Bloody Hell! The Legend of Blood Castle (1973)

This is a dark and smart Spanish horror, better budgeted than the average Hammer, and featuring a different take on Sheridan le Fanu’s stories of Carmilla, based on Erzebeth Báthory, an actual Sixteenth Century Hungarian baroness who, allegedly, bathed in the blood of female virgins in order to preserve her youth. The Guinness Book of Records has Báthory as the most prolific female murderer, although both the number of her victims and the cause of their deaths is disputed. With le Fanu’s help though The Blood Countess or Countess Dracula as she was also known, inspired everything from a section in Walerian Borowczyk’s Immoral Tales (1974) (screening as part of the BFI’s Scala season this January) to The Vampire Lovers and all points in between and beyond to Q Anon and current lunatic conspiracies. We're all just peasants it seems, at the beck and call of our betters.

 

Lucia Bose

Lucia Bose – who I first saw in Antonioni’s early films, Chronicle of a Love (1950) and The Lady With the Camelias (1953) – is still very beautiful here and plays Erzebeth Bathory living on the cusp of middle age with her faithless husband, Karl (Espartaco Santoni apparently deep in character as he tried to pursue his female co-stars…) who is more interested in the sports of hunting prey and women. Their story becomes entangled with the restorative powers of human blood and the vampire hunting of the local population, something as earthed in human suspicions of the witch hunts in Britain and America at this point in history.

 

The film begins with the locals in search of a buried vampire, there’s an angry mob following a naked lad on a horse which, as you all should know, is a sure-fire way of locating a vampire. So it proves as a vampire is unearthed in the churchyard and, after a stake is driven through his heart, the body is taken back to the town for a bizarre prosecution. Karl, as one of the local men of substance, is one of the magistrates involved and is amused by the process just as much as he is sceptical.

 

Not Matt Berry but Espartaco Santoni

Directed and written by Jorge Grau, the film is a little deliberate in pacing but is remarkably vivid with strong performances and gothic trimmings, it’s restrained in the physical horror preferring to suggest the horror and to build atmosphere. Yes, there is a fair amount of blood and of naked young maidens slain and bleeding out for the Baroness’ to bathe but this is not overused… and would unbalance the film if it was.

 

After all, what could be more uncanny than the trial of a dead vampire in which the dead man’s wife and daughter have to recount their ordeal in front of the court – including one man named Helsing at least in the English subtitles I saw. This is a society in fear o the unexplained and Baron Karl, enjoys debating the issue with fellow magistrates as they tuck into red steaks – animals living off the blood of other animals.

 

Karl discovers one of the great house’s serving girls smearing her breasts and those of her friend in the blood of a pigeon in the belief that it will benefit their firmness, he considers raping her friend but lets them go. Do as they wilt is pretty much his guiding principle and he’s a man only just held back by society’s rules.

 

Ewa Aulin

 

The same servant girl accidentally pricks herself and a few drops of her blood fall onto the Baroness’ hand who discovers that the skin is immediately refreshed and younger looking. With the encouragement of her superstitious maid Nodriza (Ana Farra), who tells her of an earlier Erzebeth – the dialogue and plot are possible a little too extensive – and the possibility that a virgin’s blood will bring her youthful vigour back. After testing the theory on a young girl – scratching her hand on broken glass – the cruel couple hatch a more dastardly plan.

 

They use ancient potions to fake the Baron’s death, he apparently drops dead of heart failure playing at the piano forte, only to resurrect him after his entombment in the family vault. He is now free to seduce and murder innocent young girls who are slaughtered in the castle’s loft over an elaborate hole which allows their blood to drip down to a grail from which the increasingly youthful Baroness drinks. It's not the instant transformation as in Countess Dracula (1971) when Ingrid Pitt arises covered in blood and nothing else, but more subtle than this as light make up on Bose hints at the marginal benefit and the huge death toll that will be required to make it work. Karl is tested though as he – finally – finds his heart and falls for the daughter of a local innkeeper, Marina played by the lovely Ewa Aulin.

The verdict is in...

Will love conquer Karl, how long can the Baroness keep her supply of virgin blood a secret and just what is the penalty for dead vampires being found guilty of vampirism? You’ll have to watch the film to find out!

 

Dusty verdict: This is an interesting film despite my quibbles about the pacing and dialogue. There are excellent performances from Lucia Bose and Espartaco Santoni especially and your sympathy is drawn for the Baroness, alone and ageing with her brute of a husband usually away enjoying the pleasures of the flesh. The fact that Santoni bears a slight resemblance to Matt Berry doesn’t distract from the tone although if there’s a remake, he’s a shoe-in!

 

There are various cuts of the film and I watched what I think is the fullest length version entitled Blood Ceremony... which is the international cut. The Spanish cut has more clothing!

