[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Umezn9sD2cY]
Here’s hoping you have a weirdly happy holiday, courtesy of the Ice Cream Bunny and 366 Weird Movies!
CAPSULE: BATHORY (2008)
AKA Bathory: Countess of Blood
DIRECTED BY: Juraj Jakubisk
FEATURING: Anna Friel, Karel Roden, Vincent Regan, Hans Matheson, Deana Horváthová, Franco Nero
PLOT: Fictionalized chronicle of the life, loves, and political struggles of the infamous 17th century Hungarian countess.
WHY IT MIGHT MAKE THE LIST: Clashing cross-genre elements and facts interposed with fiction and fantasy create an oddball portrait of an already bizarre historical figure and her horrific crimes. If not tedious, the end effect is certainly weird.
COMMENTS: Bathory is a dreamy, odd mix of historical fact, fiction, speculation, and whimsy surrounding the life of notorious sexual serial murderess, Hungarian Countess Erzsébet Báthory de Ecsed (1560 – 1614).
At 141 minutes running time, this cut of the film is condensed from a three part TV miniseries. It’s a Slovakian film produced in the Czech Republic about Hungarian history, with British actors, and the mixed production values, uneven tone and ambiguous, confusing story make for an unusual, entertaining, but disjointed viewing experience. The sets and costumes are colorful and imaginative, yet in places smack of a television budget.
Relying heavily on speculation and fancy, Bathory‘s plot combines elements of mystery, thriller, historical drama, and Renaissance steampunk adventure. Part of the movie focuses on the Countess’s personal life, her youth, her marriage to a Hapsburg dynasty heir, and fictionalized romance with painter Merisi Caravaggio (who in real life, never traveled to Northern Hungary.) The story also surveys the politics of Bathory’s dynasty, the Hapsburg empire, their battles with the Turks, and the interplay of power posturings between Bathory and her Hapsburg in-laws. This comprehensive coverage is fine for a TV miniseries, but becomes tedious and complicated in a feature-length movie, especially given the film’s sojourn into fiction.
While some of the political and historical plot points in the film are accurate, others are not, and the remainder of the picture features a murky, often conflicted depiction of Countess Bathory which attempts alternate explanations for the gruesome legends about her. This aspect of the movie is deliberately ambiguous.
Bodies of mutilated teenage girls indeed pile up, girls are found captive in the dungeons of Csejte Castle, and Bathory is seen murdering a couple of servants. Conversely, it is indicated that conspirators drugged the Countess with hallucinogenic mushrooms, and her Gypsy mystic soothsayer, a secret Hapsburg confederate, had Elizabeth so brainwashed with suspicious medicinal potions and metaphysical mumbo-jumbo that Bathory had no clear conception of reality. In other words, the filmmakers seem to be saying of her dreadful transgressions, “it wasn’t her fault.”
Bathory’s infamous bath of blood (drawn from her victims) turns out to be an innocent aquatic suspension of scarlet herbs. Or was the herb bath just a decoy to fool spies? The film hedges as if the producers are too timid to take a firm stance, yet they raise the question of whether long established historical facts are in actuality nothing more than trumped-up charges.
The Hapsburgs are depicted as doing their best to blame a string of mutilation killings on Bathory for political reasons, while fostering exaggerated Continue reading CAPSULE: BATHORY (2008)
WHAT’S IN THE PIPELINE
Happy holidays! Here at 366 World Industries, we’ll be giving the trained monkeys who screen weird movies and perform light copy-editing Christmas Day off. We’ll still be posting something, though, so that doesn’t mean you can take Christmas Day off from reading 366 Weird Movies. We recommend you take the day to catch up on some posts you might have missed. As for the rest of the week, our review of Bathory, the revisionist Slovakian miniseries about the bloodthirsty 17th Hungarian countess who allegedly killed hundreds of virgin girls for her own sexual pleasure, should put you in the holiday spirit. We’ll also marvel at the conspiratorial interpretations of Stanley Kubrick‘s The Shining discussed in the 2012 documentary Room 237, and cover Charlie Chaplin‘s technological alienation classic Modern Times. meanwhile, we’ll be gearing up for end-of-the-year top 10 lists you love so much, or at least that you’ve come to expect.
We’re not sure what’s up this season—maybe people are spending their time making awkward drunken passes at co-workers during office Christmas parties instead of typing insane searches into Google—but the drought of weird search terms continues, making it difficult for us to select a Weirdest Search Term of the Week. We did see a search for “movie scene wearing white toilet rifle,” which made us wonder what a white toilet rifle is (OK, OK, so the searcher’s probably thinking of Full Metal Jacket—we’re stretching this week). If that one’s not weird enough for you (and we suspect it isn’t), how about “oh 366 brasil radiator”? No? Well, fortunately we do have one legitimately weird search term we can offer up this week: “hitler’s pickles.” These little green treats may be sour and tasty, yet they remain the world’s most despised sandwich accessory.
Here’s how the ridiculously-long-and-ever-growing reader-suggested review queue stands: The Hour-glass Sanatorium [Saanatorium pod klepsidra]; Liquid Sky (re-review); Society; Final Programme; “Foutaises”; Bloodsucking Freaks; Lost Highway; Valerie and Her Week of Wonders Continue reading WHAT’S IN THE PIPELINE
SATURDAY SHORT: THE MAGIC OF CHRISTMAS (2012)
A group of models for Diesel Clothing are hypnotized into believing that they are children opening their presents on Christmas Day. The Magic of Christmas brings to light one of the more important meanings of this holiday season: finding out which sibling will get the best color of name brand underwear.
WEIRD HORIZON FOR THE WEEK OF 12/21/2012
Our weekly look at what’s weird in theaters, on hot-off-the-presses DVDs, and on more distant horizons…
Trailers of new release movies are generally available on the official site links.
IN THEATERS (WIDE RELEASE):
Cirque du Soleil: Worlds Away 3D:A woman is enticed to enter a strange circus tent and finds herself traveling through multiple carnivalesque dimensions, each of which just happens to be based on a separate Cirque du Soleil production. This “movie” is little more than a sampler/ad for CdS’s semi-surreal live shows, but it is cheaper than dropping a C-note to get into one of their Vegas showrooms. Cirque du Soleil: Worlds Away 3D official site.
NEW ON DVD:
Gandu (2010): The life of a young man who lives with his mother—a kept woman—becomes increasingly hallucinatory as he experiments with drugs, pornography and rap music in an attempt to find meaning in life. A rare slice of surrealism from the Indian subcontinent, decidedly un-Bollywood (the boxcover proudly proclaims, “Banned in India”). This is the first DVD release from a distributor with an interesting name—Artsploitation Films. Buy Gandu
Sokurov: Early Masterworks (Whispering Pages/Stone/Save and Protect): Three literary avant-garde movies made by Russian Aleksandr Sokurov (Russian Ark) in the early 90s: Whispering Pages is based on “Crime and Punishment,” Stone involves the ghost of Chekov, and Save and Protect is an adaptation of Madame Bovary. According to the product description all of the movies are on DVD, but there is a bonus Whispering Pages Blu-ray disc. This surprising Cinema Guild set also contains 6 short Sokurov films. Buy “Sokurov: Early Masterworks” [Blu-ray and DVD]
NEW ON BLU-RAY:
Sokurov: Early Masterworks (Whispering Pages): See description in DVD above. Buy “Sokurov: Early Masterworks” [Blu-ray and DVD],
What are you looking forward to? If you have any weird movie leads that I have overlooked, feel free to leave them in the COMMENTS section.