Apocrypha has it that the Austrian castle Bava used for Baron Blood came with its own torture chamber, which might account for the gruesome realism in an otherwise classic tale of an uncanny castle. Peter, a young American student, arrives in Vienna to visit relatives. He is particularly preoccupied with his long–dead great grandfather, Baron von Kleist, whose uttered name still sends the local villagers scurrying for shelter. At the ancestral castle, now being renovated as a hotel, he meets Euro-sex kitten Elke Sommer, here disguised as a miniskirted architect. Together they manage to conjure the dead Baron (a weirdly wizened Joseph Cotten) and all hell, or at least part of hell, breaks loose. Bava's fascination with the eternal penalty for evil deeds is no better seen than in this richly atmospheric tale where the past and present are but a portal to pain.