Кровавая баня Портрет ужаса: История одного фильма

1966 American horror film by Stephanie Rothman and Jack Hill
the 1966 American horror film

Blood Bath is a 1966 American horror film directed by Jack Hill and Stephanie Rothman and starring William Campbell, Linda Saunders, Marissa Mathes, and Sid Haig. The film concerns a mad painter of weird art who turns into a vampire like man (with different features) by night, apparently as a result of a family curse, and believes that he has found his reincarnated mistress in the person of an avant garde ballerina. Blood Bath had a complex and troubled production history, marked by various cuts and reshoots. In 1963 Roger Corman had co produced a Yugoslavia made spy thriller called Operation: Titian, but the film was deemed unreleasable. Corman purchased the rights to another film and assigned writer director Jack Hill to write a new script. This time, it was a horror film that incorporated the previous footage from Operation: Titian. Hill wrote and directed numerous horror sequences that were edited into the film, and it was re titled Portrait in Terror. Still unsatisfied with the completed product, Corman hired Stephanie Rothman to film additional sequences that were also added. This cobbled together feature was given a brief theatrical release by American International Pictures under the title Blood Bath, with screenplay and directorial credit jointly shared by Hill and Rothman. An additional version of the film was made for television and re titled Track of the Vampire.

In an unidentified locale, art student and model Daisy leaves a club alone after having an argument with her beatnik boyfriend Max. Walking through the deserted streets, she stops to admire some gruesome paintings in a gallery window painted by artist Antonio Sordi, who coincidentally also comes by to look in on his "lost children." After a friendly conversation, they return to Sordi's studio in a room beneath an old bell tower, where Sordi convinces the young woman to pose for him. There, however, Sordi is possessed by the spirit of a long dead ancestor and suddenly transforms into a vampiric monster who hacks the screaming Daisy to death with a cleaver, then lowers her mutilated corpse into a vat of boiling substance. In his vampiric form, Sordi has already killed a lone woman in the town square, then takes her to a nearby car and feigns kissing her so that a pair of oncoming pedestrians assume they are just lovers sharing an intimate moment. Another victim is approached at a party, chased into a swimming pool, and drowned there after the other guests have moved into the house. The murdered women are carried back to Sordi's studio and painted by the artist, their bodies then covered in wax. Because his vampiric self looks nothing like Sordi, facially, no one connects him with the rash of murders. Max wants to make up with Daisy but cannot find her anywhere. After recognizing her as the model in Sordi's painting of her, which is now on display at a local beatnik cafe, he goes to see her sister, Donna. Donna tells Max she hasn't seen Daisy for days, and is concerned about the recent rash of disappearances. She reads Max the legend of Sordi's 15th century ancestor Erno, a painter condemned to be burned at the stake for capturing his subjects' souls on canvas and being a vampire. Unable to convince Max that Antonio Sordi might also be a vampire, she confronts the artist at his studio and asks him if he has seen Daisy. He angrily brushes her off. That night, he later follows her through the streets and murders her as she tries to escape from him on a carousel. The "human" Sordi is in love with Dorian, an avant garde ballerina, Daisy's former roommate and a lookalike for both Donna and a former love, Meliza, the loss of whom may have driven him mad. At first he tries to protect her from his vampiric tendencies, warning her his studio is a cheerless place and at one point breaking a date with her to spend time gaining control of himself after murdering Daisy. But one day at the beach, she reveals her attraction to him and asks him to make love to her. He tries, but panics and runs away. As Dorian leaves the beach, she then is approached by the vampiric Sordi, who chases her back to town, where she is rescued by Max and two of his beatnik friends. They pursue the vampire while Dorian, shaken, and unaware the vampire is really Sordi, proceeds to the bell tower to try to get understanding why he fled from her. Sordi returns and finds Dorian in his studio. He madly enmeshes her in some netting, then comes at her with a knife, apparently believing she is really Meliza. But before he can harm her, numerous wax figures on the floor of the studio begin to move, come alive, and kill him. Max and his friends arrive, break in, and free Dorian.

Blood Bath debuted in cinemas in March 1966 through American International Pictures, and was screened as a double feature with Queen of Blood (1966), written and directed by Curtis Harrington and co produced by Rothman.

Michael Weldon, in his Psychotronic Encyclopedia of Film, called Blood Bath “a confusing but interesting horror film with an even more confusing history. Phil Hardy’s The Aurum Film Encyclopedia: Horror noted, “Cheap and crude, with echoes of a dozen movies ranging from Mystery of the Wax Museum (1933) to A Bucket of Blood (1959), this film isn’t unenjoyable." Cavett Binion of AllMovie wrote, "As one might imagine, this is pretty difficult to follow, but there are some good performances — particularly from William Campbell as the haunted shutterbug — and some fairly suspenseful scenes." In 1991, Video Watchdog magazine devoted lengthy articles in three separate issues fully detailing the production history of the film. These articles included interviews with Hill and Campbell, the latter of whom expressed shock when he was told that the film he had shot so long ago in Yugoslavia had been turned into five individual movies. Clayton Dillard of Slant Magazine awarded the film four out of five stars, writing: "Purely as a film, Blood Bath expectedly turns out to be a mash up of styles and tones, with surrealist flourishes (a tracking shot focused on Sordi in the wide open California desert) juxtaposing routine scenes of women being lured to the villain’s lair. Everything within it is odd, from rampant continuity errors, to unintelligible footage of shadowy figures from the preceding films interspersed throughout."

The film was released on DVD in 2011 through Metro Goldwyn Mayer's "Limited Edition Collection," which are made on demand discs. In May 2016, the film was released on Blu ray in a limited edition two disc set by Arrow Films. It features four versions of the film restored from the original negatives: the original Operation: Titian; Portrait in Terror; Blood Bath featuring Stephanie Rothman's re shoots; and Track of the Vampire. Hill's version of Blood Bath seems to be lost.