Colibel
Terrible acting, screenplay and direction.
Exoticalot
People are voting emotionally.
Actuakers
One of my all time favorites.
Leofwine_draca
This is one of those movies that's been made up of about four totally different productions. Blame Roger Corman. The initial movie, directed by exploitation king Jack Hill, involves a possessed painter whose "red dead nudes" have become critical masterpieces; of course, it transpires that he's under the influence of an evil spirit, and that he murders the women who pose as his subjects. This part of the movie is a bit like the gore flick COLOR ME BLOOD RED and would have benefited from being shot in colour so we could see all the red stuff. It's rather stodgy and dull, lacking in inspiration, aside from the genuinely chilling climax that sees the mutilated, wax-entombed victims of the tagline returning to stage their grubby revenge on the painter.Apparently, ANOTHER film – the unfinished Operation Titian – was being shot in Yugoslavia at the same time and Francis Ford Coppola participated in its production. Anyway, Corman didn't like the result so he hired a director, Stephanie Rothman, to shoot new scenes in which the painter becomes a vampire and chases nubile women around cities and beaches. To add to the confusion, some of the original cast members return, making it harder to spot where the different scenes have been spliced together. Finally, as if this wasn't enough, Corman needed a longer film to show on television, so he added another eleven minutes of random stuff – outtakes, a woman dancing on a beach for what seems like twenty minutes or so, etc. The resulting concoction is a confused mess that will try the patience of even the most hardened B-movie fanatic.This is nothing like DEMENTIA 13, the decent Corman/Coppola movie from a few years before. It's a mess, with many boring and pointless sequences, and even the action bits, the various chases, go on too long and are devoid of interest. This is a vampire who doesn't think twice about jumping in a swimming pool to catch a victim or chasing another into the ocean! A few cast members are familiar. William Campbell, the villain, returns from DEMENTIA 13. I thought I saw Patrick Magee pop up playing the vampire, although he's not credited. One of my favourite actors, Sid Haig, does appear in some of the film's best scenes – comedy filler moments involving a gang of Beatniks trying out a new method of 'quantum' art. These scenes seem to have been left over from A BUCKET OF BLOOD and it's a delight to see Haig on screen, even if only for a few moments. Popular US actress Lori Saunders is the nominal heroine and spends most of the film prancing around in a little bikini. Even half-naked women in the cast and Sid Haig (with HAIR!) can't save this mess of a production.
kevin olzak
1966's "Track of the Vampire" was first released theatrically at 62 minutes, under the title "Blood Bath," but this review will be of the full 78 minute version issued to television. William Campbell stars as Antonio Sordi, an artist lauded for his paintings of dead nudes, who believes himself to be the reincarnation of an artist ancestor burned at the stake for sorcery after being exposed by his latest model, Miliza, who believed her soul had been captured on canvas. Sordi keeps a portrait of Miliza in his studio, and cannot make love to his newest muse Dorean (Lori Saunders) because of her close resemblance to it. All the new scenes with Campbell were filmed by director Jack Hill, maintaining the name he used in "Portrait in Terror," but whenever the character becomes a blonde haired vampire sporting tiny fangs (!), a different actor was cast by new director Stephanie Rothman, resulting in sporadic chase sequences and a ballet lasting more than 3 minutes. Just over 9 (out of 81) minutes of footage from "Portrait in Terror" were used, recasting an unbilled Patrick Magee as a jealous husband (the exotic dancer now becoming his wife) who winds up covered in wax, like all of Sordi's female victims (the shared sequence between Campbell and Magee has completely new dialogue badly overdubbed). Apparently, he kills them first, paints their nude likenesses, then covers each corpse in wax. Campbell himself doesn't make his first appearance until 22 minutes in, the vampire having already worn out its welcome with a 6 1/2 minute pursuit of a young lass who ends up in the ocean minus most of her clothes, while a middleweight Tor Johnson lookalike acts as temporary lifeguard. The ending didn't make any sense, but probably made the film. Stephanie Rothman did all the vampire stuff, including the subplot featuring Sandra Knight, all of which is self contained (only a single dissolve fuses the artist and the vampire, pretty lame). Jack Hill did all the beatnik scenes, plus the bizarre climax, filming in Venice California. I'd say each director was split fairly even, sharing writing and directing credits, but never working in tandem (the uncredited Roger Corman replaced Hill with Rothman).
GroovyDoom
Unbelievable and nearly incomprehensible mashup of a movie scores anyway due to its wild ride all over the map, constantly changing genres and tone. If you take a step back from it, it's a very unique experience.An artist named Antonio Sordi makes his living painting images of nude young women in the throes of death. He periodically transforms into the vampiric image of his ancestor, a similar artist who was burned at the stake--the dialogue suggests that his art was just too good, he had to have been in league with the devil. His main accuser in his trial was a beautiful woman who was also his muse, and she too has been reincarnated as a blissfully unaware dancer who thinks she's having a romance with Sordi. Sordi himself seems to only be peripherally aware that he transforms into a vampire and goes out to stalk beautiful women, bringing them back to his spooky studio in a belltower to paint their dead bodies and then boil them in wax.The movie has an elliptical feel to it, this story has been pieced together from three different films. But somehow there's something here that actually works. The atmospheric scenes of Sordi's vampire doppelgänger stalking his victims are often very scary. The vampire seems to be able to corner his victims no matter where they are, even in broad daylight. There's a doomy, relentless aspect to these scenes, as nearly 100 percent of the stalking victims end up dead. The schizophrenic remainder of the film veers from boring to rapturous-- the scenes of Sordi's ancestral counterpart being tormented by his muse in a wide open space are absolutely stunning. One thing that makes this movie notable is that the actresses involved are all very beautiful and, even more odd, their styles and mannerisms seem strangely contemporary.The more serious elements of the movie are intercut with bizarre scenes of crazy beatnik art fans (one of them being Sid Haig), a brief and totally unrelated husband-wife soap opera moment, and more than a few of the costumes are silly. Depending on which cut of the film you view, you also might get stuck with a scene where one of the main starlets performs a ballet dance on the beach--for five minutes straight. I recommend the fast forward button for that. Plot threads this drastically different can never be tied together without some serious lapses in logic and a near total absence of motivation for any of the characters. But fans of the offbeat should take note of this film, as it manages to be utterly bizarre without becoming unwatchably bad.
bella-6
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.
