THE STORY – Decades after her mysterious disappearance, the Blood Countess re-emerges in modern-day Vienna, where she reunites with her devoted underling, Hermine, to track down a dangerous book with the power to destroy all evil – including all vampires such as themselves. The duo embark on a scavenger hunt through the city’s magnificent historic sites, and conscript the countess’s melancholic nephew – a vegetarian vampire named Rudi Bubi – and his psychotherapist as they expand their search to Bohemia. Meanwhile, a pair of vampirologists and a police inspector remain hot on their trail…
THE CAST – Isabelle Huppert, Birgit Minichmayr, Thomas Schubert, Lars Eidinger & André Jung
THE TEAM – Ulrike Ottinger (Director & Writer)
THE RUNNING TIME – 119 Minutes
A known entity in the European film world and a recurring presence on the global art scene (her work has been exhibited at MoMA and the Berkeley Art Museum, among others), Ulrike Ottinger has a varied filmography spanning decades. Generally associated with a more arthouse-leaning milieu, she remains somewhat true to that philosophy with “The Blood Countess,” although the horror-adjacent elements and the inspired decision to cast Isabelle Huppert as the lead may attract a slightly different crowd this time around.
As per the title, the film is cheerfully rooted in the mythology surrounding an infamously real person: the countess Erzsébet Báthory (commonly known as Elizabeth in English-language depictions), a Hungarian noblewoman and serial killer who spent the last years of her life imprisoned in a Slovakian castle after it emerged she and her servants had tortured and murdered hundreds of young women.
She quickly entered local folklore via the rumor that she bathed in the blood of virgins to retain her youth, which led to her frequently being depicted as a vampire in popular culture, in works such as the Hammer horror film “Countess Dracula” (where she’s called Elizabeth Nádasdy, using her husband’s surname) and the novel “Dracula the Un-dead” – co-authored by Bram Stoker’s grandnephew – where she is reimagined as the Transylvanian count’s cousin. Her alleged killing methods also inspired the most gruesome sequence in Eli Roth’s “Hostel: Part II.”
In Ottinger’s version, Báthory, who has been missing for decades, resurfaces in present-day Vienna and reconnects with her faithful henchwoman Hermine (Birgit Minichmayr), with whom she sets out to locate a legendary book that could potentially end the existence of all vampires. As they search for clues across the Austrian capital, leaving bodies in their wake that attract the attention of the police and some self-proclaimed vampirologists, a second plot strand concerns the countess’ nephew, Rudi Bubi (Thomas Schubert), a self-hating vampire who struggles both with his commitment to vegetarianism and his inability to convince his arrogant, self-absorbed therapist (Lars Eidinger) that the creatures of the night are real.
In keeping with the cinematic tradition of vampires being well-traveled, Báthory is multilingual and delivers most of her dialogue in the razor-sharp French viewers are accustomed to in Huppert’s acting style, with only a handful of lines in German and/or Hungarian. Arch and yet fully believable, the actress – no stranger to oddball roles – savors every single syllable as she conveys the layers of the countess’ undead personality: psychotic and playful, yet also elegant and, at times, genuinely fond of her equally deranged peers. A powerhouse on her own, she’s also hilarious whenever she shares the screen with Minichmayr, the other half of a deliciously bizarre comedic duo.
For yes, while the color red dominates pretty much from the get-go, when Báthory enters the frame on a vessel that matches her garish outfit in chromatic terms, this isn’t a particularly scary movie, but rather a very funny one. Dark humor abounds throughout the film’s two hours. While some jokes may be lost on viewers who aren’t familiar with elements of the Vienna scene or Austrian pop culture in general (such as Karl Markovics channeling one of his earlier TV roles when he shows up as a bumbling homicide cop), the gags are usually calibrated in such a way that they will hit their target with hilarity-inducing accuracy.
There is even an evolution for some of the humorous touches, most notably concerning the supporting part played by Eurovision champion and queer icon Conchita Wurst: almost a background character at first, her role gradually increases until she singlehandedly steals the show in one of the film’s most joyously extravagant sequences, a spellbinding blend of comedy and music that is already destined to become a cult moment in genre circles. To use modern slang, everyone in the cast understands the assignment, be it Wurst in a role that openly plays on her public persona or Eidinger gleefully sending up the pompous intellectual types he has embodied in a far less self-effacing manner in the past.
Ably assisted by her cinematographer Martin Gschlacht and editor Pia Dumont, Ottinger also gets the most out of the various Viennese locations, ranging from the obvious – crypts and the like – to the more pleasingly mundane, such as the countess riding the escalator in a subway station, as though she were taking us on a weird tour of the capital after hours. And perhaps as a declaration of intent vis-à-vis the picture’s aim to be entertainment, a crucial sequence takes place at Prater, the city’s famous amusement park, perhaps also acting as a metaphor for the rollercoaster that is the film’s pacing: the middle section occasionally runs out of steam, but when it picks up again, the momentum is nigh-on unstoppable as we head towards the neatly calculated, yet also delightfully insane climax.
