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The Torture Chamber of Baron Blood

The Torture Chamber of Baron Blood – 1972
aka Orrori del castello di Norimberga, Gli
Director
Mario Bava

Writers
Vincent Fotre

Cast
Joseph Cotten
Elke Sommer
Massimo Girotti

Review by Wayne Malin

Beautiful but just OK,

A young man, Peter, goes to Austria looking for relatives. He also finds a huge castle being renovated which belonged to an ancestor of his…Baron Blood. Blood was an evil man who tortured and killed people until being killed himself. Unwittingly, Peter brings the Baron back from the dead. Then things really start getting bloody…

This is a review of the uncut version (which runs about 100 minutes) not the PG 90 minute version.

One of Bava’s better horror films. It looks just beautiful, has an eerie atmosphere and moves fairly quickly (after a slow opening). There’s also plenty of blood (most of it is missing from the PG version). As noted before, the opening half hour or so is slow and dull…but after Cotten shows up, things really get moving.

The bad parts: Elke Sommer–she looks great but is not a particularly good actress. She isn’t terrible but she isn’t good either…also, she has the worst scream I’ve ever heard! Cotten appears to be drunk during most of the movie and really chews the scenery again and again. The dubbing of everybody else is terrible! It’s even worse than those Godzilla movies! And the plot is kind of vague.

Still, it spooked me, had some truly beautiful settings and lighting and enough blood for a horror fan like me. Worth catching…try to see the uncut, newly done print.

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