing in 147 episodes. She also appeared as Betty Gordon, one of Mr...
), an avant-garde
Avant-garde
Avant-garde means "advance guard" or "vanguard". The adjective form is used in English to refer to people or works that are experimental or innovative, particularly with respect to art, culture, and politics....
ballerina and Daisy's former roommate. At first he tries to protect her from his vampiric tendencies, warning her his studio is a cheerless place and at one point breaking a date with her to spend time gaining control of his feelings for her. When she turns up at the studio unannounced, he believes she is the reincarnation of Erno Sordi’s long-dead mistress Melizza (also played by Linda Saunders), a witch who had denounced him to the ecclesiastical courts in order to protect herself from prosecution, and traps her in a net. He is about to slash her throat with a razor when Max and his beatnik friends finally realize Sordi is a murderer and successfully free her from the tower. Melizza, seen in a painting that Sordi keeps concealed behind a curtain, brings three of Sordi's victims back to life and they dispatch him by forcing him into the boiling wax.
Production
Blood Bath had possibly the most convoluted production history of any horror movie ever made.In 1963, while on vacation in Europe, Corman made a deal to distribute an unproduced Yugoslavian espionage thriller to be titled Operacija Ticijan/Operation: Titian. Corman bought the rights to the film for $20,000 and insisted on control over the production to ensure it could be adequately “Americanized”. To this end, Corman provided two cast members, William Campbell and Patrick Magee
Patrick Magee (actor)
Patrick Magee was a Northern Irish actor best known for his collaborations with Samuel Beckett and Harold Pinter, as well as his appearances in horror films and in Stanley Kubrick's films A Clockwork Orange and Barry Lyndon.-Early life:He was born Patrick McGee in Armagh, County Armagh, Northern...
, who had appeared together in Corman’s The Young Racers and Francis Ford Coppola
Francis Ford Coppola
Francis Ford Coppola is an American film director, producer and screenwriter. He is widely acclaimed as one of Hollywood's most innovative and influential film directors...
’s Corman-produced Dementia 13
Dementia 13
Dementia 13 is a 1963 horror thriller released by American International Pictures, starring William Campbell, Patrick Magee, and Luana Anders. The film was written and directed by Francis Ford Coppola and produced by Roger Corman...
. In addition, Coppola was installed as the production’s script supervisor. The completed film was deemed unreleasable by Corman, although a redubbed, slightly re-edited version was eventually released directly to television under the title Portrait in Terror.
In 1964, Corman asked director Jack Hill
Jack Hill
Jack Hill is an U.S. film director, noted for his work in the exploitation film genre. Despite this, several of Hill's later films have been characterized as feminist works.Hill was born in Los Angeles...
to salvage the film. Hill filmed additional sequences in Venice, California, in order to match the original movie’s European look, and turned the former spy thriller into a horror movie about a crazed madman who kills his models and makes sculptures out of their dead bodies. Campbell was available for the reshoots and insisted on a sizeable paycheck to appear in the film, reportedly angering Corman, who nonetheless agreed to the actor’s demands. Hill added all of the beatnik-related scenes shot with Sid Haig
Sid Haig
Sid Haig is a American actor. His roles have included acting in Jack Hill's blaxploitation films of the 1970s as well as his role as Captain Spaulding in Rob Zombie's horror films House of 1000 Corpses and The Devil's Rejects...
and Jonathan Haze
Jonathan Haze
Jonathan Haze is an American actor. He is best known for his work in Roger Corman films, and especially for the black comedy cult classic, The Little Shop of Horrors.-Early years:...
, and was responsible for what many fans believe is the single most effective sequence in the film, the hatchet murder of Melissa Mathes. Magee’s role was more or less retained intact in this version. However, Hill’s version of the film, retitled Blood Bath, has never been released, as Corman once again was unhappy with the results.
In 1966, Corman made another attempt to create a workable film. He hired another director, Stephanie Rothman
Stephanie Rothman
Stephanie Rothman is a film director, producer and screenwriter, known for her low-budget independent exploitation films made in the 1960s and 1970s. She was the first female to be awarded the Directors Guild of America fellowship...
, to change the story as she saw fit. While retaining much of Hill’s footage, she changed the plot from a story about a deranged, murderous artist to a story about a deranged, murderous artist who is also a vampire. Because Campbell refused to participate in yet another reshoot, Rothman was forced to use a completely different actor for the new murder scenes. This meant Rothman now had to provide the Campbell character with the ability to magically transform his physical shape whenever he turned into a vampire, in order to explain why the vampire-killer looked nothing like Campbell. Almost all of the scenes Rothman added, including those with Sandra Knight, were among the most derivative, and therefore the weakest, in the film. This time around, Magee’s role was almost completely excised. He appears as the jealous husband of a nightclub dancer (played by Anna Pavane) who poses for Sordi but is not murdered. He tracks Sordi to his studio and attempts to kill the artist but is pushed into the boiling wax. For reasons known only to him, it was this version of the film that most pleased Corman, and it was subsequently briefly released to theatres by American International Pictures
American International Pictures
American International Pictures was a film production company formed in April 1956 from American Releasing Corporation by James H. Nicholson, former Sales Manager of Realart Pictures, and Samuel Z. Arkoff, an entertainment lawyer...
