Although there are still more films of his that I haven't seen than I have as of this writing (I'm catching up, though), when someone mentions Italian horror, the first name that I usually think of is Mario Bava.

I've consistently enjoyed Bava's films more than his Italian competitors - Dario Argento, Lucio Fulci, Ruggero Deodato, etc. - and Baron Blood is no exception. Although I like his competitors' films to an extent, and they all have masterpieces of their own, Bava seems to be more focused on his films' construction as a whole--the plot, the characterizations, the dialogue, etc. are all as important as the gore and style.

Baron Blood begins as the story of Peter Kleist (Antonio Cantafora), who has traveled back to his ancestral home of Austria, ostensibly to take a break from college after earning his Master's degree. As we quickly discover, however, he really headed back because he's intrigued--obsessed, almost--with the legend of Baron Otton von Kleist, a relative from 300 years ago who is a virtual reconstruction of Vlad the Impaler, the real-life source and inspiration of much of Bram Stoker's Dracula.

At this point, I was mildly hoping that Baron Blood would turn into a vampire film of sorts, as the vampire subgenre is one of my favorites, but Bava takes the film in a different direction, and pleasantly surprised me.

It seems that Peter has found an old scroll, supposedly written by a witch that's guaranteed to wake Baron Kleist, or "Baron Blood" as he's known to the locals, and make him suffer the same tortures that he put his victims through. Peter, through friends (possibly they were relatives and I missed it) in Austria, hooks up with Eva Arnold (Elke Sommer), an architectural restoration expert, and together they skeptically try to see if the witch's incantation will really work.

One of the first things you'll notice about Baron Blood is the great atmosphere. Bava's films always have crisp cinematography, and from the moment we first see Baron Blood's castle (like Vlad the Impaler, Baron Blood was apparently the political leader of the area in his time), Bava conveys both eerieness and beauty at the same time. Later scenes heighten the atmosphere, and Bava makes great use of fog to suggest the classic horror films from the 30's and 40's. In fact, the Baron Blood character himself seems like a forgotten classic monster--deserving of a place next to The Phantom, Dracula, Frankenstein, The Mummy, et al.