That was an excellent one.

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

A film of deceptively outspoken contemporary relevance, this is cinema at its most alert, alarming and alive.

After playing with our expectations, this turns out to be a very different sort of film.

Don't get carried away too much by the cool sounding title, the awesome looking film poster or the names of the some of the people involved in this production, as "Blood Bath" is not one of those vastly entertaining Roger Corman B-movie cheapies, but a weird and experimental hybrid of 2-3 movies at once. As far as I can tell, Corman initially hired Jack Hill ("Spider Baby", "Pit Stop") as director but he then got replaced by Stephanie Rothman ("The Velvet Vampire") who was ordered to insert bits and pieces of a Yugoslavian movie where the producer wasted his money on … or something like that! The result is an oddity that very occasionally is tense & atmospheric, but most of the time just dull, incoherent and meaningless. Daisy Allen is a young model desperately looking for an artist to make her famous, but all she ever encounters are idiots in rancid bars that shoot with paintball guns at paintings. She then runs into the promising artist Antonio Sordi, who also happens to be romantically involved with her sister Donna, but he quickly proves to be a lunatic who talks to the illustration of a woman on canvas and believes he's the reincarnation of a cruel vampire. So instead of making artful portraits of his models, he slaughters them and boils their bodies in a hot wax bath! Yes, I do realize it sounds like terrific horror entertainment, but I assure you it's not. During perhaps 2 or 3 scenes, the atmosphere of "Blood Bath" reminiscent to genre classics that were released earlier in the decade, notably "Dementia 13" and "Bucket of Blood" both of which also came from Roger Corman's stable. Unfortunately these are only a few isolated moments of greatness, while the vast majority of the film is utter baloney. The undeniable highlight is a bizarre and nightmarish chase sequence ending on a merry-go-round! What a giant contrast with the absolute low point, which is a stupid split-screen ballerina dancing scene on the beach that that lasts for … Well, I don't know exactly how long it lasted because I pressed the fast- forward button. Far too long, that's for sure!

If you read what I write on a regular basis then you already know that I have a love for all things Arrow Video. It's one of those companies determined to resurrect movies from the past that are overlooked, forgotten or tossed aside by their home studios and then offer them in pristine condition with enough extras to entertain but not overshadow the movie in question. That being said their offering of BLOOD BATH is the most comprehensive and exhausting endeavor I've seen from them and I mean that in a good way.Before delving deeper into the set be aware you're getting 4 movies here made up of one movie. I'm not talking about sequels, extended editions or director's cuts. I'm talking 4 different movies…all from the same original movie. To understand you have to realize that when it was made there was a drive-in circuit that movies played in with films that catered to those clients, more often than not teens looking for cheap and easy action, horror and racy flicks. Director Roger Corman made his career on these types of films and began producing as well. He produced a film in Europe that was called OPERATION TITIAN, a film about stolen art with cops and robbers involved. He decided the movie wasn't quite what he wanted so had it recut and changed into the film PORTRAIT OF TERROR. Still not quite what he wanted he handed it over to director Jack Hill and it became BLOOD BATH. Stephanie Rothman had helped with that version but before selling it to TV it was recut again with new scenes added and became TRACK OF THE VAMPIRE (the version I was aware of from horror hosts screenings years ago). What Arrow has done is bring all four version together in one package which makes for fascinating viewing for film fans.OPERATION TITIAN is actually a well-made robbery film with some amazing shots reminiscent of the Carol Reed film THE THIRD MAN. The presentation here in black and white is amazing to see with a crisp, clear image that shows work was put into this presentation. PORTRAIT OF TERROR and BLOOD BATH offer the same footage in some places combined with a new story to offer a different tale, switching things from a robbery film to the story of an artist who thinks he's a vampire and boils his models in wax. Definitely different right? And yet both use some of the same footage. By the time you get to TRACK OF THE VAMPIRE a part of you wonders what in the world was going on. But the fact is that the movie made money in all four versions, a definite return on investment that many film makers would love to see.As I said the quality of the movies as presented here is better than you would expect when you consider the fact that it was chopped up so many times, played the drive-in circuit and was never a movie a studio would consider preserving if they even kept it on hand to begin with. But Arrow has come through offering the most complete presentation of the film in all of its incarnations here.In addition to that the extras should satisfy fans as well. They include high definition transfers of the films in 1080p, "The Trouble With Titian" a documentary featuring Tim Lucas that describes the long and twisted path the films took, an interview with Sid Haig who starred the later versions, an archive interview with director Jack Hill, a stills gallery, a fold out double sided poster featuring old and newly commissioned artwork, a reversible cover sleeve and a booklet about the films. The price is higher than most Arrow releases but again you're getting four complete films here folks.Fans of Corman will find this a must have in their collection as will die-hard Jack Hill fans whose numbers seem to be growing with each Arrow release that he is responsible for. Horror fans will want to add it to their collection as a reminder of those days when horror host ruled the airwaves. Movie lovers will want to have it because of the historical value on display. In short it is an interesting development to watch from one film to the next and a nice addition to any collection.

