Barba Azul

This film has a lot of neat ideas, some beautiful women, and Burton as world-weary Baron with a campy, phony, middle-European accent. The script is clever and the sets are lavish, with Bluebeard's estate evoking E. A. Poe's Prince Prospero's: a different color dominating each separate room.

Only Dmytryk fails as a director. The material frankly begs for someone like a Roger Vadim or even Roger Corman. BLUEBEARD should have been more fun, more intelligent than the Vincent Price movies of the time (such as THEATRE OF BLOOD) or even those of Roger Vadim (such as PRETTY MAIDS ALL IN A ROW), and yet it isn't. The script demands macabre humor and erotica, and Dmytryk couldn't deliver either, even in his heyday (and this film was made at the end of his slow, sad artistic decline).

However, I personally enjoy this movie more for what it could have been than what it is. Unlike Chaplin's MONSUIER VERDOUX, and other "Bluebeard" movies directed by various people (from Edgar G. Ulmer to Claude Chabral) this is one film not inspired by the true story of Landru. It much more hearkens back to the original Perrault fairytale, only done in the modern times with Burton's Bluebeard as a proto-Nazi. It's not a bad idea for a film, but someone more hip, with more energy, was needed to pull it off.

Enjoyable, campy fun featuring a number of beautiful women, most of whom go nude, a seductive score by Ennio Morricone, good old fashioned direction from Edward Dmytryk that stresses atmosphere and setting, and that uses the flashback structure to good effect. Burton is an amusing Bluebeard and he's a lot more enjoyable here than he was in The ExorcistII(77), and Joey Heatherton who worked with Dmytryk in Where Love Has Gone(64)is well cast as the only American and the film's only likable character. Though Heatherton's look is not period, her charm and appeal to Burton's Bluebeard is believable, especially since most of Bluebeard's other wives are depicted somewhat unflatteringly. Though the film's treatment and attitude towards women is largely exploitive, and the film could be better paced, it's nonetheless diverting trash and thanks to a clever ad campaign and trailer it was a hit when released in theaters in 1972. The theatrical trailer is featured on Anchor Bay's DVD.

Austrian aristocrat Kurt Von Sepper (Richard Burton) is a celebrated WWI pilot with a striking blue beard and connections to the fledgling neo-Nazis. He's a real ladykiller. He meets and marries American vaudeville performer Anne (Joey Heatherton). After moving into his castle, she makes disturbing discoveries including his seeming inability to consummate their marriage. He gives her the keys to the castle with a golden key which leads to a freezer filled with his murdered former wives. He recounts to her the story of each wive and their faults which led to him murdering them. Anne plots her escape as she listens to his tales of horror.

This is sold as an erotic thriller with an international cast of beauties such as Raquel Welch. Joey Heatherton has a sincere bouncy cuteness which fits the sincere vaudeville role. However, she is not the best of actresses. She has to be both inwardly horrified and outwardly placating the crazed killer. Her inconsistencies only add to the camp of this movie. Richard Burton is still a powerful actor but the material is strictly B-level. There are some very memorable kill scenes like the elephant tusk chandelier and the hawk. The erotic thrills are fleeting and the horror is old style weak. Most of it is in flashbacks which takes away any intensity. It is still a memorable camp classic.

"Bluebeard" is neither a masterpiece nor a memorable movie. It is an outdated film... Nevertheless, more than thirty years later, it is still entertaining and funny. Why?

Because this 1972 version of the "Bluebeard" story -a wealthy charming psychopathic who kills his wives- is full of sarcasm, with a light horror touch. In this movie Richard Burton, who plays an insane, is once again a great leading man, surrounded by a group of sexy actresses at the height of their beauty (Raquel Welch, Virna Lisi, Nathalie Delon, Agostina Belli, Marilù Tolo, ...). The film is deliberately and elegantly kitsch... Watch the production design, the colours, the hunt scenes and the killing scenes -everything is filmed in a cynical and sardonic way. The film has quite a luxurious package, it's like a psycho-erotic endless game.

"Bluebeard" has no place in the movie history, I think it is an underrated film. But it has good points, even if it looks its age. To me it is a cult movie.

