- With an unquenchable thirst for blood, Countess Elizabeth Bathory was one of the most prolific serial killers in history.
- Bathory is based on the legends surrounding the life and deeds of Countess Elizabeth Bathory known as the greatest murderess in the history of mankind. In this re-telling that ignores historical records, Elizabeth Bathory is framed as the subject of a witch-hunt.—Anonymous
- The gruesome tale of Countess Elizabeth Bathory, notorious yet obscure, has been recounted by historians, writers, poets, playwrights, musicians, painters, and movie-makers. Tradition has it that Countess Bathory was the greatest murderess in the history of humankind. She tortured her victims, exclusively women, before killing them. She bathed in their blood and tore the flesh from their bodies with her teeth while they were still alive.
In four centuries, no historical document has been found to reveal what had exactly happened. The plot of the film diametrically opposes the established legend. The movie alleges that Christian priests purged the cataloged history and wrote their own to defame Bathory. Liz was betrothed by her father to the heir of a noble Hungarian family in her childhood. She ears 2 children & is pregnant with a third, when her husband Ference, is called to defend Hungary against the Turkish hordes in 1593. Ference returns when Hungary is attacked & this time is captured by Turks in battle. Hungary is still a congruence of Counts & Bathory is the richest of them all with more land under her rule than the king. With Ference gone, she reaches out to other counts in Hungary to form an alliance to fight Turks. Thurzo is the commander of Ference's forces & helps him escape the Turkish prison, by bribing the guards. Thurzo lusts after Bathory & her lands.
Bathory strikes a delicate friendship with a captured painter from Italy, Marisi, who helps her refute Thurzo's advances. She also forbids Thurzo from having sex with her maids every night. Ference returns straight to the front & is injured. Bathory starts to have a relationship with Marisi. Bathory tells Marisi that she suffers from a blood disorder & is not scared of growing old. Marisi wants to be a great painter by understanding the human body. Bathory gets corpses sent to the castle where Marisi can dissect them in secret & perfect his art.
Ference returns & Thurzo tells him that Bathory has been having sex with Marisi. He poisons Marisi's drink at a party, but Bathory unknowingly takes the glass from Marisi & drinks it. Marisi escapes. To save Bathory, Ference calls a witch Darvulia who cures Bathory & tells her that her medicine will keep her young forever, but Bathory can never love again. She makes Bathory drink her own blood. 10 years on, Bathory is completely under Darvulia's control as she controls all access to Bathory & has her complete trust.
The town witnesses bodies of maids coming out of the castle & buried by Darvulia in her private compound outside the castle walls. They suspect Bathory & Darvulia of witchery. Ference is badly injured in battle & returns home only to dies soon after. He urges Bathory to marry again into a noble family to strengthen her position against Turks, by pooling their armies together. The town thinks that Ference's scars were inflicted by Bathory & Darvulia.
At Ference's funeral Thurzo demands lands promised to him by Ference from Bathory, but she refuses. Thurzo blackmails her with his knowledge of her affair with Marisi. Bathory starts to be under influence of drugs (administered to her under guise of Darvulia's medicine), as the maids body count increases. News of the alleged butchery reach the church in Vienna. The church sends two priests to investigate & find proof for allegations.
Bathory becomes increasingly mad under drugs & suspects Darvulia & banishes her. The priests enter the castle by stealth & watch Bathory taking a wine bath & believe that she is bathing in blood. But they find evidence that it is only wine made of berries. Darvulia goes to Thurzo & gives him the book of drawings made by Marisi that had all the human insides drawn from his dissecting days. Thurzo returns the book to Bathory along with Darvulia & extends his hand in friendship. He warns Bathory that even a powerful widow in Hungary can lose everything quickly.
Bathory travels to Vienna & finds Marisi in a church & proceeds to have sex with him inside a confession box, publicly. She meets the king upon Thurzo's invitation where the king's blind fortune teller declares that Bathory has conspired with the devil & is doomed. This is when Bathory realizes that it was Thurzo's doing all along (the murders of virgins, the drugs) to trap Bathory in front of the King. He asks for 1/3rd of Bathory's property to protect her, & she refuses. Thurzo tries to frame Bathory by depicting that she is taking a blood bath, but the catholic priest spies kill Thurzo's men & save Bathory.
Bathory reaches out to her distant cousin Garbor & asks for protection when Thurzo tries to murder her son. Garbor attacks Thurzo's villages & estates. Thurzo engineers a complaint from Bathory's town about random murders by Bathory. But he doesn't want Bathory to be burnt as a witch as in that case Church takes the property. Bathory's sons-in-laws side with Thurzo in the conflict & secretly deal with him to divide the property among themselves.
The sons-in-laws invite Bathory to meet her daughters & then Thurzo's men surround the town, making her escape impossible. That night Thurzo attacks & captures the castle & then arrests Bathory on charges of murder of young girls. He engineers a collection of young girls imprisoned in Bathory's dungeon to prove the allegations. Thurzo murders all of Bathory's faithful servants. The survivors are tortured to lie about Bathory's atrocities. Thurzo organizes a court that sentences Bathory to life imprisonment & orders the death of all of her "accomplices".
The king finds out & pulls up Thurzo for suspicious circumstances in the Bathory trial. Thurzo approaches the Catholic church who, based on the reports of their 2 spy priests, agrees to help Thurzo only if he agrees to help the church confiscate the property. in 1614 Bathory commits suicide. The Catholic spy priests document her life in a book, which gives their account of how Bathory was framed.
Due to Thurzo'a unsubstantiated accusations, Bathory is listed in the Guiness Book of Records as the greatest murderess of all times.
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By what name was Bathory: Countess of Blood (2008) officially released in India in English?
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