I will have to admit that until the Blood Ceremony Blu-ray landed in my mailbox I had not seen any films by Jorge Grau outside of his famous Living Dead at Manchester Morgue (aka Let Sleeping Corpses Lie). So needless to say I excited to expand my knowledge of Grau’s oeuvre. Blood Ceremony (aka the Legend of Blood Castle), is one of many 1970’s films which take on the legend of Elizabeth Bathory, the notorious Hungarian “Blood Countess” who bathed in the blood of virgins to retain her appearance of youth.

Blood Ceremony takes a slightly different perspective than any of the films that came before or after, rather, this one doesn’t deal with Elizabeth herself, but as a descendant of the notorious countess. This one is interesting, it takes place in a world where “vampirism” allegedly exist, and in fact, a vampire (Actually a corpse in a coffin) is brought to trial.

Meanwhile, Countess Bathory (Lucia Bose) gets blood spilled upon her and feels like her skin is rejuvenated. She feels that she is aging badly, and losing her love Karl (Espartaco Santoni). Somehow, he manages to convinces Karl to fake his death, in doing so he can now murder the nubile young women the Countess needs to maintain her youth. All the while, Karl does fall for the innkeepers daughter, who works her “spell” on him. Of course, this doesn’t stop his Bathory-inspired murder spree.

Now even though this is not the original Countess herself, a lot of the plot points of her story play out as such. So if you are familiar with any of the versions or the historic variation there are no surprises in that regard. However, Grau really creates an unbelievable powerful film with some truly shocking moments, and some that shock you in ways that you would not suspect. I found the moment when the Countess desperate for blood made a little girl cut herself to be a truly hard watch, and showed the extent of her desperation. The scene after Bathory’s trial where her maid gets her tongue sliced seemed extremely and very memorable.

Blood Ceremony was previously released by Mya Communications on DVD as Legend of Blood Castle. I didn’t see that version, but most of their DVD’s were taken from pretty bad sources. I can say without a doubt that Mondo Macabro did FANTASTIC work here. We are presented a 4k scan at 1080p in 1:66:1 colors are stable, detail is excellent, blacks are solid, and grain is natural and film like. Audio is Spanish or English in HD audio and sound crisp and clear without issue. Extras include a commentary with Troy Howarth and Nathaniel Thompson and another fantastic one with Robert Monell and Rodney Barnett. There are also 2 archival Grau interviews. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.