Blood Delirium

Blood Delirium opens with a concert pianist named Sybille arriving home and removing her top. She puts on dinner. She checks her answering machine. A message warns of “two candles, one flame.” The window blows open. We are barely past the opening credits.

Cut to a gothic castle, where renowned painter Saint Simon watches his wife Christine die during a thunderstorm. Christine was also a pianist. She looked exactly like Sybille. These facts will become important, though “important” is a generous word for anything that happens in this film.

Simon cannot paint. He and his manservant Hermann dig up Christine’s corpse. Some clunky exposition reveals a full year has passed since her death, not the few days we’d reasonably assumed. They wire the rotting skeleton to the piano in Simon’s studio. This does not cure his artist’s block. I cannot imagine why.

At a showing of his work, fate introduces Simon to Sybille. Shocked by her resemblance to his dead wife, he invites her to visit him at his castle. As Simon drives home, three glowing orbs attack his car on a deserted road. He pulls over and finds Sybille standing by the roadside. No one remarks on any of this. She goes with him. He dresses her in his dead wife’s clothes and locks her in a room. She seems unbothered.

Hermann, meanwhile, is a busy man. He assaults a local girl, whom he charmingly calls “a nice piece of ass.” Sybille watches this with the mild interest of someone observing a fender bender. Later Hermann abducts the same girl, brings her to the castle, and murders her. The scene is generous with nudity and blood. Simon takes the scenic route to intervene, arriving too late. He begins scolding Hermann, then notices the blood. His eyes light up. This, he realizes, is the color of suffering.

What follows is a kind of low-rent A Bucket of Blood, minus the social satire. Simon lures victims to the castle, murders them, and drains their blood for his art. As Hermann wheels out one emptied corpse, Simon warns him: “Don’t molest her!” This is a reasonable concern. Simon once caught Hermann molesting Christine’s body before her funeral. Friends don’t let friends molest a corpse.

Among Simon’s paintings, by the way, is one titled “The Devil Shitting out the Universe.” That sentence could serve as a capsule review.

Sybille’s boyfriend eventually shows up in a helicopter, which is the most logical thing anyone does in this picture. He infiltrates the castle with a group of movers and attempts a rescue. He fails. Christine’s ghost takes matters into her own hands, setting every painting ablaze and burning the castle to the ground with Simon and Hermann inside. The dead wife accomplishes in thirty seconds what ninety minutes of plot could not.

Yes, I have spoiled the plot. My duty is to convey the experience of watching this film, and the above should serve as adequate warning. For those who seek out this particular brand of derangement, rest assured: it is more unhinged than I have made it sound. John Phillip Law chews scenery as Simon, in a performance he would later all but disown. Gordon Mitchell is convincing as Hermann, mainly because he looks like he could actually do these things. Everything else is a blur of nudity, blood, and clumsy plotting.