Blood Bath

This is complicated so pay attention. Roger Corman bought an unfinished film shot in Europe called OPERATION TITIAN concerning the hunt by both cops and crooks for a stolen Titian painting. Patrick Magee was the star. At the same time Jack Hill was shooting a movie in Venice, CA about an artist (biker film alumnus William Campbell) who kills his models and dips them in boiling wax (where have we heard THAT before?). By combining the footage, a trick he was to do many times in the 60's Corman created a film that essentially made no sense at all. Now that has never stopped our Roger so he brought in new director Stephanie Rothman who added an effect new to American movies, an oil dissolve, and shot even more footage to create a film about an artist who sometimes transforms into his remote ancestor who was falsely accused of witchcraft and burned at the stake only to return as a vengeance seeking vampire. Got all that? The stolen Titian painting was lost in the shuffle and Patrick Magee shows up only briefly as a jealous husband who gets dumped alive into the boiling wax.

Meanwhile watch for Corman regulars Jonathan Haze, Sid Haig and Carl Schanzer turn up as Beatniks (leftover characters from BUCKET OF BLOOD perhaps?) who hang out in a coffee house, argue about art and use the word "quantum" a little too frequently. Also in the cast is Lori Saunders (billed here as "Linda") who went on the play the airhead, would-be journalist Bobbie Jo Bradley on "Petticoat Junction". This time she plays a dancer who is in love with Campbell never suspecting what he does with his models. She has a lengthy (8 minutes by my stopwatch!) scene where she does an interpretive dance on the beach and models 3 bikinis, each one smaller than the one before it, during the film.

I do believe Joe Spinell saw this movie since the ending of his film MANIAC borrows liberally from the climax of BLOOD BATH.

PS: This was not Lori Saunders only encounter with a mad killer. She would be chased by an axe wielding psychopath in a Tor Johnson mask (!) in SO SAD ABOUT GLORIA (1972).

Blood Bath (1966)

** (out of 4)

Artist Antonio Sordi (William Campbell) is a painter who specializes in nude but bloody prints. What people don't realize is that he's actually a vampire who is constantly luring young woman to their death.

Producer Roger Corman hired Jack Hill and Stephanie Rothman to take the unmarketable 1963 film OPERATION TICIJAN and turn it into something that could be shown at drive-ins. What they did was take footage from that movie and added some new footage of Campbell as a vampire and the end result was BLOOD BATH. However, things didn't stop here as this film only ran 62 minutes so when it came time to put it on television as TRACK OF THE VAMPIRE they had to film even more new scenes to pad out the time.

If you go through the special edition Blu-ray you'll have Tim Lucas explaining the complicated history of this film, which included the original movie having its own television version under the title PORTRAIT OF TERROR. Having now seen all the versions, it's easy to say that none of them are good movies. If I had to view another one again I'd probably go with BLOOD BATH since it's the shortest of the lot and contains some nice supporting players including Sid Haig and Jonathan Haze.

The entire vampire stuff isn't shot overly well and the film is quite choppy once you can tell and notice it's history but for the most part it's a quick 62 minutes and I'd argue that it's cheap entertainment. There's certainly nothing ground-breaking or "important" to be had with this film but it is certainly different to say the least.

Don't get carried away too much by the cool sounding title, the awesome looking film poster or the names of the some of the people involved in this production, as "Blood Bath" is not one of those vastly entertaining Roger Corman B-movie cheapies, but a weird and experimental hybrid of 2-3 movies at once. As far as I can tell, Corman initially hired Jack Hill ("Spider Baby", "Pit Stop") as director but he then got replaced by Stephanie Rothman ("The Velvet Vampire") who was ordered to insert bits and pieces of a Yugoslavian movie where the producer wasted his money on … or something like that! The result is an oddity that very occasionally is tense & atmospheric, but most of the time just dull, incoherent and meaningless. Daisy Allen is a young model desperately looking for an artist to make her famous, but all she ever encounters are idiots in rancid bars that shoot with paintball guns at paintings. She then runs into the promising artist Antonio Sordi, who also happens to be romantically involved with her sister Donna, but he quickly proves to be a lunatic who talks to the illustration of a woman on canvas and believes he's the reincarnation of a cruel vampire. So instead of making artful portraits of his models, he slaughters them and boils their bodies in a hot wax bath! Yes, I do realize it sounds like terrific horror entertainment, but I assure you it's not. During perhaps 2 or 3 scenes, the atmosphere of "Blood Bath" reminiscent to genre classics that were released earlier in the decade, notably "Dementia 13" and "Bucket of Blood" both of which also came from Roger Corman's stable. Unfortunately these are only a few isolated moments of greatness, while the vast majority of the film is utter baloney. The undeniable highlight is a bizarre and nightmarish chase sequence ending on a merry-go-round! What a giant contrast with the absolute low point, which is a stupid split-screen ballerina dancing scene on the beach that that lasts for … Well, I don't know exactly how long it lasted because I pressed the fast- forward button. Far too long, that's for sure!