It was another cold mostly dreary winter day so I decided to watch two Prime video movies. I'm really getting my money's worth out of my membership. Today I went with off-beat Vampire stories. Yes, I look for the unusual stories. The first was 'Blood Bath' from 1966. Watching it I thought for sure it was Italian made. Later I read up on it, turns out it was filmed in Serbia, of all places, and L.A. It starred William Campbell. I knew him best as Trelane in the original series Star Trek episode 'The Squire of Gothos' and as a Klingon in another episode. The story is about a Jekyll and Hyde like vampire. At times he seems like a gentle but rather morbid artist. Other times he is possessed by a vampire artist ancestor of his. The back story for his vampire ancestor was a bit confusing. Nowadays he finds female victims and boils their bodies for some reason. He boils them till they look like soap sculptures. He also makes morbid death paintings of female nudes. As in many films of this type there seems to be an endless supply of naive women victims for him to choose from. Sometimes they're standing under Gothic arches on dark streets late at night. Evidently they're waiting to become victims. No they aren't there because they're hookers or anything close to logical like that. Other times they're swimming alone in bikinis on isolated beaches or hanging out alone by swimming pools at night. One female, after meeting him on the street admiring his art work in a window, is lured to his studio. She then offers to do some modeling for him and strips without even being asked to. Yes, even though his studio looks like it's in the Tower of London only not as cheery, the women don't seem overly concerned about the decor. There are some attempts at surreal scenes in the movie where the director is trying to be artistic, the carousel scene for instance. A woman is being chased on this carousel by the vampire, she begs for help yet either nobody takes her pleas seriously or they just don't care. The best part about the film for me was the comments it contained on the nature of art and its value. To me much of what is now considered priceless art is simply garbage in disguise; some of Andy Warhol's works come to mind as examples of expensive junk. Is a painting of a Campbell's soup can really worth a fortune? This movie seems to agree with me that it's not. There are some beatnik-like characters in it that think all kinds of junk are art. One character even has what appears to be a prototype of our current paint guns and uses it to enhance his "art". There are some very unlikely heroes that turn up. The film does succeed to some extent by being different and ends with pretty good scares even if the makeup is poor.For those reasons and its offbeat quality I give it a 4 out of 10 rating. It was diverting.

One of the most underrated gonzo films of all times! On the surface, this is an atmospheric, low-budget and sometimes confusing horror film. But this amazing work is composed of three separate films and was several years in the making.Roger Corman, noted producer/director, hired Jack Hill in 1964 to write and direct a horror film with the condition that he make liberal use of footage from "Operation Titian", a thriller Corman produced with Francis Ford Coppola (!) in Yugoslavia, but deemed unworthy of USA release. Hill was given actor William Campbell, Titian's star, and hired Lori Saunders (still using her original name of Linda Saunders, and soon Petticoat Junction-bound).However, Corman didn't like the resulting film about a murderous sculptor possessed by the spirit of his ancestor, who was killed by a beautiful witch. So he shelved it for a year, bringing it out for director Stephanie Rothman to revise. Rothman turned the possessed sculptor into a vampire, shot extensive new footage (using a few members of the supporting cast) and---bingo!---"Blood Bath" was out in the theaters at last, as the co-feature for "Queen of Blood" in 1966.Despite its plentiful source materials, the finished film ran only 69 minutes. When it was prepared for TV release, Corman changed the title to "Track of the Vampire" (Rothman's title of choice) and added approximately 11 minutes of additional footage (some of it outtakes from Hill's and Rothman's shoots). Further complicating matters, Corman released the English-dubbed version of "Operation Titian" directly to TV at about the same time as "Portrait In Terror".Amazingly, this complex mishmash works. Atmospheric, intense and with some violent and original touches, "Blood Bath" is the most successful example of Roger Corman's eclectic approach to creativity. Its current placement in critical limbo is only because the film remains frustratingly difficult to find. But it's worth the search.A fascinating three-part article by Tim Lucas on the making of this film and its numerous versions provided details for these comments. It appeared in 1991 in "Video Watchdog" magazine, numbers 4, 5 & 7.