blood bath

As one might expect from a career as lengthy as Roger Corman's, there are no shortage of colorful stories to tell. But few are as complicated and convoluted as the history behind Blood Bath (1966), a 62-minute second feature made up of no less than three other films, which set a new standard for return on investment...even by Corman's standards!

It's probably best to start with the extras on Arrow Video's remarkable 2-disc set, most notably Tim Lucas' feature-length breakdown on the genesis of the film, which began as Operation Titian, an Eastern European crime-thriller which Corman commissioned but found to be unmarketable to a US audience (despite the fact that future auteur Francis Ford Coppola was in charge of the set).

An abridged version was released as part of American International's TV package, entitled Portrait in Terror. But Director Jack Hill (Spider Baby) shot an entirely new film using bits and pieces of Titian as a backdrop for his story about an artist (William Campbell) who murders his models to create a series of gruesome still life portraits. However, circumstances pulled Hill away from the final cut, and, under the auspices of Stephanie Rothman, Blood Bath was turned into a more traditional vampire movie!

This sort of cut-and-paste production was nothing new for Corman, who had already done the same thing with a series of Russian sci-fi films, incorporating the special effects footage into several different titles. But Blood Bath's evolution didn't stop there; another longer cut was created for TV once again under the title Track of the Vampire, expanding the running time with a number of embarrassingly stretched out scenes.

So how are the films themselves? Operation Titian is actually a very competent piece of Euro-filmmaking, presented here on video for the very first time. The story involving the theft of a priceless painting includes a pair of strong performances (with great use of Patrick Magee as the heavy) and a stylish visual approach reminiscent of Orson Welles' canted camera angles and chiaroscuro lighting. Blood Bath adds a dated bit of beatnik humor (inspired by Corman's own Bucket of Blood), nonsensical supernatural elements and mismatched characters, but still manages one humdinger of a "wax museum" finale. The other versions of the film are curiosity pieces more or less, but the ability to view and dissect them is a fascinating achievement in film preservation...and an enlightening study in the bizarre backstage business machinations of the exploitation industry.

Arrow's boxset includes the essential aforementioned documentary The Trouble with Titian hosted by Tim Lucas along with interviews from director Jack Hill and co-star Sid Haig. There's also a foldout poster, liner notes, reversible sleeve and outtakes. But the crowning achievement here are the 2K restorations of Portrait in Terror, Blood Bath and Track of the Vampire along with a new reconstruction of Operation Titian using the original film materials and standard definition inserts.