In the past, I’d watched three other versions (four, if one includes Charles Chaplin’s variation MONSIEUR VERDOUX [1947]) about the famous fictional serial killer Landru – the 1944 Edgar G. Ulmer/John Carradine and 1963 Claude Chabrol/Charles Denner BLUEBEARD and the W. Lee Wilder/George Sanders BLUEBEARD’S TEN HONEYMOONS from 1960.

Actually, this one is best approached as “Euro-Cult” (what with its flashes of nudity from a bevy of international beauties) rather than a historical piece – BLUEBEARD, incidentally, was a production of the Salkinds, soon to enjoy critical success with Richard Lester’s “Three Musketeers” films and, eventually, the money would come pouring in with the “Superman” franchise. Besides, the tone is unsurprisingly one of black comedy – with the titular ladies’ man revealed as an impotent who’s forced to kill a succession of spouses so as to keep this embarrassing fact a secret! Incidentally, it also transpires that events as depicted on-screen may well be fabricated since the real reason for the killings only emerges towards the end: “Bluebeard” – a WWI air ace – recounts his romantic misadventures to his latest conquest, a young American showgirl, after she’s cajoled by her husband towards the discovery of a secret passage leading to the vault wherein all the bodies of his former wives lie frozen!

The treatment is somewhat heavy-handed (with obvious predatory symbols, for instance): its connotations to Nazism, too, prove unnecessary – and, consequently, Bluebeard’s demise/come-uppance seems fateful when it should have been slyly ironic. All of which results in an uneven film with a tendency towards camp – though undeniably abetted by the overall handsome look (“Euro-Cult” regular Gabor Pogany is the cinematographer) and a typically imposing score by Ennio Morricone; incidentally, I had used portions of a funereal motif from the soundtrack of this film for my final short during the NYFA course I took in Hollywood a couple of years back! Individual contributions by the star cast, then, are also variable: to begin with, Richard Burton’s thespian skills were often misused during this particular period – lending his services to interesting but often ill-advised ventures (three more of which I watched only recently, namely DOCTOR FAUSTUS [1967], CANDY [1968] and THE ASSASSINATION OF TROTSKY [1972]); in this case, he sports a silly colored beard (the script having interpreted the title all-too-literally, but which might actually be an indication that it shouldn’t be taken seriously) and looks alternately bored and exasperated throughout!

The ladies are all easy on the eyes but also surprisingly willing, with Joey Heatherton as the stunning current bride getting the lion’s share of the running-time. The others – in order of appearance – are Karin Schubert (when Burton’s deficiency, excused at first by a period of convalescence ostensibly suffering from a war wound, can no longer be concealed, she threatens to expose him to public ridicule and this triggers off his homicidal ‘urge’!); Virna Lisi (enjoying herself as she drives Burton to distraction with her incessant singing of corny love songs!); Nathalie Delon (a model whose inexperience in love leads her to take lessons from prostitute Sybil Danning, but the two become instant lovers!); Raquel Welch (a nymphomaniac who attempts to stifle the habit by, ahem, donning it i.e. she becomes a nun!); Marilu' Tolo (again, fun as an outspoken feminist – who even kicks Burton where it hurts! – but who also turns out to be a closet masochist); and Agostina Belli (as an outwardly-innocent but actually spoilt child-bride).

Going back to that “Euro Cult” comment, BLUEBEARD may have been influenced by the giallo work of Mario Bava – with its set of glamorous female victims (as in BLOOD AND BLACK LACE [1964]) and the novel methods of assassination (in the wake of A BAY OF BLOOD [1971]). Still, amid its forced Hitchcock references (the embalmed mother from PSYCHO [1960] and the falcon attack a' la THE BIRDS [1963]), it appears that Burton & Co. were consciously emulating the previous year’s success THE ABOMINABLE DR. PHIBES (1971) – a low-budgeted but stylish vehicle for horror icon Vincent Price. Of course, one can’t forget to mention the film’s affinity with the classic Ealing black comedy KIND HEARTS AND CORONETS (1949) in its nonchalant, inevitably comical attitude to murder.