Vampire Fans, Don’t Sink Your Teeth Into Blood Bath (1966)
The old saying, “Hokey is okey unless the acting is jokey,” was coined for movies like Blood Bath (wha’da’ya mean you never heard that old saying before?). Arguably, in its history American International has produced few five-star movies, however that does not mean that American International films are not entertaining. It’s just that most seem to fall into one of two categories: either they are so bad they are good, or they are so bad they are torment.
If you can imagine those two categories as two extremes on a scale, Blood Bath is planted perilously close to torment. Based on the hypothesis that everyone loves vampires (though maybe not the moody, sparkly, teenage kind), filmmakers think that everyone will love anything with vampires that they throw at us. Which means that if you love vampire movies, you get to watch a whole bunch that just…well, there’s no other way to say it…suck.
Blood Bath has two major flaws: the acting is horrocious and the villain would have been better cast as a serial killer. The major characters in Blood Bath are artists and their models. One artist, Antonio Sordi (William Campbell), specializes in paintings of bleeding, murdered women. Another artist, Max (Karl Schanzer), shoots paint-ball prototypes at oil paintings--his own oil paintings (it’s “quantum art”), and hangs out in a coffeehouse with beatniks who pour wine on his head.
You don’t want to be bored with the details and plethora of flaws of Blood Bath, so instead I’ll take a cue from American International, a studio that didn’t put much effort into their film, and simply say: it stinks. (In the trailer above, director Jack Hill explains why Blood Bath is so awful).
Blood Bath is part of the MGM Special Edition Collection and is available manufactured-on-demand from on-line retailers.
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