Legend of the Blood Countess Bathory in screen adaptations - Review

Once having heard this urban legend about a noblewoman that loved to bathe herself in blood of virgins she’d killed to keep herself young, you would never forget it. Who knows, you may even lose your sleep for a while.

Lady Bathory de Ecsed was a real historical figure that had lived in the Kingdom of Hungary in 1560 - 1614. Nobody knows for certain how many victims she'd killed with her collaborators, but the official number equals to more than 600. After she was accused and put to trial her sentence was to be contained in a room with no light in her own castle for the rest of her life. There was only a tiny opening for meal deliveries. She died after five years of home-imprisonment.

Although she is considered a serial-killer there are no evidence that she did have bath in the virgin blood. It is commonly believed that these rumors were the product of the townsfolk imagination. Since Lady Bathory was very beautiful and drew attention of all men she met, not necessarily with such intention, it aroused unending jealousy and envy from other women towards her. So it was just the matter of time until someone would have started some supernatural gossip and rumors about this person. Some compared her to the Count Dracula and thus even called her as the Countess Dracula.

This is basically the idea and a plot for all screen adaptations involving Lady Bathory.
Personally I’ve seen three different movies about this countess and that’s what I’m going to share with you here.

“Bathory”, 2008 (it’s also been released under the title “Bathory: Countess of Blood”)

Production was launched in cooperation with such countries as Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Hungary, and the United Kingdom.

This version is an example of how it’s easy sometimes to spoil one’s reputation out of spite and unleashed anger. It’s based on the facts and shows us the more realistic story of how it may have truly happened. Of course, this is only a movie and we can’t rely on the events to be correct.
As a film it is entertaining and actually succeeds in keeping the audience in suspense until the very last scenes.

In addition to the good plot the setup of the costume drama is beautifully staged.
Those who love historical dramas will be greatly satisfied with the outcome.

Here is the trailer you may watch:

“The Countess”, 2009

This picture is a product of French-Germany filming companies and starred Julie Delpy, William Hurt and Daniel Brühl as the main characters.

It was the first movie about Lady Bathory that I watched. I remember how impressed and blown away I was with the story. Costumes, castles and the perfect cast absolutely made my day.
I didn’t know about the past existence of such a person before but this movie got me interested and then I made my research on this personality. That’s when I found that the woman was a real person and most of the events and characters in the film did take place.

As far as the movie is concerned you can feel the danger coming from this mystic woman whose self-control shouldn’t be mistaken for a sign of calmness and harmlessness but taken as a reason to run away as fast as the feet can take you.

The films of 2008 and 2009 are about the same countess but at the same time they are so different in the way of approaching the history that it can only be an advantage to see them both.

One of the trailers:

Lady of Csejte, 2015

Production included associated work of filming companies from Russia, USA and the Czech Republic.

Upon being thrilled with having watched the above movies there was no question in whether I should see another adaptation of the same story as I found that they can be so exciting in their diversity.

The beginning of the movie is promising and different from what I’ve seen so far in other similar pictures. It doesn’t start directly with the introduction of the countess. Herein the story is told through the experience of one of the maids that’s taken a job and temporary residency in the castle. This maid happens to be a young girl of teen age and therefore a virgin. Naturally she is to become one of the potential victims of the unsated countess. Whether or not the countess succeeds in luring the girl into the trap is yet to be seen.

As I said the beginning enthralled me but unfortunately after 20 minutes or so the anticipation of the plot unwinding quietly subsided due to different reasons.
As for me I had several issues with the story-line. First of all, acting skills of the younger actress and actor who plays her brother is somewhat amiss. You only get the proper acting from the actress who plays the countess.
But I could have lived with that have I not found other faults.

The important one is the script!

The motion is so slow. No dynamical elements. Sometimes you catch yourself on the way to falling asleep. Just to be fair I got to say that often they tried to create illusion of threat with menacing music in the background but somehow it wasn’t enough. The only time you see true movements is almost at the end.

Script is something that the whole project is based on. If you don’t have an ideal script there’s really no point in shooting the movie at all. A worthy script can save any low-budget movie! And I do believe that’s true!
Apparently the creators of the “Lady of Csejte” haven’t thought of that.
After my huge disappointment I went on finding the reason for this fail of the movie and I think I figured it out.

This time the movie was produced mostly by the “Enjoy movies” company which I didn’t take a note of at first. And now I truly regret that I didn’t.
You see, this “Enjoy movies” filming company is considered to have a really bad quality projects in Russia. Although they continue filming other projects uninterruptedly their scripts are so bad that they can ruin even the story that’s practically been written for them by history.

You can see the trailer by the clicking below. I didn’t care at the time that it wasn’t anything good. Although the blood left on the steps by the bottom of the dress does make a certain impression.

I hope my review helped you to understand these pictures at least a little bit. You should still make your own judgments and ignore my intrusive opinion if you have any interest in historical costume dramas and suspense genre.

As always, thank you for staying with me until the end of this post and I wish you more good movies!