Bathory

Countess Elizabeth Bathory (Wikipedia entry) was a Hungarian noblewoman who was almost a precise contemporary of Shakespeare (Bathory: 1560-1614; Shakespeare: 1564-1616). According to common legend, she was a monster. The Guinness Book of Records, for example, credits her as the top female serial killer of all time. Some place her body count as high as 650, and nobody attributes fewer than 36 deaths to her cruel hands. The most horrific legends, which have no basis in evidence as far as I can determine, picture her bathing in the blood of virgins in order to remain perennially young. Popular myth snowballed her reputation as it did for that of Vlad Dracul, so folklore had already transmogrified her into an ogress before our time. The B movies of the 20th century finished the job for both  Bathory and Dracul, essentially completing their metamorphosis into the Count and Countess of blood.

There is, or at least there ought to be, some distinction drawn between the two cases. Vlad Dracul was not Dracula, but he was an extremely cruel and arbitrarily unpleasant man, so there was plenty of justification for his demonic reputation. It's not really so clear that Countess Bathory was really evil. It is the premise of this film that the countess was framed by rival nobles and Catholic clerics who wanted to grab some chunks of her vast estates. That may be partially or even entirely true. After 400 years, it's not really possible to sort out the accusations and counter-accusations to determine where the legends end and the facts begin. The countess was indeed a very rich widow whose land holdings were envied by all. It was indeed a time when Catholics and Protestants slaughtered one another in God's name, and she was the country's most powerful Protestant, so it is not surprising to hear that she was accused of blasphemy. Accusing someone of sacrilegious or blasphemous behavior in those days was like accusing someone of being a communist in the 1950s - a convenient way to get an enemy out of the way. Although there was some evidence presented against her and her servants, it was not unheard of in those days for investigators to extract evidence out of thin air with bribes, intimidation and torture. It is possible that every single accusation against her is invalid. And don't forget, some of the most wild-eyed accusations against her were made by people who believed in vampires and thought that cancer could be cured with leeches.

In other words, the film's general aspiration - to debunk the grisliest of the Bathory legends - has merit. The film's specific treatment, however, is just ridiculous. Instead of debunking the legend with common sense and verifiable facts, it supplants it another legend which is even more preposterous. It involves a witch with miraculous herbs, and some roller-skating monks with anachronistically advanced scientific gizmos. To make matters worse, the script presents some scenes which seem to confirm the dark Bathory legends, only to turn around and reveal that those actions to be either something she did while under the influence of hallucinogenic drugs, or something she imagined while in the grip of those drugs. The script also assigns the countess a long-term romance in Slovakia with the artist Caravaggio who, to the best of my knowledge, never left the territory which now forms the modern country of Italy, except for one trip to Malta. In addition to the geographical problem, there is no evidence that Caravaggio liked girls. On the other hand, none the love story's authenticity problems really matter, because even if all the details were true, or at least believable, the romance is a gratuitous add-on which seems to have zero relevance to the main storyline.

Oh, and about that whole wacky "bathing in blood" thing ... easily explained by natural herbs that turned the water red.

One has to wonder whom the auteur had pictured in his ideal audience. Could somebody love this film? Would the people who relate to the explicit blood and gore also enjoy the sappy love story, and vice-versa? Would the people who admire a skeptical approach to legendary history also approve of superseding a silly legend with a sillier one?

The wild tone shifts and overall offbeat presentation are not helped by the fact that some of the supporting actors have a dubious grasp of the English language and, for that matter, the craft of acting. On the other hand, the period imagery looks great: elegant balls, bleak battlefields, lusty wenches, picturesque bucolic views, flashing swords, imposing castles, candles everywhere. I have no idea whether it is all authentic, but my guess is that it is not, based upon the existence of roller-skating monks. Accurate or not, it looks terrific, except for some cheap CGI effects in a few scattered scenes. The outdoor cinematography is especially impressive. Some of the pastoral still-lifes are so gorgeous that you could use prints of them as backgrounds for your desktop. Unfortunately, those beautiful images should have gone straight-to-jigsaw-puzzle because the script is utterly trivial, and the film lasts two and a quarter hours with no apparent artistic or economic reason to exist.

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The good news?

There is quite a bit of nudity

• Anna Friel
• Sandra Pogadova
• Michaela Drotorova
• Hanna Vagnerova
• Various (unidentified)

Here is a sample of the quality from the Anna Friel clip (not so bad):