Blood Bath

Plot synopsis:
In Venice, California, student Daisy (Merissa Mathes) leaves a club alone after having an argument with her beatnik boyfriend Max (Carl Schanzer). Walking through the deserted streets, she stops to admire some gruesome paintings in a gallery window painted by artist Antonio Sordi (Campbell), who coincidentally also comes by to look in on his "lost children." After a friendly conversation, Sordi convinces the young woman to pose nude for him that night. At his bell-tower studio, Sordi is possessed by the spirit of a long-dead ancestor and suddenly transforms into a vampiric monster who hacks the screaming Daisy to death with a cleaver. Afterwards, he lowers her mutilated corpse into a vat of boiling wax.
Sordi, in his vampire form, stalks Venice in search of victims; he is able to do so freely at all hours. In the middle of the day, he chases a young woman into the surf at a beach and drowns her. At night, he kills a prostitute in a car while pedestrians stroll by, all of them assuming the pair are lovers sharing an intimate moment. Another victim is approached at a party, chased into a swimming pool, and drowned there after the other guests have moved into the house. The murdered women are carried back to Sordi's studio and painted by the artist, their bodies then covered in wax.
Max wants to make up with Daisy but cannot find her anywhere. Learning that she has posed for Sordi and become the subject of the latest in the artist's series of "Dead Red Nudes," he visits her sister Donna (Sandra Knight) to ask her forgiveness. Donna tells Max she hasn't seen Daisy for days, and is concerned about the recent rash of disappearances. She reads Max the legend of Sordi's 15th-century ancestor Erno, a painter condemned to be burned at the stake for capturing his subjects' souls on canvas. Unable to convince Max that Antonio Sordi might also be a vampire, she confronts the artist at his studio and asks him if he has seen Daisy. He angrily brushes her off. That night, he later follows her through the streets and murders her as she tries to escape from him on a carousel.
The "human" Sordi is in love with Dorian (Linda Saunders), an avant-garde ballerina and Daisy's former roommate. At first he tries to protect her from his vampiric tendencies, warning her his studio is a cheerless place and at one point breaking a date with her to spend time gaining control of his feelings for her. When she turns up at the studio unannounced, he believes she is the reincarnation of Erno Sordi’s long-dead mistress Melizza (also played by Linda Saunders), a witch who had denounced him to the ecclesiastical courts in order to protect herself from prosecution, and traps her in a net. He is about to slash her throat with a razor when Max and his beatnik friends finally realize Sordi is a murderer and successfully free her from the tower. Melizza, seen in a painting that Sordi keeps concealed behind a curtain, brings three of Sordi's victims back to life and they dispatch him by forcing him into the boiling wax.

Tags: haunting

Review:
Cheap but fun horror anthology..
Joel M.Reed's "Blood Bath" features four weird and darkly amusing horror stories:the first one is about luckless hit man,the second one is about one guy who wishes he was fighting in Napoleonic wars and his wish is granted by magical coin,the third one is about greedy businessman who is locked in his own safe and haunted by a ghost and finally the fourth and the weirdest one is about martial arts fighter."Blood Bath" is very weird horror anthology that doesn't make a lot of sense.The film is low on gore but high on weirdness.It's extremely tame in comparison to Joel M.Reed infamous exploitation classic "Bloodsucking Freaks".There's hardly any gore in "Blood Bath",but if you like strange and twisted horror comedies give this one a chance.7 candlelit dinners out of 10..
Worth a look, clever, darkly amusing.
Well okay, there isn't really much blood in this movie, so get over it.
This is a tame film, especially compared to Director Reeds deservedly notorious, and I think somewhat misunderstood, Bloodsucking Freaks.
Blood Bath isn't a shock fest but knowing this and knowing the extremely limited resources they had to make the film it's pretty entertaining and has some good performances from actors who were/are in real movies.It moves along well,each story features some good humor and good twists,and even all these years later it retains a spark of originality to it.
The worst aspect is the low budget or no budget production design and photography, but it's all in focus and pretty much cuts together under Victor Kanefsky's editing--who went on to edit Bloodsucking Freaks for Reed as well.
There are also some clever shots here and there when time allowed.
There are however a few scenes that play against nothing but blackness--they couldn't even afford a wall.
Main genre element I suppose deals with the sort of cruel irony/comedy of getting what you think you want, or thinking you got away with evil deeds and having them come back to trip you up.Recent DVD release features a longish,not very creative, but still interesting, featurette that itself should have been better photographed but does dig up several of the performers and lets behind the scene people tell it like it was to make the film.
This was not a hack work production, it was a quickly that they all did the best they could with and it's entertaining.Those who hate low budget movies feel free to watch some large slick empty thing instead, but this is diverting stuff for those in the right frame of mind..
A Forgotten Masterpiece.
I cannot believe that this gem of a horror has had such little publicity-totally original,clever with a bizarre twisted undertone,although a nightmare to find- any self respecting horror genre fan must hunt this beauty down-Forget Bloodsucking Freaks this is Joel Reeds finest moment!!!I first saw this movie over 20 years ago and and to be honest for years I had convinced myself I had been having flashbacks of some disturbing dream because the movie seemed to have totally be erased from existence even endless searches on the internet proved useless until eventually it turned up on ebay one day and naturally i snapped it up!What a relief it was I tell you confirming that I wasn't actually going insane!The art work alone for this film is just soooo classic in itself and in this case the video definitely should be judged by the cover!SEE IT!.
another work of genius by b-movie norse god joel reed.
this nauseating tale of gore and torture wins my vote as the best b-movie horror for 1976.
brilliant costume, intelligent plot, and terrific special effects make this a must see.
not only that, but i threw up T W I C E while viewing this exceptional work of art; once when i saw blood and again when i witnessed a monstrous act of torture only the devil himself could conceptualize.
this movie is wicked...if you like "blood sucking freaks" or the situational comedy series "the golden girls", you will love this obnoxious little piece!.
Boring bath.
What can I tell about this flick.
It's from the director of Bloodsucking Freaks with the same kind of score.
The movie itself is boring and bloodless.
It contains four story's that are predictable and boring.
The first one is maybe the best but you can see the plot coming from the beginning.
Storyline two is a lot of bla bla and nothing really happens, you should be scared to see the ending, well you ain't.
Storyline three about some coins, boring as hell and there's some gore in it, well , not scary at all.
The last storyline is, as you can guess boring.
And after the four story lines there's a plot to the whole movie, again predictable.
The acting is beyond zero, Oh I can go on for ages, it's one you will see but forget immediately.
This should have been a tales from the crypt but failed, a shame, Bloodsucking Freaks was better.