THEATRE DES VAMPIRES.

Part of the Vampire Blog-A-Thon

http://filmexperience.blogspot.com/2006/10/vampire-blog-thon.html

A Vampire's Prologue.

ACT ONE:

Countess Dracula is one of my favorite Hammer Horror films which was loosley based on the legend of the "blood countess" Elizabeth Báthory, one of my longest running obsessions. Released in 1971 staring Ingrid Pitt as the Countess. It is in many ways atypical of Hammer's canon, but can be considered a close relation of that studio's Karnstein Trilogy, which was based on the works of Sheridan Le Fanu and was an attempt to broaden Hammer's output from Dracula and Frankenstein sequels.

The film is set in seventeenth century Hungary, Countess Elisabeth Nodosheen discovers that her youthful appearance and libido can be temporarily restored if she bathes in the blood of young women. She enlists her steward and lover, Captain Dobi, to help with the kidnap and murder of countless local girls, whilst pursuing further sexual conquests with the likes of Lt. Imre Toth. As a cover for her crimes while in her rejuvenated state, she takes the identity of her own daughter; a plan that spirals out of control when her actual daughter, Ilona, returns home. The movie has always held my twisted imagination and is one of my favourite Vampire stories. But as soon as I began researching the real story behind the film, my fascination increased and has become one of my writer's obsession!

Here's the original trailer:

ACT TWO: THE LEGEND BEHIND THE FILM.

Elizabeth Bathory aka “The Blood Countess” (1560 - 1614) Elizabeth Bathory was born in 1560 to a wealthy and prominent family. She was the daughter of Baron and Baroness George and Anna Bathory. She had many powerful relatives: a cardinal, princes, and a cousin who was prime minister of Hungary. Though frequently cited as Hungarian, Elizabeth is more likely to belong to the Slovak Republic (During this time, her land shifted hands between the armies of Europe.) Most of her adult life was spent at Castle Cachtice, near the intersection of Austria, Hungary, and the Slovak Republic. Bathory was born during a time of war between the Turks and Austria-Hungary armies. In 1571, her cousin Stephen (1575-86) became Prince of Transylvania and additionally assumed the throne of Poland. He was a very effective ruler, but his plans of uniting Europe against the Ottoman Empire were foiled by the invading armies of Ivan the Terrible. It was Prince Steven Bathory of Transylvania that participated in an expedition led by Vlad Dracula in Wallachia in 1546 to recover his throne.

Elizabeth Bathory was a woman of exceptional beauty. Her long raven hair was contrasted with her milky complexion. Her amber eyes were almost catlike, her figure voluptuous. She was said to be excessively vain and her narcissism drove her to depths of perversion. The Countess would spend days in front of her large dark mirror she had designed herself. It was so comfortable that it even had supports on which to lean one's arms, so as to be able to stand for many hours in front of it without feeling tired.

Elizabeth soon became acquainted with the art of inflicting pain and death, in the same time she was also developing an interest in Black Magic. Thorko, a servant in her castle, instructed her in the ways of witchcraft, at the same time encouraging her sadistic tendencies. Elizabeth wrote one day to Ferencz: “Thorko has taught me a lovely new one. Catch a black hen and beat it to death with a white cane. Keep the blood and smear a little of it on your enemy. If you get no chance to smear it on his body, obtain one of his garments and smear it’. Her husband, when he was home, also took part in torturing the servants, giving her lessons from his own experience of torturing war prisoners.

When her husband, Ferencz Nadasdy, died on January 4th, 1604 a witch, Anna Darvulia, began serving Erzsebet; with her arrival, the torture and killings escalated. With the help of her court, Elizabeth captured servant girls at the castle, taking them to an underground room known as 'her Ladyship's torture chamber' and subjected them to the worst cruelties she could imagine. Under the pretext of punishing the girls for failing to perform certain trivial tasks, Elizabeth used branding irons, molten wax and knives to shed their blood.

To the one who had stolen a coin she would repay with the same coin red-hot, which the girl had to hold tight in her hand. To the one who had talked during working hours, the Countess herself would sew her mouth shut, or otherwise would open her mouth and stretch it until the lips tore. Bathory beat her victims routinely and mutilated them as well. Reportedly she froze some in the snows of winter near Castle Csejthe, dumping ice water on them in freezing weather. Soon, the Countess began attacking her bound victims with her teeth, biting chunks of bloody flesh from their necks, cheeks and shoulders. Blood became more of an obsession with Elizabeth as she continued her tortures with razors, torches, and her own custom made silver pincers.

