CAULDRON OF BLOOD (1970)

On his way to a vacation in Paris, journalist Claude Marchand (Jean-Pierre Aumont) gets orders to fly to Spain to do a photo story on Franz Badulescu (Boris Karloff), a sculptor who toiled most of his life in obscurity until he was left blind and crippled from a car accident caused by his wife Tania (Viveca Lindfors). Claude uses Valerie, a local woman (with whom he eventually has an affair) to get access to Franz. The artist has continued to sculpt, using life-sized skeleton armatures, dug out of graves by his wife, who seems more concerned with her husband's career than his comfort. What we soon learn is that Tania, with some help from her lover, local bar owner Shanghai (Milo Quesada), is killing animals and humans, then dipping their bodies into an acid bath in the cellar to provide the skeletons for Franz. As young, attractive women continue to vanish, a local gypsy woman has a vision that Franz is behind the disappearances and predicts that someone close to Claude will die that night at 3 a.m. Since the only person close to Claude is Valerie, he goes rushing to the mansion to save her, where she is indeed about to become the latest person to take a bath in acid.

That plot summary is short and mostly coherent unlike the movie itself which, at nearly 100 minutes, is too long and often incoherent, And, frankly, not very interesting on any level. This is one of Karloff's last movies and he doesn't really have much to do, partly because, due to illness, he isn't very mobile. He keeps an aura of seriousness about him, but that doesn't make this cheap, messy movie any more entertaining. Plotwise, it's a riff on the Mystery of the Wax Museum/House of Wax story, except here the statue maker is unaware of the horrific deeds that are being performed in the name of art (and money). Aumont, Lindfors and Rosenda Monteros (as Valerie) have the most to do here and generally do it fairly well, but in service of a weak screenplay, for a rather incompetent director. Milo Quesada is handsome but he's stuck playing an unmotivated villain. Ruben Rojo is interesting for a while as a drunken former reporter (I think) who hangs around being obnoxious to everyone, but honestly I lost track of the character, and I couldn't tell you if he lives or dies. In a climactic battle between Tania and Valerie, the score suddenly turns into spy-movie music—I liked it, but it didn't fit. A mess you can avoid unless you're a Karloff completist. Not released in the States until 1971, after Karloff's passing. Pictured are Lindfors, Karloff and Aumont. [DVD]