Cauldron of Blood Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		1.5
Video		3.0
Audio		3.5
Extras		0.0
Overall		2.0

Cauldron of Blood Blu-ray Movie Review

Is it actually possible for Boris to bore us?

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman October 13, 2014

Online auction sites like eBay can often be a surprise filled adventure, and one of the most surprising things I ever received as an auction winner was a pile of old contracts signed by Viveca Lindfors, despite the fact that this pile had absolutely nothing to do with the actual auction item on which I had bid (the seller had thrown them in as a frankly kind of weird "bonus" item). The contracts covered several years in Lindfors’ later career, and included both stage and film roles, but they had a ton of personal information (including her Social Security number and address) which kind of made me uneasy. (Making this whole escapade even more bizarre is the fact that I won an auction from Lindfors' son, actor Kristoffer Tabori, just a couple of weeks after having received these items, in one of those "is the universe trying to tell me something?" moments.) I don’t recall if Cauldron of Blood (also known as Blind Man’s Bluff) was included in the stack (I tend to think it wasn’t), but this odd, misshapen riff on iconic horror films like House of Wax 3D and its progenitor Mystery of the Wax Museum probably was seen as little more than a mere paycheck for Lindfors and her legendary co-star Boris Karloff, not to mention the top billed performer, Jean-Pierre Aumont. Filmed in Spain in 1967, the film wasn’t even released theatrically until after Karloff’s death in 1969, and even then quickly disappeared, relegated to late night showings on broadcast television now and then.

Olive's description on the keepcase insert references both giallo and Euro Horror, perhaps hopefully in the former case, since Cauldron of Blood doesn't really exploit the gore and gruesomeness that the Italian idiom often does. There is a trenchcoated villain, though, so that counts for something. The Euro Horror appellation is much more accurate, and furthermore this film also is decidedly "trippy" in a late sixties way, with no doubt intentional allusions to psychedelia and hallucinations. And in fact some cynics may aver that the entire film is something of a bad trip, one that frankly doesn't make a whole lot of sense and which seems to have been cobbled together from disparate elements almost willy nilly.

Jean-Pierre Aumont plays jet setting photographer Claude Marchand, who has been assigned to photograph aged sculptor Franz Badulescu (Boris Karloff). That opening gambit actually ends up playing second fiddle for quite a bit of the film, as Cauldron of Blood instead concentrates on Badulescu’s scheming wife Tania (Viveca Lindfors), who has a number of “side jobs” augmenting her assistance of her infirm husband (Karloff plays almost the entire film seated, under a blanket). Badulescu’s sculptures are famous for their bodily authenticity, something that’s explained by his use of actual skeletons for his statues’ armature. Where he’s getting the skeletons turns out to be the key to the supposed mystery in this particular house of wax, but the film is so ham handed in doling out information there’s absolutely no surprise who the culprit is.

Playing into all this melodrama are a bunch of swinging sixties vignettes, including buxom babes lounging on the beach, alcohol fueled parties and even a masked ball. The film is relentlessly chaotic and noisy, as if director Santos Alcocer hoped that keeping everything whipped into a frenzy might distract audiences from the fact that film is, ultimately, a pretty sad waste of major talent.

Camp lovers will no doubt get a kick out of several key elements in Cauldron of Blood, including a sado-masochistic angle involving Tania (one almost expects Bettie Page to make a cameo), and in one of the film's most over the top moments, a bizarre hallucination that sees Tania becoming a whip cracking Nazi. What this has to do with the actual "plot" of Cauldron of Blood is anyone's guess, but it makes for a nice momentary diversion if nothing else.

There are a number of none too subtle tips of the hat to Karloff’s sixties boss Roger Corman sprinkled throughout the film. The opening credits have the same hallucinatory ambience as many of the Corman features, jazzman Ray Ellis contributes a score that seems to be channeling Les Baxter, and there’s a frankly weird closing couple of shots of a roaring ocean which echo similar shots of seas in several Corman pieces. Corman of course famously wanted to inject Freudian elements into his Poe offerings, and one could make the case that his frequent use of water imagery was an allusion to the collective unconscious. As Freud himself might have stated had he been given the chance to see Cauldron of Blood, “sometimes an ocean is only an ocean.”

Cauldron of Blood Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Cauldron of Blood is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Olive Films with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.78:1. This is a fairly unexciting high definition presentation, one hobbled by consistent damage to the elements which include manifest scratches, dirt and other blemishes. Colors have faded, with flesh tones appearing slightly brown, and the overall palette looking pretty anemic, with the exception of some still pretty vivid blues. Detail is acceptable, but hardly stellar, and in fact most of this presentation is fairly soft looking. Grain is natural looking and expectedly spikes in several optical effects sequences. On the plus side, there are no compression artifacts of any note, and as is Olive's usual custom, there are no signs of excessive digital tweaking of the image.

Cauldron of Blood Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Cauldron of Blood's lossless DTS-HD Master Audio Mono track is fairly shallow throughout the film, offering decent support for the dialogue (such as it is) and the often quite odd underscore. While there's no real damage to speak of, there's also not much punch here, with the result being decent but unremarkable.

Cauldron of Blood Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

There are no supplements on this disc.

Cauldron of Blood Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Cauldron of Blood will probably appeal mostly to Karloff completists. (Are there Lindfors completists? If so, I have a fantastic deal on a pile of contracts I'd like to talk to you about.) But even fans of Boris may be disappointed, not just in Karloff's kind of sad shape in this film, but in how completely chaotic and nonsensical this outing often is. Technical merits are acceptable but hardly reference quality.