To me, this movie is perfection.

Nice effects though.

There are moments in this movie where the great movie it could've been peek out... They're fleeting, here, but they're worth savoring, and they happen often enough to make it worth your while.

Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

Put together from different sources of footage this actually hangs together quite well. An artist haunted by a woman one of his ancestors killed continues to murder young women and paint pictures of their corpses. It's only sixty two minutes long so it tells its story without any fuss and some of it looks excellent. Dark shadows, dark empty streets and gloomy beach scenes. There is a bleak atmosphere most of the time that is quite effective and some of it is quite creepy. The last scenes are very well done.What does let it down is the acting. William Campbell as Antonio Sordi tries to do a tortured artist but is stiff and unconvincing. The rest of the cast are not much better though I did find the group of beatniks in the cafe talking about 'quantum' art amusing. Lori Saunders runs around in several bikinis distractingly.It is worth seeing for the cinematography and some good macabre touches.

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!

This film really is a complete mess so it came as no surprise to me that it's actually made up of about three different films that were spliced together over a period of a few years. It's a shame really because there's several interesting plot elements on show and they could definitely have resulted in a decent movie – as evidenced by Roger Corman's A Bucket of Blood which is an excellent movie based on similar ideas. The central plot line revolves around an artist who happens to be the descendant of a man who was put to death for witchcraft centuries earlier. Both men were painters – the modern day one very successful. He paints pictures of beautiful women; before tossing them in a vat of acid when he's finished. He's apparently also a vampire. The film is shot in black and white and features some very interesting visuals, although it does look very cheap throughout. There are a few memorable faces; including those belonging to William Campbell and Sid Haig and the director's credit goes to Jack Hill, although Roger Corman had something to with it too apparently. It's a shame that the film couldn't have come together better because there are some good ideas here, but unfortunately it didn't and Blood Bath will be best be remembered as a bit of a mess. It's an interesting cult film...but I really wouldn't recommend going out of your way to find a copy!

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.