Christopher Lee stars as the cold and merciless Judge Jeffreys, based on a real person (although our old pal Jess Franco takes massive liberties with the historical source material). Jeffreys is a ruthless witchfinder in the 17th century (in reality though he was more concerned with traitors to the crown) who while in his day-to-day rulings of condemning witches to death, he espies the beautiful Mary who he becomes fixated with. Along the way toward Jeffreys quest for total domination over Mary, we are witness to the parade of torture, sadism and other cruelties to which he subjects those who get in his way. That’s right, folks. It’s a healthy dose of good ol’ fashioned European witch killing, Jess Franco-style!

For long-time Jess Franco fans, what you will notice immediately is that Uncle Jess is working with a higher budget and broader scope than usual, courtesy of producer Harry Alan Towers. It’s obvious that Towers here is riding on the coattails of the success of other witchfinder movies that were popular around the same time like Witchfinder General and Mark of the Devil (in fact, this film has a very similar feel to the Germany-produced Mark of the Devil, released the same year). Regardless of the reasons though, Franco appears to be given a real production budget with nice costumes, some great locations and enough extras to make the film feel lived in. Plus having Christopher Lee as your main man (I’m sure he was sick of the vampire roles Hammer had been offering him in lately) immediately adds a touch of gravitas to the proceedings. While Maria Rohm looks sufficiently ravishing as Mary, it’s Franco regular Howard Vernon who turns in the most deliciously scenery-chewing performance as the dungeon master in charge of torturing and executions. Watching this you can feel Franco internally at war with himself, his arthouse side legitimately wanting to create a polished, sumptuously produced period piece and his more lascivious side really dwelling on the prison torture sequences which are pretty extreme for the time period. Oh, and in case you are wondering, Franco is already working on his patented “uncomfortable zooms onto genitals” technique that would more fully blossom over the next few years. While The Bloody Judge (the original title most people know this film by) may not be Franco’s best (my money might be on Venus in Furs or possibly Vampyros Lesbos personally), it is certainly one of his most accomplished from a purely budgetary standpoint, and that alone makes this one worth checking out for the Franco loyal.

The 4K transfer from Blue Underground generally looks very nice and crisp. Franco’s tendency to use bright, saturated color schemes in this time period is in full effect here at times and looks stunning. The audio is your standard mono track and comes through nice and clean with the extensive dialogue being free of distortion or hiss and the whips and screams broadcasted as intended. In typical BU fashion with these new deluxe editions, Night of the Blood Monster (as the film was stupidly retitled in the US to cater to the grindhouse crowds) is absolutely packed with tons of extras. We have THREE audio commentaries, all included on both the UHD and standard blu-ray discs. All three include different pairings of Euro Cult film historians (our favorite kind!). The first has Troy Howarth (author of the So Deadly, So Perverse giallo series) and Nathaniel Thompson (the maestro behind Mondo Digital and author of the DVD Delirium books). The second has Kim Newman (long-time horror film critic who collaborated with Stephen Jones on the lauded Horror: 100 Best Books) and Barry Forshaw (author of Sex and Film and several books on crime fiction and noir). The third has David Flint (noted film book editor and author of cool stuff like Sheer Filth and Babylon Blue) and Adrian Smith (film professor and co-author of Norman J. Warren: Gentleman of Terror). All three commentaries are very good with lots of detail on the film, witchfinder films in general, the careers of actors involved, the relationship between Jess Franco and Harry Alan Towers and lots more. Naturally there’s some overlap in content between the different tracks, so this is more of an instance of just pick your favorite critics and get going. They’re all worth listening to! Also on the blu-ray disc, we have interviews with Franco and Lee, both of whom express their displeasure in the film being renamed to Night of the Blood Monster for its US release. We also get interviews with the great Stephen Thrower, author of the definitive tomes on Jess Franco (Murderous Passions and Flowers of Perversion….and yes, I own both and they’re both great and so big you could use them as a weapon to bludgeon someone breaking into your home) talking about both Jess Franco and Harry Alan Towers. The disc also includes an interview with director Alan Birkinshaw who, like Jess, worked with Harry Alan Towers on several films. We also get deleted and alternative scenes including the alternate credit sequences for the different film titles in different markets (it was marketed as a faux Edgar Wallace krimi in Germany for instance) as well as trailers and an image gallery. Like I said, this thing is STACKED.

If you are a Jess Franco nut like most of us here at ECAV, you don’t need me to tell you that you need this. And if you aren’t, this isn’t a bad place to start given the relative restraint with which Franco works here and the higher budget than usual. Highly recommended!