Shot on location outside of Vienna, Baron Blood ranks pretty low in director Mario Bava's filmography. The late, great horror auteur (the fountainhead of the popular "giallo" subgenre) coasts a bit here, recycling plot elements from earlier films in his career.
The story, in many ways a retread of the director's Black Sunday, concerns an American student on vacation in Austria. In addition to rest and relaxation, Peter Kleist (Antonio Cantafora) is interested in tracing his roots as he's a direct descendent of the titular sadist, a 16th-century "Vlad the Impaler" type.
Our young hero has in his possession an ancient parchment and hopes to come "face to face" with his ancestor by reciting an incantation in the very room where he was killed, even though he's been warned by his uncle (Massimo Girotti) not to dabble in the occult.
To assist him in this endeavor he enlists the aid of Eva (Elke Sommer), an expert on castles. The baron's castle (the locals call it "Castle of the Devil" and go out of their way to avoid it) is about to be converted into a hotel for foreign tourists and the pretty fräulein is a consultant on the project. Curious, and attracted to our self-assured protagonist, she leads the way yet expresses some misgivings ("If he really were to come back, he'd be a monster"). Peter, however, doesn't want to pass up such an opportunity. He assures her, too, that a second incantation may be invoked which will send the baron back: "If we don't dig him, we'll ditch him."
As often happens in stories of this type, however, something goes wrong. Here, a gust of wind blows the parchment into a fireplace where it is consumed before Peter can reverse the spell (incidentally, the two started this fire themselves in order to keep warm). This scene, however, isn't as exciting as it ought to be, partly due to the fact it treads over familiar ground.
The whole business with the parchment, for instance, recalls Curse of the Demon, the Jacques Tourneur horror classic from 1957. And what follows—a bowing door, the notion that a supernatural force is behind it, blood seeping underneath—comes to us by way of a specific moment in Tourneur's The Leopard Man (that one, one of a handful Val Lewton famously produced in the early Forties). It seems likely Bava or screenwriter Vincent Fotre drew from these sources. Bava, in fact, had previously worked with Tourneur—as cinematographer on the Steve Reeves, sword-and-sandal epic "La Battaglia di Maratona" (Giant of Marathon).
The second act of Baron Blood focuses on the resurrected corpse as it soon goes about killing those it comes in contact with. With the exception of Fritz (Alan Collins, aka Luciano Pigozzi), the castle's caretaker, however, these murders aren't particularly noteworthy. More funny than horrific, Fritz takes a crowbar to the shoulder as he attempts to steal a ring off a dead man's finger (recalling "The Drop of Water" story from Bava's Black Sabbath trilogy). He's subsequently tossed into a spiked coffin, which of course evokes the director's masterful Black Sunday (where a spiked mask was pounded onto Barbara Steele's face).
The last act of Baron Blood introduces two new characters: the wheelchair-bound Alfred Becker (Joseph Cotton), who buys the castle at auction and announces he's moving in (the earlier hotel plans mysteriously dropped); and a clairvoyant (Rada Rassimov) who might prove helpful in that she can contact the dead.
Baron Blood is mostly pretty diffuse and dull. Coming from the underrated Bava, it's disappointing to say the least. Aside from an appealing set (producer Alfredo Leone provided Bava with an actual castle, the Korneuberg Museum) and a stylishly shot chase sequence, there isn't a whole lot to recommend here. The principals are lackluster (and lack lust, though Elke Sommer does show off some leg) and there are no great shocks or surprises in this story. Familiarity doesn't breed contempt so much as boredom. Of Bava's "Blood" titles, this is the least bloody (PG-rated) and the least remarkable. Check out Blood and Black Lace and Bay of Blood instead.
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