One of horror giant Mario Bava's biggest hits, Baron Blood returns to the all-stops-out Gothic atmosphere and the central theme of a witch's curse that fuelled his breakthrough film Black Sunday twelve years earlier.
This time, the curse was placed on Baron Otto von Kleist, Austria's legendarily murderous 'Baron Blood', whose corpse is inadvertently revived when an ancient incantation is read out as a joke by a descendant and his girlfriend. Naturally, the Baron decides to carry on where he originally left off, with the help of an entire vault of elaborate torture devices.
Joseph Cotten (Citizen Kane, The Third Man) has a whale of a time as the deceptively charming Baron, and is given sterling support from Elke Sommer (Lisa and the Devil), who is chased through fog-shrouded alleyways in one of Bava's most memorably atmospheric set-pieces.
Review
Arrow goes above-and-beyond offering three version of the film in 1080P (seamlessly branched for 2 - AIP version looks like a separate encode - running time 1:30:30): Gli orrori del castello di Norimberga with Italian opening and closing titles and Baron Blood with English opening and closing titles and the European English export version audio, and for the first time on home video, the AIP version with alternate score by Les Baxter. - DVD Beaver 4/5