, retaining Hill's Blood Bath title. Both Hill and Rothman were credited as co-directors. The film's co-feature was Queen of Blood
Queen of Blood
Queen of Blood horror/science fiction film released by American International Pictures. The director, Curtis Harrington, crafted this B-movie with footage from the Russian films Mechte Navstrechu and Nebo Zovyot. It was released as part of a double bill with the AIP movie Blood Bath...
, which was cobbled together by Corman and co-produced by Rothman.
A fifth version of the film exists. Rothman’s Blood Bath ran 69 minutes, which was deemed too short for television showings. More new footage was added, including a six- minute sequence showing Linda Saunders dancing non-stop on the beach. The film was retitled Track of the Vampire, and it is this TV version that is the most commonly known of all five films today, available in a wide variety of “public domain
Public domain
Works are in the public domain if the intellectual property rights have expired, if the intellectual property rights are forfeited, or if they are not covered by intellectual property rights at all...
” videotapes and DVD
DVD
A DVD is an optical disc storage media format, invented and developed by Philips, Sony, Toshiba, and Panasonic in 1995. DVDs offer higher storage capacity than Compact Discs while having the same dimensions....
s.
Music for the film was cribbed from scores that composer Ronald Stein wrote for earlier Roger Corman productions, most notably The Undead
The Undead (film)
The Undead is a 1957 horror film directed by Roger Corman starring Pamela Duncan, Richard Garland, Allison Hayes, and Val Dufour. It follows the story of prostitute Diana Love who is put into a hypnotic trance by psychic Quintis , thus causing her to regress back to a previous life...
and Dementia 13
Dementia 13
Dementia 13 is a 1963 horror thriller released by American International Pictures, starring William Campbell, Patrick Magee, and Luana Anders. The film was written and directed by Francis Ford Coppola and produced by Roger Corman...
.
Response
Michael Weldon, in his Psychotronic Encyclopedia of FilmPsychotronic Video
Psychotronic Video was a film magazine originally started by publisher/editor Michael J. Weldon in 1980 in New York City as a hand-written and photocopied weekly fanzine entitled Psychotronic TV. It was then relaunched by Weldon under its more commonly known name as an offset quarterly in 1989...
, called Blood Bath “a confusing but interesting horror film with an even more confusing history.” Phil Hardy’s The Aurum Film Encyclopedia
The Aurum Film Encyclopedia
The Aurum Film Encyclopedia is a multi-volume reference work on cinema, published in the UK by Aurum Press and edited by Phil Hardy. The first volume, devoted to western films, appeared in 1983, with eight subsequent volumes announced at that time as "forthcoming". However, as of 2007, only...
: Horror noted, “Cheap and crude, with echoes of a dozen movies ranging from Mystery of the Wax Museum (1933) to A Bucket of Blood
A Bucket of Blood
A Bucket of Blood is a 1959 American comedy horror film directed by Roger Corman. It starred Dick Miller and was set in beatnik culture. The film, produced on a $50,000 budget, was shot in five days, and shares many of the low-budget filmmaking aesthetics commonly associated with Corman's work....
(1959), this film isn’t unenjoyable." Cavett Binion of Allmovie wrote, "As one might imagine, this is pretty difficult to follow, but there are some good performances — particularly from William Campbell as the haunted shutterbug — and some fairly suspenseful scenes."
In 1991, Video Watchdog
Video Watchdog
Video Watchdog is a bimonthly, digest size film magazine started in 1990 by publisher/editor Tim Lucas and his wife, art director and co-publisher Donna Lucas....
magazine devoted lengthy articles in three separate issues fully detailing the production history of the film. These articles included interviews with Hill and Campbell, the latter of whom expressed shock when he was told that the film he had shot so long ago in Yugoslavia
Yugoslavia
Yugoslavia refers to three political entities that existed successively on the western part of the Balkans during most of the 20th century....
had been turned into five individual movies.
Other source
Lucas, TimTim Lucas
Tim Lucas is a film critic, biographer, novelist, screenwriter, blogger, and publisher/editor of the video review magazine Video Watchdog.-Biography and early career:...
The Trouble With Titian, Video Watchdog
Video Watchdog
Video Watchdog is a bimonthly, digest size film magazine started in 1990 by publisher/editor Tim Lucas and his wife, art director and co-publisher Donna Lucas....
, Issues #4, 5, and 7 (1991)
External links
- Allmovie: Blood Bath/Track of the Vampire entry