An early collaboration between two directors who later became cult favourites – Jack Hill and Stephanie Rothman, both working for Roger Corman. It starts with a sort of Bucket of Blood flavour, with a bunch of beatniks and artists (including Sid Haig, so you know Jack Hill directed that bit) hanging out in a café.
The film gets progressively weirder, as befits its reputation. Basically it’s about an artist vampire who kills his models and dips them in wax. But you’re more likely to remember the disjointed feel and shocking continuity. There’s a long sequence where a girl dances on the beach; a hot bit where William Campbell paints a topless model while he does this monologue about an insane artist; an attractive woman changes into a bikini, walks into the water then straight out again to be menaced; weird dream sequences; another actor to help flesh out William Campbell’s role; Patrick Magee badly dubbed; a laughable bit where a vampire jumps in a pool after a victim.
Still, there are some spooky bits – deserted streets at night, an okay finale with Campbell’s creatures rebelling against him; attractive women in the cast; the novelty of Sid Haig and Jonathan Haze as beatniks.
There five versions of this movie – the original part-Roger Corman-financed Yugoslavian film, Operation: Titian, starring Campbell and Patrick Magee (on which Francis Ford Coppola apparently worked); a version for this adapted for TV as Portrait in Terror; the Jack Hill version, Blood Bath, where Hill did some extra work in the US (why Sid Haig and Jonathan Haze are in the film); the Stephanie Rothman version, also called Blood Bath, which turned Campbell into a vampire (only with a different actor playing Campbell’s part); the extended Rothman version, known as Track of the Vampire, with additional footage inserted to make up the TV running time. Of interest for fans of Hill and Rotham, which is why I saw it, but for the most past this is a mess.
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