"The director of the film, Jorge Grau, is less known than other Spanish "fear makers" of his generation like Jesus Franco or Paul Nashy. But with only three films (this one and the excellent Pena de Muerte and No Profanar el Sueno de los Muertos) he proves an incredible ability to create disturbing and compelling horror films.
Ceremonia Sangrienta is for me not only his masterpiece, its also the best attempt to do horror cinema in Spain, its as good as other countries with longer horror traditions like the United States, United Kingdom or Italy. The story is fascinating. It proposes a new point of view of the classical myth of the vampire, more realism than existed in the moment that was made the film, and really visionary.
Visually the film is equally splendid. The photography of Fernando Arribas, present in a lot of Spanish horror films like La Cruz del Diablo, Horror Express or the recent Memorias del Angel Caido, is simply extraordinary, giving the film the appropriate color and light.
The cast is perfect, especially the sensual actress Lucia Bose, but its the work of Jorge Grau behind the camera that makes this film so interesting. The tempo has ups and downs and progresses with the force of a train in the night, the mise in scene is classical and stylish at the same time, and I have no doubt that Grau really had known how to capture the essence of vampirism in images."
Covered Version of a great film
John M. Bernhard | 09/02/2009
(3 out of 5 stars)
"It's worth noting that this dvd from Mya utilizes a covered print, ie: nudity filmed for the movie is replaced by 'covered' shots so the film would pass censorship rules in the Franco ruled Spain of the 70's.
This is not what the director intended and not what fans want from a 70's exploitation horror movie.
This is a wonderful film, but Mya has chosen the cheaper, easy route and delivered a dvd that is sure to annoy fans of the film. Buyer beware."
4 Star Movie 1 Star DVD
Rod Torfulson | 12/08/2009
(1 out of 5 stars)
"The movie is a pretty startling gothic telling of the Countess Bathory tale. Think of a good Hammer movie with a Spanish/Italian flavor. Well acted and dubbed, it's not your usual Euro-trash.
Image quality looks good on a 4:3 tube TV, but on a widescreen TV (the disc is non-anamorphic in a 1.77:1 aspect ratio) blacks look blotchy. I can tolerate that. A couple of times when there is action and the camera or actors move quickly there is a weird ghosting issue. It's very infrequent and I can deal with that, too. The thing that bugs me is that 19 times (maybe more, but that was my count) throughout the movie the image pauses for a split second. Imagine a DVD layer change pause occurring that many times for the entire duration (starts around 7 minutes and continues through to the end credits) of the movie and you have an idea of what it's like. I read another review on the web that mentioned this (they didn't seem as bothered by it as I was) so it's not only the disc I got. I've also read a couple of reviews for the Island of the Fishmen MYA disc that mention that one having the same defect.
Also on the 2 out of 3 DVD players I tried it on the DVD would go straight to the main menu when I tried to rewind. The pause issue was the same on all 3 players.
So there you have it. I returned mine for a refund. If you can tolerate the defects it's worth a look, but if this sounds like something that would bother you then stay away.
And MYA please get your act together, these movies deserve better, and at the price you're asking for them the fans deserve better, too."
Good spanish adaptation of bathory story
Michael P. Dobey | colorado springs | 08/02/2009
(3 out of 5 stars)
"This movie is a adaption of the Countess Elizabeth Bathory story. She killed over 600 people and used their blood in a attempt to stay young. Only her real life story took place in a castle in hungary in the 1500's. This story takes place in the 1800's and the main character is supposed to be a decendant of the evil countess. Many parts of the story are very similiar to the real countess who was walled up alive in her castle and her evil cohorts were all burned. In this story which is well photographed and done in a good straight forward manner; the evil countess makes her husband fake his death so he can kill victims for her. The people of that century and earlier did in fact try the dead for being vampires and their idea of vampires is different from ours. They Believed the body stayed in the ground but the soul came out to suck the life or blood of the living. At least that's how most europeons looked at vampires until Bram Stokers "dracula" novel. So noone wanted to be a vampire back then , after all rotting in a grave and your soul is out and about is not romantic like a "Twilight" book. I would have rather seen a story about supernatural vampires in a castle but
this story is good enough to be enjoyable for 1970's Europeon made horror film fans. There is gore and bloodletting but it's not bad by todays standards. Someday someone will do a real faithful movie about Bathory and it will be very horrible indeed. The print of this movie looks pretty good and thanks to Mya for getting this older movie to our shores. Now if they can find some movie like 'orgy of the vampires" or other supernatural europeon vampire movie that has never been released with a decent print that would make many people happy. They are putting out 'Island of the fishmen" aka 'screamers" and that is excellent news indeed. The acting is very good in this movie and the whole enterprise was done by veterans and that's another reason to enjoy this movie as well.
It has a english soundtrack and original spanish as well. So if you are a fan of 1970's Europeon horror then you might enjoy this movie."