Blood Ceremony or Ceremonia Sangrienta in its native Spain is a horror film retelling the myth of Elizabeth Báthory though through one of her descendants who has a similar first name of Erzebeth...
Set in 19th century Europe, people are still superstitious about vampires and the like. The film starts with villagers exhuming a grave of a recently deceased man they suspect of being a vampire and put the body on trial where they make sure he is dead by putting a stake through his heart.
Erzebeth's husband is at this hearing and is intrigued to hear about a medallion the man had been wearing which is daughter said was cursed. He takes it and tells the rest he will wear it to disprove the theory of curses and vampires.
In the meantime, Erzebeth is feeling old and unloved by her husband who seems to be more interested in his birds and reading then her. One day in incident occurs where the blood of a much younger woman is spilled and gets on the skin of Erzebeth and she notices it makes the area look younger. She is then reminded by her lady companion of her ancestor’s story of how she bathed in blood to make her younger and to which they hatch a plan to murder more young women to keep her young looking.
Her husband while wearing the medallion suddenly dies due to the curse and comes back from the dead and pursues various young maidens in the village for himself and to help his wife keep her youthful appearance.
It all comes to a head where they are found out, though at first it seems everyone blames Erzebeth's husband whose body is up for trail and a stake put through his heart, however she confesses to her crimes in front of everyone.
The film ends with the punishment being dished out; her companion has her tongue removed but is allowed to live but only to serve Erzebeth whose punishment is to be bricked into her room in her castle where she will live until she dies with the last shot being of her face that is now older looking due to not bathing in any more blood.
This was an ok film, did feel it dragged a little in places. It does however capture a time of film making where I think where European horror was probably at its best, though believe at the time it was a victim a bit of the Spanish censors cutting out a bit of nudity. It has a feel of trying to be a bit like a Hammer Horror though again around this time Hammer were putting out some great films so could see how it make other film makers/studios try copy and recreate the same elsewhere if not at times better it.
It was directed by Jorge Grau a year before he would go on to do the great Living Dead at Manchester Morgue. The film is also known as The Legend of Blood Castle and has a couple of other names it goes by, off the top of my head think Female Butcher is one of them.
Mondo Macabro, recently released it on Blu Ray with both cuts of the film and as always they have did a great job of bringing it back from maybe slight obscurity.
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