Customer Service
The Sadistic Baron von Klaus (Blu-ray)
- Buy 3 items and get 20% off MSRP!
- In stock, ready to ship
- Backordered, shipping soon
We generally process your order within 1 busines day (M-F)
Film Details
96
Cast and Creators
Jess Franco
This section doesn’t currently include any content. Add content to this section using the sidebar.
About the Film
In this follow-up to his ground-breaking horror film The Awful Dr. Orlof, Jess Franco (Female Vampire, A Virgin Among the Living Dead) continued to lay the foundation of a career defined by fetishistic imagery and transgressive violence. A series of grisly murders in the remote village of Holfen convinces the locals that the town is still cursed by the spirit of a 17th-century baron who maintained an elaborate torture chamber in the dungeon of his estate. Undaunted by the villagers' superstitions, a detective (Georges Rollin) quickly focuses his investigation upon the creepy Max Von Klaus (Howard Vernon). Meanwhile, the youngest male descendent of the Von Klaux bloodline (Hugo Blanco) returns home to mourn the death of his mother, and must wrestle with his own connection to the cursed family history. The Sadistic Baron Von Klaus occupies a significant stage in Franco's evolution as a filmmaker. On one hand, it is a well-produced thriller in the European style (the influence of Carol Reed's The Third Man is apparent throughout). But Franco is clearly interested in stepping outside convention to innovate something of his own, as evidenced by the newly-restored torture dungeon sequence - which cult film historian Tim Lucas (Video Watchdog) called, "horror cinema's first sequence of 100-proof erotic horror." It is a sequence that is shocking even today and was, in 1962, an omen of diabolical things to come.
Redemption
About the Director
Jesús "Jess" Franco (1930–2013) directed between 180 and 200 films, a number so high that even film historians cannot agree on the exact total. He was a trained jazz musician and once worked as Orson Welles’s assistant on Chimes at Midnight. Franco brought an energetic, improvisational camera style to every genre he worked in, including horror, softcore erotica, spy thrillers, and combinations of all three. He often filmed these movies back-to-back, using the same sets and cast.
His breakout film, Gritos en la Noche (The Awful Dr. Orloff, 1962), was one of the first Spanish horror movies to get international distribution, released just as Spain’s censorship laws were starting to relax. After that, Franco became a regular in the European co-production scene, working with producers in France, Germany, and Portugal. He made films like Vampyros Lesbos and She Killed in Ecstasy, which combined lurid stories with a truly hypnotic visual style. He used hand-held zooms, jazz soundtracks, and often ignored traditional narrative logic, which put off critics but won over cult audiences years later.
Since Franco’s death, people have looked at his work differently. What at one time appeared sloppy now appears as a unique, dreamlike style, more like underground cinema than typical exploitation films. Because he made so many movies, he is also a good starting point for collectors, as nearly every major genre from that era appears in his filmography.
