Patrons have paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to get a glimpse at one of art’s greatest masterpieces, Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa. They wait in line for hours, buy novelty t-shirts (that say ‘my SMILE is from seeing the Mona Lisa’), and go bankrupt purchasing other art in place of what they know is inferior compared to the GOAT painting in history. However, the worst part is the feeling deep inside their guts when they finally take a gander at their cherished relic, because it seems to disappoint. Maybe because size does actually matter. The real Mona Lisa, also known as Jocande, always seems like it will be a huge painting the size of our wall; instead, when people view it at The Louvre (usually at a cost of an average movie ticket) they leave unsatisfied to know it is only 21 inches high (sorry to disappoint, but the one you viewed is actually a replica, as the real Mona Lisa is hidden in an air tight vault. Maybe that’s why she [or he?] is deviously smiling)! I feel their suffering, having recently witnessed a true work of insanity the likes of which Van Gogh would have cut out his eyes to unsee, which is the black and white abstract bad pop art known as Blood Bath (aka Operation: Titian aka Portrait in Terror aka Track of the Vampire), a watercolored replica of a Yugoslavia-produced film so surreal it would take Dan Brown to uncover the secret as to why people paid money for this abstract expression of quality cinema!
Due to the rise in technology, a few years back, X-rays revealed that the Mona Lisa as we know it was actually a redo by Da Vinci, as there are elements of the original painting underneath. It appeared, like most artists, Da Vinci was dissatisfied with his final work (maybe he would have been more successful as a studio executive). It’s ironic in the sense that this canvas of a film itself had multiple layers as well. Produced by the very portrait of string-shoe magician Roger Corman, the original production was an unreleasable film titled Operation: Titian, which, upon setting his sights on the commission, Corman realized was unwatchable. He then hired the adept maestro Jack Hill (the creator of brave works like Foxy Brown and Spider Baby) to splash some blood and guts with some tight reshoots, resulting in a film he titled Portrait in Terror. However, like buying a painting from the Sears collection of Vincent Price, Corman was still not satisfied, so he hired Stephani Rothman (responsible for such photorealistic works as It’s a Bikini World and The Velvet Vampire) to shoot a few more bloody good (crappy) scenes before releasing it as Blood Bath from Corman’s pals at American International Pictures. Regardless of what title the film falls under (I would have been partial to Blood Bath of the Vampire’s Portrait myself), I’m not sure what to feel of a vampire film in which the idea of a vampire is that there is no vampire. It’s more of a demon/succubus that hides in the portraits the artist creates of his victims. It’s a stretch of an already complicated canvas, but just because you throw a few fangs on a guy who looks like the other guy who starred in the Yugoslavian portions of the frame, a vampire film does not make! Great use of black and white photography, a couple of good chills with the wax-covered bodies, and just the sheer presence of actor Sid Haig (even with hair) cannot make up for what is clearly posterity for a movie mixed together to create so-so shades of horror. However, paintings throughout the film, done in such frightening detail, are the true stars of the film(s) and should have their own gallery opening instead of watching the varnishes dribble of minimalistic terrors.
In a thriving artistic community, among the very frustrated (and narcissistic) artists is model Daisy, who, after loathing the dark alleyways, finds herself admiring the work of the infamous (and dangerously famous) Sordie. His paintings shriek of Baroque Romanticism and death for anyone who glares at his devious work. But speak of the Devil, Sordie appears and scares his new admirer, telling her he must paint her. Daisy agrees, enjoying the break from her group’s meandering, artistic self-indulgence party. They arrive at his studio, and while she possesses Sordie, he reveals that an ancestral vampire possesses him. As he transforms into a vampire (sucking as a vampire and not as a hacky painter), he preserves her body (for some weird, unexplained reason) in boiling wax, capturing Daisy’s soul forever in creative endeavors (I’m sure he still collects unemployment like more street artists). When not a starving (more like thirsty) artist, Sordie spends his days with a ballerina he is madly in love with, but lately the need to love her has been wiped away (with paint thinner) by his sensationally urgent need to feed the artistic beast within. Will Dorian escape the renaissance of her lover’s paintbrush, or will Sordie be able to collect another couple of bucks with his new portrait of hideousness?
Stroking your way at a soothing sixty-nine minutes, Corman still was not satisfied with Rothman’s Blood Bath and re-re-hired her to shoot additional footage for the television version titled Track of the Vampire, including reshoots where Sid Haig’s hair and beard appear and re-appear due to shaving for another movie in between. You can stream this graphic canvas on most streaming services, but try to find the limited edition two-disc set by Arrow Films, which features all four different versions of this (un)thrilling masterpiece. So next time you decide to travel to Paris and see a famous termite-infested work of art like the Mona Lisa, maybe save a few bucks and just go to your local Ma and Pa thrift store to find classic like Blood Bath (aka Operation: Titian aka Portrait in Terror aka Track of the Vampire) on that discarded VHS (with incredible cover art), because like Da Vinci himself might have once said, “Art is never finished, only abandoned… like the movie theatre after five minutes of whatever version of this film they watched.”
