This popped up on the Horror Channel and I had a vague musing that this might be a obscure and long forgotten Hammer horror made to cash in on the acclaim that WITCHFINDER GENERAL received . When the name of Jess Franco appears you quickly realise this won't be a Hammer movie . The story is set against the background of William Of Orange , he of Battle Of The Boyne fame trying to get his hands on the English crown and the political intrigue involving the fall out . The narrative then revolves around Judge Jeffries and isn't a million miles removed from the feel of WITCHFINDER GENERAL . That said if you've seen Michael Reeves 1968 movie and compare it to this one you start understanding why the prior film gains its sometimes bewildering reputation as an under looked classic horror drama . Reeves film was shot in English locations and had a rather effective performance from Vincent Price as Matthew Hopkins which many people consider Price's career highlight . Here however it's painfully obvious the locations are filmed in Europe with mountains in the background which isn't a common geographical characteristic of the Hampshire countryside . There's also obvious dubbing which means the over emphatic regional accents gives the film an unintentional feeling of Monty Python rather than serious horror

This film is an unique thing. Being possibly the best of B-category Franco's movies, this one is very hard to find in Russia. And I guess only Franco's true fans and the lovers of the costume movies (like me)really have any reason to search for it.Nevertheless, this film could be worse if not Christopher Lee. The man destined to play fantastic villains all his life now was playing a real historic villain (was the real Judge Jeffreys a villain? I think not but Jess Franco used another version). But Lee was ready to play in a HISTORIC movie, and instead of it he was to perform a horror show. Although his performance in this role was a very good one, he was disappointed and detested and told later he doesn't want any credits for this film. There are some very rough mistakes (or special changes) in the movie: 1) The date is missed. The year 1685 was the real time of Monmouth rebellion, but the events destroying James II' and Jeffreys' power, has happened only 4 years later, in 1688-89, and called "Glorious Revolution". 2) Sir George Jeffreys really has died in the Tower of London - but of stone, not of a heart-attack as it's shown. 3) Jeffreys, how good or bad he was, has never been neither womanizer nor witch-hunter. Moreover he did all he could to prevent death sentences to alleged witches. And there was nothing to suggest that he had a mistress or used the arrested women for his lust. It is nothing but a profanation. 4) There were NO witch hunt in later 1680's in England. Even the few who was charged were mostly acquitted. The horrible things shown in film as Ketch's work were used normally in Scotland, not England.

O.K., it's no Witchfinder General (but then again, what is?), but Jess Franco's The Bloody Judge is a well-written, well-acted, well-made historical-horror hybrid in the tradition of it's obvious model, Rowland V. Lee's The Tower of London. Franco stalwart Howard Vernon delivers a delicious homage to Karloff's Mord the Executioner from that film, and Christopher Lee is excellent, if somewhat insecurely emphatic and earnest, as the cruel, narrow, and hypocritical Judge Jeffries. The score, by Bruno Nicolai, is majestic and memorable, and the film as a whole is vividly entertaining. Having seen this film over 25 years ago, on television, heavily edited, under the title Night of the Blood Monster, I was amazed at how much of it had lain dormant in my memory, ready to be jostled into consciousness. Whole scenes played out in my mind as I re-watched them on my wide screen TV.There are a few people, including the otherwise estimable Glenn Erickson, of the hugely insightful and informative DVD Savant site, who have claimed, based on the evidence of this film, that Jess Franco could not have "directed" the legendary Battle of Shrewsbury in Orson Welles' Chimes at Midnight. First, lets get a few facts straight. It is well documented that Franco shot the second unit on Chimes at Midnight, which included much of the battle scene. This means that Franco shot a lot of coverage of the battle, working from a general outline given by Welles. Later, Welles took the miles of footage into the editing room and, many months later, emerged with the shattering sequence that appears in his picture. Franco, obviously, had nothing to do with this editing process, and, as far as I can tell, has never claimed otherwise. To compare the battle scene in The Bloody Judge with Welles' magnificent achievement is grotesquely unfair, as I am sure that Franco was allowed minutes rather than months to assemble The Bloody Judge for exhibition. Given the strictures under which he was working, Franco, his cast, and his collaborators should be commended for having produced a film with such a high level of professionalism. Welles, that most populist of auteurs, who once stated that he would rather watch paint dry than sit through an Antonioni film, and who responded to energy, verve, iconoclasm, and enthusiasm, had seen and appreciated those qualities an early Franco effort, which eventually led to the offer to work on Chimes. If Franco was good enough for Welles, he should be good enough for us. The two are closer than you think...

