Isabelle Huppert spends The Blood Countess as Erzsébet Báthory, undead and loose in present-day Vienna. Director Ulrike Ottinger says she was pushed into cutting 15 to 20 minutes out of the film. “The film originally had a wonderful rhythm, exactly as it was,” she said at the Tokyo International Film Festival, in remarks reported by Variety.
Ottinger did not name who applied the pressure. She said only that “everyone was forcing me to.” She has made her peace with the result. “From my point of view, it’s perfect now, but it was a big job to rework it again,” she said.
The Berlin Version Ran 119 Minutes
The film had its world premiere in the Berlinale Special Gala section on February 16 at Berlin’s Zoo Palast, where the programme listed it at 119 minutes. It is an Austrian, Luxembourgish and German co-production, shot by Martin Gschlacht.
Báthory Hunts a Book Through Vienna
Huppert’s countess resurfaces in the modern city alongside her maid Hermine (Birgit Minichmayr), looking for a book said to be able to destroy vampires, herself included. Her nephew Rudi Bubi (Thomas Schubert) and his therapist (Lars Eidinger) get pulled along, while vampirologists and Inspector Unglaube (Karl Markovics) chase them across Vienna and into Bohemia. Conchita Wurst appears as a Master of Ceremonies.
Ottinger wrote the screenplay and worked on the dialogue with Elfriede Jelinek, who won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2004. Báthory has been genre property for decades: Hammer built Countess Dracula around the legend with Ingrid Pitt in 1971, and Delphine Seyrig played Báthory by name in Daughters of Darkness the same year.
Strand Releasing holds the US rights and plans a theatrical release in spring 2027, with no exact date set yet.
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