Save your money for something good and enjoyable

Great Film overall

best movie i've ever seen.

Each character in this movie — down to the smallest one — is an individual rather than a type, prone to spontaneous changes of mood and sometimes amusing outbursts of pettiness or ill humor.

A newly wed young couple are heading to England via the ferry but stop the night at an out of season hotel in Ostend. They are the only guests until a striking middle aged looking woman called Countess Bathory and her young female companion arrive. Now anybody with a half decent knowledge of vampirism will recognised the name Bathory as the real life murdering, sadistic & bloody Hungarian countess from the 16th/17th centuries. Filmed in Belgium but English language, this is simply a beautiful work of art. Every frame is sumptuous, fantastic use of colour and in my opinion is up there with Polanski's Dance of the Vampires as one of the best looking vampire films ever made. It may prove too slow for horror fans looking for regular amounts of blood but for those who appreciate finer things allow yourself to become immersed in this, late at night with the lights out. Nudity and lesbianism had become popular in the genre at this time and this film has it's share of erotica, but it's integral to the story rather than just showing flesh for the sake of it.

Negative! Complete failure, pile of crap film. Successful as an "ART" film, if deaf and blind. Boring, Amateur Acting, Garbage Story.OK, first rule of a film, should probably be is ENTERTAINMENT. This movie is boring, slow, amateur acting all around, amateur directing, the story is just plain garbage. Best part is the cinematography, that was good. The editing sucked, you can tell by how long they linger on a frame. And all the cuts of the waves crashing in. The music was OK, not great. The ending with the car crash and fire was just plain garbage. Then the new embodiment of the "Countess" maybe waiting for a sequel, real Hollywood ending. Believe it it sucked. I'm reading through the reviews. And most people love this crap. Maybe they go into it thinking it's an ART film and they excuse all the elements that make up an ENTERTAINING film, like story, acting, etc. I don't know, but it must be why the same people love Suspiria, another pile of crap that people love, and other Argento films. I hate Argento and I hate this movie. Here's the story, a newlywed couple stay at an abandoned hotel. We have no back story on the wife, not good. The back story on the husband is he has a mother, but there's mystery. So, you stick around for the mystery. Finally we find out who the mother is, an older guy in drag, probably some kind of sugar daddy for the husband. This leads to nothing. Nothing! OK, so then we get a scene, wait for it, when the husband beats the wife with a belt. Not cool. Then a shot of them naked with marks on the wife, and the guy still holding the belt. She takes off but is brought back to the hotel by the "Countess". Now the Countess is supposedly Elizabeth Bathory, the blood sucking/bathing wench who also checked in at the hotel. She appears earlier with her "Secretary". We have no other info on her or why she's staying at this hotel. Apparently she stayed there 40 years before, at her last world tour, because the concierge recognized her and that she hasn't aged a day.The countess sends her secretary to seduce the husband, she dies by cutting herself on a shaver, they bury her on the beach. The countess opens her coat like bat wings, real chess here. But people love this crap. The countess kills the husband and she and the wife drink his blood, and they dumb the body. There's a retired detective that comes around, he gets run over while riding his bike. At the end, the wife is now the new secretary, she is driving the countess. The countess asks for speed because daylight is approaching, they crash, the countess flies out of the car onto a branch, and is impaled, the car goes on fire and so does the countess. Next scene, we see the wife, acting as the new countess speaking to another couple at an outside part. The end. The story sucks. No backstory on the wife, the backstory on the husband at first is interesting, then goes into a dead end. The countess and her secretary, just ridiculous. The acting all around are garbage. The woman playing the countess, you can tell there's talent there but the crap she's given is utter nonsense. It just goes on and on. The secretary was decent compared to the rest. The wife was just plain owful. The husband was OK, but not great, again, given garbage dialogue. The concierge and old detective could have been played by the same person, both utter trash. The sets were OK, but not great. Just because you put someone in a red dress in the middle of the set does not equate to art. The Bathory story is also garbage. The movie with Ingrid Pitt "Countess Dracula" is also garbage. I'm starting to think that it's not about the product. It's about the marketing. You can produce a movie or any other product, have nonsense stories, crappy acting, amateur directing, but if you have a great publicity campaign then you can call it "ART" and denounce those who don't like it as snobs. Maybe that's what happened here. And with "Suspiria" a worse film than this.

Stay with this film, it is incredible. Great acting, cinematography, direction. The lead actress isn't great, but the actress who plays Erzebet Bathory is phenomenal. Bizaar sets, and strange milieu really add to this film's strange portrayal of vampires and how they deal with the living. I really loved this film. Of course, today, everything happens at the speed of light. Back in 1970, they took their time with building the film and really letting it sink in before hitting you with the shocks. This one has plenty of shocking moments and some really great inventive scenes that add to the history of the vampire film. Unfortunately, today we now have 'Twilight', a disgusting parody of the genre that hopefully audiences will someday say, 'What the hell were we thinking?'.

On the box it put this film in the same company with greats like Night of the Living Dead and Texas Chainsaw Massacre. I completely disagree. For one thing, I was expecting to see at least a little gore in this film and there was almost none, other than a scene where the male character cuts himself shaving. For an "erotic" film, there was very little actual sex, apart from the first scene, which incidentally does not feature much nudity, and a shower scene. OK, so there wasn't much sex or violence, that doesn't mean it's a bad film. Some of the best films simply imply sex or violence. This however is not one of them. The acting is not bad, but the characters are written really flatly. The male character's mother who is dying of cancer is unconvincing. The wife is even less convincing. She doesn't seem to have any past at all. Where did these people meet? I still don't understand why the mother does not like the wife. The relationship between the vampire and her mistress is confusing. What is the mistress' purpose? It seems as though there is a symbiotic relationship, but what is the nature of that symbiosis? Overall, a disappointing film.