1966's "Track of the Vampire" was first released theatrically at 62 minutes, under the title "Blood Bath," but this review will be of the full 78 minute version issued to television. William Campbell stars as Antonio Sordi, an artist lauded for his paintings of dead nudes, who believes himself to be the reincarnation of an artist ancestor burned at the stake for sorcery after being exposed by his latest model, Miliza, who believed her soul had been captured on canvas. Sordi keeps a portrait of Miliza in his studio, and cannot make love to his newest muse Dorean (Lori Saunders) because of her close resemblance to it. All the new scenes with Campbell were filmed by director Jack Hill, maintaining the name he used in "Portrait in Terror," but whenever the character becomes a blonde haired vampire sporting tiny fangs (!), a different actor was cast by new director Stephanie Rothman, resulting in sporadic chase sequences and a ballet lasting more than 3 minutes. Just over 9 (out of 81) minutes of footage from "Portrait in Terror" were used, recasting an unbilled Patrick Magee as a jealous husband (the exotic dancer now becoming his wife) who winds up covered in wax, like all of Sordi's female victims (the shared sequence between Campbell and Magee has completely new dialogue badly overdubbed). Apparently, he kills them first, paints their nude likenesses, then covers each corpse in wax. Campbell himself doesn't make his first appearance until 22 minutes in, the vampire having already worn out its welcome with a 6 1/2 minute pursuit of a young lass who ends up in the ocean minus most of her clothes, while a middleweight Tor Johnson lookalike acts as temporary lifeguard. The ending didn't make any sense, but probably made the film. Stephanie Rothman did all the vampire stuff, including the subplot featuring Sandra Knight, all of which is self contained (only a single dissolve fuses the artist and the vampire, pretty lame). Jack Hill did all the beatnik scenes, plus the bizarre climax, filming in Venice California. I'd say each director was split fairly even, sharing writing and directing credits, but never working in tandem (the uncredited Roger Corman replaced Hill with Rothman).

A crazed artist (William Campbell) who believes himself to be the reincarnation of a murderous vampire kills young women, then boils their bodies in a vat.

Michael Weldon called Blood Bath "a confusing but interesting horror film with an even more confusing history." This is quite right, as the film actually started out as a spy thriller filmed in Yugoslavia with William Campbell, and Francis Ford Coppola somehow involved. But Roger Corman did not like the finished product -- which no one has ever seen -- and scrapped it.

And then, wanting to revive it as a horror film, he brought in Jack Hill to cut out the spy parts and film new horror parts. Let me say, I love Jack Hill. Now, that is because I think "Spider Baby" might be the greatest horror film of the 1960s. But Hill is no slouch in this earlier outing, either (financially backed by B-movie god Roger Corman and with supporting actors Sid Haig and Patrick Magee).

But then, after Hill completed his version of the film, Corman again did not like it... and a third director was hired to finish the job. That is the film we have today.

With the three visions mixed, there is a something of a mystery to this film, almost like a bit of a dream to it. While it could be compared to "Color Me Blood Red" or "A Bucket of Blood" (many have pointed out the beatnik artist connection), there is more ambiguity here. Is the artist a vampire? A reincarnation of a vampire? Even connected at all? George Romero explored this theme again (albeit in a very different way) with "Martin", but I think Jack Hill did just as well in many respects.

I would love to see what Hill's version looked like before the new additions and changes. Would it be better? Worse? Just different? I have no idea. But now, looking back on Hill's career, we see he is a far more important part of cinema history than he could have been known to be at the time. Preserving his work would be a good way to add to his legacy, and I would firmly support it.