 

The non-conformist… Bartleby (1970)

I confess that I was in the mood for a more ebullient film and confused this with Alan Bates’ Butley (1974) but once you start watching John McEnery’s turn as the almost impenetrable Bartleby it’s hard to look away. This film is as emotionally intelligent as they come and provides a puzzle for the audience and performers alike with a character who behaves in ways that are often painful to watch and which speak to our insecurities and the instinctive need to not only respond in kind to others’ prompting but to conform in most of what we do. Society expects and there’s a good adaptive instinct behind that but to every rule there must be an exception and, perhaps the main character is one of those accidents of nature that leads nowhere or somewhere depending on your point of view.

The film is an adaptation of the short story Bartleby, the Scrivener; A Story of Wall-street (1853) written by Herman Melville apparently in reaction to the disappointing sales of Moby Dick and Pierre, his preceding novel. As such it’s source story of possibly about depression and alienation, but updated and relocated to London, by director Anthony Friedman who co-scripted with Rodney Carr-Smith, its meaning is less hard to pin down. The main character is withdrawn and, in being so, pulls in his employer, an accountant played by the masterly Paul Scofield whose commercial concerns are replaced by an enigmatic concern for the other’s well-being even as he exasperates and frustrates him.

John McEnery

The film also provides something of a city symphony with extensive locations showing the London of 1970 and there is much fun to be had in spotting streets and buildings that are familiar and yet long changed, this is an aftertaste of a city we all take for granted and yet which never gives us pause for breath. Bartleby is first seen on a train heading into Euston where he puts his luggage into a locker and after a tube journey – Northern Line? - emerges into the bright London light and immediately looks out of place in the concrete jungle as commuters mill around the temporary walkways around London Bridge.

Bartleby is looking for work and we see flashbacks of his previous position in a Post Office sorting office as he trudges the streets, a look of vague dissatisfaction and wariness indicating a troubled past and a troubling present. McEnery manages to convey everything and almost nothing and whilst depression may have been on the script there’s a ringing familiarity with Asperger’s and autism speaking as a member of an autistic family. Diagnoses were rarer in 1970 but today we’re seeing what was 1% of the population on the spectrum steadily growing through better diagnosis – it’s a cliché but neurotypicality is a broad spectrum in itself as is the atypical ASD person; it’s not a monolithic condition and every single person has supposedly contraindicating “spikes”.

McEnery’s Bartleby presents in similar ways one of which is that he always tells the truth no matter how inconvenient that is; he doesn’t mean to be difficult, he is just saying how he feels at that particular point. What he faces is a monumental absence of sympathy and even the concern of his fellow workers doesn’t go anywhere deep enough to make a connection.

The Office (1970)

Bartleby passes the test to get a job as a clerk at the accountancy firm run by Scofield’s accountant and, despite his odd refusal to discuss anything other than what he has written on his application, he clearly knows how to keep books and, naturally, we all assume this will be the beginning of his “fitting in”. Everyone masks their true feelings in the workplace to some extent, I’ve passed psychometric tests I shouldn’t have and we all know what behaviours are expected (unless you work for GB News…). The anticipation of our hero doing the same is quickly vanished by his polite refusal to fit in with his co-workers, Tucker (Colin Jeavons), Dickinson (Tony Parkin), Miss Borwn the secretary (Rosalind Elliot), office lad (the mighty Robin Askwith) and even the tea lady, Hilda (Hope Jackman) who try but are politely rebuffed.

Then Bartleby startles the head accountant by refusing to do a task - I don't feel I can. Just at the moment - this sets the older man back and he tries again, still patiently asking what he means only to be told that his clerk would prefer not to explain. The next morning Bartleby offers the same explanation and the mantra of I prefer not to becomes more frequent even as he continues with some tasks and not others.

In between these moments of escalating conflict, the young man wanders the city, looking on in fascination at the old Starling murmuration in Leicester Square and emblem of a tight knit “society” all the birds flying in close formation, never colliding and swooping down on the insects that are their reward for joint enterprise…

John and Paul

The Accountant’s friend, played by Thorley Walters, asks him why he doesn’t just sack Bartleby but he is determined to try and help the man. He tries all reasoning and, even when he discovers that Bartleby is sleeping in the office overnight, can’t bring himself to refuse him another chance. The Accountant becomes the focus as the narrative darkens and we are all Paul Scofield as his movable force meets this irresistible object.

Dusty Verdict: It’s a truly fascinating contest with both Scofield and McEnery leaving everything on the pitch and leaving the viewer with plenty of take-aways. What the film lacks in action it makes for with questions and the locations only serve to remind us that this is the capital we still walk and that, by and large, we still must walk the same talk.

Why would someone take the hard way out? Perhaps there are some like Bartleby who simply have to. It’s not a preference but something, perhaps the only thing, they cannot say no to.

  

 

Chiswell Street between the Barbican and Moorgate

 

Grimsby Street off Brick Lane

Hungerford Bridge heading north

Piccadilly - definitely Let it be...

This and above St Alphage Highwalk near Moorgate

Rupert Street heading south from Soho