Blood Bath. Jack Hill and Stephanie Rothman, 1966.
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Edition screened: Arrow 4-film Blu-ray box set, released 2016. English language. Runtime approximately 62 minutes.
Summary: Blood Bath contains no depictions of violence or harm to animals, but the first two films included in the set depict the murder of a German Shepherd.
Blood Bath was realized through multiple reinterpretations of the Yugoslavian art-theft thriller Operation Titian, tinkered with until it became a vampire horror film. Production details can be found numerous places on the internet (here for example). The Arrow box set includes all four surviving stages of this transformation. Click on individual titles for more details:
Operation Titian (1964) is much better than expected and stands on its own as a good mid-60s European crime thriller with decent acting and creepy old museums.
Portrait in Terror (1964) is identical to Operation Titian much of the time. It is simplified slightly for an American audience and adds a long scene in which a killer carries a woman’s body from the hillside church where she was murdered way down to the bay. The original just lets us assume that she was tossed over the side. Watch Operation Titian instead.
Blood Bath (1966) is very different from the first two films, recycling a few atmospheric shots but having a completely different plot and only one returning actor/character. The vampire serial killer story is convoluted but completely enjoyable. Jack Hill’s comedy scenes are fun to watch, the female characters are cute and sexy, and the underwater vampire attack is quite a novelty.
Track of the Vampire (1966) is nearly identical to Blood Bath except for three boring and unnecessary scenes that were added to lengthen BB’s short run time: First comes a tedious sequence in which a new character is chased through the woods and across a beach, followed immediately by a stylistically fumbled beach ballet sequence, and finally a doubling-down on the underwater vampire attack. While the original aquatic blood sucking in Blood Bath was a fun surprise, this additional one goes on about four times longer than it should, and diminishes the fun of the original which comes later in the film. Track o/t Vampire also reaches clear back to Operation Titian to add a few more Old World architectural shots containing characters no longer in the last two films. Watch Blood Bath instead.