She even managed to bring into the castle the worst instruments of torture. Her toy maker created for her the famous automaton known as the Iron Maiden which was placed in the torture chamber. This clockwork doll was of the size and colour of a human creature. Naked, painted, covered in jewels, with blond hair that reached down to the ground, had a mechanical device that allowed it to curve its lips into a smile, and to move its eyes. For the Maiden to spring into action it is necessary to touch some of the precious stones in its necklace. Elizabeth would instruct a servant girl to fix the jewels on the Iron Maiden, and when a certain jewel was moved, the Maiden would grab the girl, spikes would come out of the breasts, and the girl would quickly bleed to death. Once the sacrifice is over another stone in the necklace is touched: the arms drop, the smile and the eyes fall shut, and the murderess becomes once again the Maiden, motionless in its coffin. A cage, too short to stand in, but too narrow to sit in, was also one of Elizabeth’s favourite toys. It was on a pulley, and had dozens of spikes jutting into the cage. The cage would be swung back and forth so that the girl inside would be torn to pieces on the spikes. As Elizabeth aged and her beauty began to wane, she tried to conceal the decline through cosmetics and the most expensive of clothes.

The story says that one day a servant girl accidentally pulled her hair while combing it and Elizabeth slapped the girl's hand so hard she drew blood, which fell onto her own hand. She immediately saw that her skin took on the freshness of youth and from that moment on she thought she had found the secret of eternal youth. Following the witch's instructions, Elizabeth had her evil henchmen kidnap beautiful young virgins, slash them with knives and collect their blood in a large vat. Then the Countess proceeded to bath in the virgin's blood. When she emerged from the blood she had seemingly regained her youth and radiance. Elizabeth's minions procured more virgins from the neighboring villages on the pretext of hiring them as servants. As the body count grew, Bathory's servants dumped the corpses outside the castle. When local peasants found the dead bodies, drained of blood, rumors quickly spread that vampires inhabited the old fortress.

But even though Elizabeth tortured young noblewomen and accompanied the blood baths with witchcraft rites, she could not retrieve her lost youth. For over a decade she perpetrated her acts of vampirism, mutilating and bleeding dry over 650 maidens until the day that Prime Minister Thurzo of Hungary stormed the castle with soldiers to arrest the Countess and her associates on December 30th. In the cellar, cluttered with the remains of the previous night's bloody ceremony, he found a beautiful mangled corpse and two young girls who lay dying. But that was not all. He smelt the smell of the dead; he saw the walls splattered with blood; he saw the Iron Maiden, the cage, the instruments of torture, bowls of dried blood, the cells - and in one of them a group of girls who were waiting their turn to die and who told him that after many days of fasting they had been served roast flesh that had once belonged to the bodies of their companions. The Countess, without denying Thurzo's accusations, declared that these acts were all within her rights as a noble woman of ancient lineage. To which the Count Palatine replied: 'Countess, I condemn you to life imprisonment within your castle walls.' For political reason, Elizabeth never attended her trial. Her powerful family managed to convince King Matthias II of Hungary to indefinitely delay the sentence against probably the extinction of the debt the Crown owed her.

She remained confined in her castle while she and her sadistic accomplices were tried for their crimes. All of her accomplices were beheaded, except for Ilona Joo and Dorottya Szentes, whose fingers were pulled off before they were burned alive. The Countess was found to be criminally insane and was walled up within a room of Csejthe Castle. Stonemasons were brought to Castle Csejthe to wall up the windows and doors of the bedchamber with the Countess inside. They only left a small hole through which food could be passed. When everything was ready, four gallows were erected on the four corners of the castle to indicate that within those walls lived a creature condemned to death. In this way she lived for three years, almost wasting away with cold and hunger without showing the slightest sign of repentance. Countess Bathory writes her last will and testament on July 31st 1614. Later in the year, she was found face-down on the floor, dead, by one of her guards. The date is reported as either August 14th or the 21st. The local folklore says that she is one of the legendary ghosts that still haunt certain areas in the Carpathians.

ACT THREE:
Vampires have been portrayed throughout history in so many mediums including Film, T.V and Theatre and of course,anime, another of my favourite depictions of vampires...