Next month, one of the most expensive films ever made in eastern Europe will be premiered in Bratislava, Slovakia. Titled Bathory, it is a biopic about the infamous 'Blood Countess': Elizabeth Bathory.
The film is a Czech, Slovak, Hungarian and UK co-production. It stars Anna Friel (right) as the nymphomaniac Hungarian noblewoman, who was convicted, in 1611, of murdering dozens of young girls, amid rumours of lesbianism, Satanism and vampirism.
Coincidentally, a month after the premiere of Bathory, a second movie about the 'Tigress of the Carpathians', starring Julie Delpy and William Hurt, will commence filming. This American take on the mad sapphic Countess is said to be even more bloodthirsty than the European effort.
Normally I would be looking
|  |
|
 |
 |
|
sean thomas gets a fright from Anna Friel’s nymphomaniac Hungarian vampire |
| |
forward to these films. I like nothing more than a well researched, bloodcurdling Gothic history movie, especially if it involves nude scenes with Anna Friel. However this time I am not so sure. Because I have already had an uncomfortably close encounter with the woman who was the real-life inspiration for Bram Stoker's Dracula.
It happened last winter, when I was researching the Countess for a book. To get a grip on Bathory's extraordinary story, I visited all the places most associated with her. I went to the lonely Ecsed marshes, in eastern Hungary, where she grew up. I saw the bizarre church of Nyirbator, where she is possibly buried. I schlepped across the Hungarian plains to the ruined castle of Cachtice, in the dark forests of west Slovakia, where Bathory died, quite mad - walled up in her own bedroom as a punishment for her 
|
Film: showing at a cinema near you
Castle Dracula is for suckers
