Baron Blood (1972) on Netflix
Peter Kleist comes to Austria to trace his family history. A document he brings is said to raise his ancestor, Baron Otto Von Kleist, from the dead.
- Netflix1.8/5
- IMDb5.9/104,813 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes14%
Trailer
Plot summary
American college student Peter Kleist arrives in Austria to look up his family history, and his uncle Karl Hummel invites him to stay. Karl tells him about his great-grandfather, Baron Otto Von Kleist, a sadist who tortured and murdered more than a hundred villagers, and about the Baron's castle, now being turned into a hotel. There Peter meets the hotel project's entrepreneur, Herr Dortmundt, and Eva, whose task is to keep Dortmundt from altering the castle's architecture. Over dinner at Karl's house, Karl's young daughter Gretchen claims she saw the Baron in the woods, and nobody listens. Peter then shows the family an old document he found in America: an incantation that, spoken at midnight in the castle bell tower, is said to raise the Baron from the dead. Karl warns him not to try it.
Cast
- Dieter Tressleras Mayor Dortmundt
- Rolf Halwichas Auctioner
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Baron Blood (1972)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- The "Well to Hell" hoax, an urban legend that spread on the internet and in American tabloids in the late 1990s, claimed a Russian borehole had been drilled so deep it broke through into Hell; the recording of screams from the nine-mile-deep pit was actually a remixed portion of the Baron Blood soundtrack, with added effects.
- One week into shooting, the Bank of America cancelled its agreement to discount producer Alfredo Leone's letter of credit in response to the Nixon shock; Leone flew to New York and secured $125,000 from J. Arthur Elliot and Sam Lang of Cinevision Films, who got executive producer credits and the US rights to two other films in return.
- To satisfy a pre-acquisition agreement with distributor Allied Artists, most of the film's violent scenes were shot twice, once for theaters and once, toned down, for television.
- American International Pictures, which picked up the US release after Leone turned down Allied Artists over its plan to book the film only as a second feature, cut Baron Blood by ten minutes and replaced Stelvio Cipriani's score with one by Les Baxter.
- Alfredo Leone said the script was almost entirely Fotre's work, with Mario Bava adding minor touches such as blood oozing under a door during the invocation sequence; William A. Bairn, credited as adapter, was really the dialogue coach, and "Wilibald Eser" was a fictitious name included to satisfy the Italian-West German co-production agreement.
- Location work for Baron Blood included the Austrian castle Burg Kreuzenstein; producer Alfredo Leone recalled that Bava was so excited by the castle's filming possibilities that when Leone told him he had secured the deal to use it, Bava embraced and kissed him.
- After Baron Blood proved an international box office success, especially in the US, producer Alfredo Leone offered Bava a contract for a new film, Lisa and the Devil, and gave him total artistic control on it.
