It’s time for a movie that you could tell was going to go off the rails almost immediately. The characters are pretty bad and the whole film is one of the biggest compilations of self inflicted wounds that I have seen in a very long time. Definitely not going to go down as one of the next big horror films and I can see why nobody talks about this one. The baron is not a winner.

The film starts off with a guy named Peter deciding to visit his relatives. He wants a break from the usual routine of school work and what better way than by learning about the legend of Baron Blood? This guy was an ancestor of Peter’s after all. It doesn’t matter that the Baron was known to be an incredibly evil man. Peter is curious to know more about him. So when Peter learns about a spell that could summon the Baron back to life, he doesn’t hesitate to use it. Everyone warns him about this but he doesn’t care! After using the spell, mysterious things begin to happen. People begin to get murdered but surely this isn’t because of what Peter did right? There was another spell to destroy the Baron once more but due to a lot of carelessness, it ends up being burned. Is there any way to stop the Baron?

I think the biggest problem right away with Peter is that he has virtually no remorse for what he’s done. People are literally being murdered in gruesome ways and he’s still interested in how the spell worked. He continues to act fascinated and excited by what is going on even after the negative effects have been well under way. That doesn’t sound like a good character to me. In fact, that sounds like a pretty bad one. He’s more focused on seducing Eva and getting more scientific experience under his belt than saving the day.

For that reason, he was definitely never going to rank. I would also say Eva takes some guilt here for going along with this. Peter may be crazy but she doesn’t have to follow his lead. She could have just said no instead of letting herself get seduced immediately and going against her better judgment. It certainly didn’t go very well for her, that’s for sure. She was a big believer in the supernatural events going on so that’s even more reason why she should have taken a step back there.

Then we have Karl who isn’t as bad but he probably could have taken a harder stance in telling Peter to knock off his interest in the occult. I just can’t put a lot of blame on him because these are all adults so you have to trust in some common sense. Karl went about his life as normal and then once he found out about the threat, he got to work. He certainly felt more prepared than the other two and could at least talk with the cops without sounding crazy while the other two would phrase things in the craziest possible ways.

It’s a tried and true trope of the characters talking to the cops about monsters and actually thinking they will believe it. No shot, and I can’t even blame the cop there. It is a tough tale to swallow. As for the Baron, yeah he doesn’t have a ton of character or anything like that. He likes torturing people, that’s about the extent of personality that he has. He goes around wrecking everyone as much as possible. I guess he also seems to like Eva quite a bit so he has that trait as well which doesn’t really help matters.

You won’t be remembering this guy for very long. I suppose he is at least smart enough to be able to use a disguise and trick the heroes but that doesn’t take a whole lot of skill here tbh. Just about anyone would be able to pull the wool over these fighters! Even aside from the characters, the film had a bunch of issues though. For starters, I found it to be way too mean spirited. Since this guy’s whole thing is torture, he goes around torturing everyone.

All of the deaths are pretty brutal and the film comes across as rather mean spirited There isn’t much of a story beyond the carnage and even though the film’s runtime is fairly short, this will feel like a rather long experience. The movie actually could have been a bit better if the baron had pretended that he’d turned over a new leaf or something. That would have been far more interesting and then you would have an excuse for less violence in the meantime.

I suppose I’ll give the film credit for having some fairly good effects here. Everything is very practical and that can be a lost art at times. Meanwhile the script is fun enough with everyone talking all proper. It doesn’t make up for the writing of course as that is still a lost cause overall but at least that is a silver lining.

Overall, Baron Blood is definitely a film that I would advise you to avoid. In a way it almost feels like the original blueprint to a classic slasher film. The whole film is about the kills and the heroes being unable to do anything here as even they are captured and outmaneuvered. There aren’t any bright spots to raise the film up from the lower levels and you can do better with even the average horror film. Now that’s saying something since the whole genre tends to be on the lower side. That’s just how bad this film was. You can absolutely pull off a jerk main character but in that case I need a more satisfying ending for him. It felt like this guy wasn’t intended to be written like an antagonist, even though he absolutely was one. Never forget that the entire murder spree was 100% his fault. The Baron had been trapped by an immortal spell to suffer forever thanks to a witch and Peter ruined it just for kicks.

Overall 1/10