Product Description

Studio: Wea-des Moines Video Release Date: 05/19/2009

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #24786 in DVD
• Brand: RYKODISC
• Released on: 2009-06-09
• Rating: Unrated
• Aspect ratio: 1.33:1
• Formats: Dubbed, DVD, Widescreen, NTSC
• Original language: Spanish
• Dubbed in: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 88 minutes

Features

• LEGEND OF BLOOD CASTLE (DVD MOVIE)

Customer Reviews

vampirism
The director of the film, Jorge Grau, is less known than other Spanish "fear makers" of his generation like Jesus Franco or Paul Nashy. But with only three films (this one and the excellent Pena de Muerte and No Profanar el Sueno de los Muertos) he proves an incredible ability to create disturbing and compelling horror films.

Ceremonia Sangrienta is for me not only his masterpiece, its also the best attempt to do horror cinema in Spain, its as good as other countries with longer horror traditions like the United States, United Kingdom or Italy. The story is fascinating. It proposes a new point of view of the classical myth of the vampire, more realism than existed in the moment that was made the film, and really visionary.

Visually the film is equally splendid. The photography of Fernando Arribas, present in a lot of Spanish horror films like La Cruz del Diablo, Horror Express or the recent Memorias del Angel Caido, is simply extraordinary, giving the film the appropriate color and light.

The cast is perfect, especially the sensual actress Lucia Bose, but its the work of Jorge Grau behind the camera that makes this film so interesting. The tempo has ups and downs and progresses with the force of a train in the night, the mise in scene is classical and stylish at the same time, and I have no doubt that Grau really had known how to capture the essence of vampirism in images.

Covered Version of a great film
It's worth noting that this dvd from Mya utilizes a covered print, ie: nudity filmed for the movie is replaced by 'covered' shots so the film would pass censorship rules in the Franco ruled Spain of the 70's.
This is not what the director intended and not what fans want from a 70's exploitation horror movie.
This is a wonderful film, but Mya has chosen the cheaper, easy route and delivered a dvd that is sure to annoy fans of the film. Buyer beware.

good spanish adaptation of bathory story
This movie is a adaption of the Countess Elizabeth Bathory story. She killed over 600 people and used their blood in a attempt to stay young. Only her real life story took place in a castle in hungary in the 1500's. This story takes place in the 1800's and the main character is supposed to be a decendant of the evil countess. Many parts of the story are very similiar to the real countess who was walled up alive in her castle and her evil cohorts were all burned. In this story which is well photographed and done in a good straight forward manner; the evil countess makes her husband fake his death so he can kill victims for her. The people of that century and earlier did in fact try the dead for being vampires and their idea of vampires is different from ours. They Believed the body stayed in the ground but the soul came out to suck the life or blood of the living. At least that's how most europeons looked at vampires until Bram Stokers "dracula" novel. So noone wanted to be a vampire back then , after all rotting in a grave and your soul is out and about is not romantic like a "Twilight" book. I would have rather seen a story about supernatural vampires in a castle but
this story is good enough to be enjoyable for 1970's Europeon made horror film fans. There is gore and bloodletting but it's not bad by todays standards. Someday someone will do a real faithful movie about Bathory and it will be very horrible indeed. The print of this movie looks pretty good and thanks to Mya for getting this older movie to our shores. Now if they can find some movie like 'orgy of the vampires" or other supernatural europeon vampire movie that has never been released with a decent print that would make many people happy. They are putting out 'Island of the fishmen" aka 'screamers" and that is excellent news indeed. The acting is very good in this movie and the whole enterprise was done by veterans and that's another reason to enjoy this movie as well.
It has a english soundtrack and original spanish as well. So if you are a fan of 1970's Europeon horror then you might enjoy this movie.