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Greetings, and welcome to VIEWING THE CLASSICS. Here you'll find capsule reviews of vintage movies from the early days of cinema through the 1970s, with a special emphasis on sci-fi, horror, and mystery movies. Be sure to check out the Pages links, where you can find a Film Index of all my reviews, links to the reviews organized by cast members, directors, and other contributors, and links to my reviews of the films of talented young director Joshua Kennedy.

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Sunday, March 24, 2013

Blood Bath (1966)

Starring William Campbell, Marissa Mathes, Lori Saunders, Sandra Knight, Carl Schanzer
Directed by Jack Hill & Stephanie Rothman
(actor & director credits courtesy IMDB.com)

An artist who paints gruesome depictions of murdered women hides the secret that he is a vampire and the women he paints are in fact his murder victims.

This horror film from Roger Corman's production unit is hard to judge without acknowledging it's history.  As related in Wikipedia's entry on this film, it originated as a spy thriller, which was then refashioned by director Jack Hill as a horror film featuring Campbell's murderous painter and comic relief scenes with a group of beatnik artists, and then was further revised by Rothman, who added the vampire sequences.  That the film is coherent at all considering that history is something remarkable.  Unfortunately, as Campbell was unavailable for the final reshoots, a different actor who does not resemble him plays the vampire, making for a bit of a jarring contrast.  Regardless, as a whole, it's not a bad film, and it's fun to watch to guess which scenes were filmed when and by whom.

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