Finally, I've found some time to post my thoughts on this film. I had already discussed it briefly with Francesco via e-mail (in Italian) but this thread has been quite revealing for me as well.Well, to begin with, I did not find the film to be as bad as many have claimed (and I see that Francesco hasn't changed his mind in this regard); dull and uninvolving it may be, but it is also intermittently enjoyable (particularly Christopher Lee and Leo Genn's numerous confrontation scenes) for what it is. Even when considering the very few Jess Franco movies I've managed to watch in this one year, I wouldn't classify THE BLOODY JUDGE (1970) among his best work; moreover, it never quite approaches (let alone reach) the cinematic quality of Michael Reeves' far more psychologically compelling WITCHFINDER GENERAL (1968): witness the two films' very different conclusions – in Franco's film, the villain is justly 'punished' for his crimes while the two lovers emerge unscathed and the 'revolutionaries' triumphant, a pretty bland 'happy ending' if you ask me; WITCHFINDER GENERAL still has one of the bleakest wrap-ups to a film I've ever seen (spoilers ahead, I'm afraid!): Ian Ogilvy, driven over-the-edge by the social and personal injustices he has witnessed (including the unrepentant deflowering of his girl, Hilary Dwyer, by the dastardly Vincent Price), savagely hacking the latter to pieces with an axe while the former, tied up in a castle dungeon, looks on horrified (as much for what is happening before her as the awful realization that the couple's 'pure' love has been inevitably and permanently scarred by the experience) and screaming her lungs out – on which the scene freezes! Quite a difference, no?To get back to THE BLOODY JUDGE, I think that Christopher Lee's uncommitted performance (he may have been interested in the project initially but, no doubt, his enthusiasm dissipated considerably when he realized that no serious attempt at authenticity would be made). Besides, because Lee's character is so rigid (a motif visually counterpointed by his hardly ever emerging outdoors, thus appearing constantly cramped as much by his surroundings as by his own physical condition, the very Word of the Law he exercises and the implacable religious fervor prevalent at the time), his role is nowhere near as iconic as Vincent Price's had been, no matter what the DVD's liner and sleeve notes claim! The film's saving graces basically lie in Manuel Merino's lush cinematography (economically, the production was mostly shot on real locations) and Bruno Nicolai's sprawling yet melancholic score. However, I feel that Franco the auteur was not really inspired by the material at hand, resulting in an almost completely impersonal direction: in fact, it only comes alive inside the creepy-looking Howard Vernon's dungeon/torture chamber (where Margaret Lee's ordeal is particularly striking, eliciting another fine if all-too-brief performance from an underrated Euro-Cult actress of the 1960s) but, then, the sudden change in style and emphasis is extremely jarring, as if these scenes had strayed from a totally different picture! The nudity (especially the entirely gratuitous romantic-interlude-in-the-hay between Maria Rohm and Hans Hass Jr.), even if not explicit, was quite unnecessary here: even the notorious 'forced lesbian sequence', though exquisitely filmed, doesn't really belong here. Regarding the latter, I tend to share Glenn Erickson's viewpoint as expressed in his 'DVD Savant' review of the film: 'The moment pointed out by liner notes writer Tim Lucas as 'incredible, transgressive erotica' is a bafflingly inane scene where Maria Rohm licks the blood from the body of a hanging female corpse. The display is so pitiful, it isn't even pornographic. It is beautifully scored by Bruno Nicolai, however.'The way I see it, Rohm performed this dubious and quite irrelevant act of her own free will or, perhaps more accurately, in spite of herself – that is, driven to such an extremity of degrading behavior by the sheer physical and psychological torture she has gone through in Vernon's custody. But, then, this scene is immediately followed by the one in which she is seduced by Judge Jeffreys himself, and where she apparently regains enough of her senses to want to kill him! Which brings me to this part of one of Francesco's earlier posts in this same thread:'As usual I'm in absolute minority in valuing THE BLOODY JUDGE as the worst of the three bad Franco films of the CHRISTOPHER LEE COLLECTION. But in order to explain on the basis of what criteria and valuation-scales I rate this film even lower than the Fu Manchus, I want to make one only example: the scene in which Mary attempts to stab Jeffreys. He's turning his back to Mary; she grasps the dagger and runs towards the Judge, who doesn't realize what's happening; then she lifts up her arm and finally ..... finally does she stab him? no, instead of stabbing him, she stops her arm and cries!!! obviously the man turns round and disarms her, putting at end one of the most embarrassing Franco's sequences ever; even worse than SADOMANIA's stuffed crocodile, IMO.'Well, in Franco's defence, I'm sure that having Mary Gray hesitate and cry out at such a crucial moment could only be a sign of her essentially virtuous character; she OUGHT to find the act of murder repellent, no matter what Jeffreys did to her, and that is exactly why I feel the preceding 'erotic interlude' to be so uncharacteristic! Still, Francesco, I can think of any number of far more embarrassing moments in either of Franco's Fu Manchu films…[P.S. By the way, I've just watched the trailers for Blue Underground's upcoming DVD editions of Franco's THE GIRL FROM RIO (1969) and SADOMANIA (1981), and I must say that I'm less than intrigued by them – especially when considering that, for some reason, they seem to have a higher price-tag than the standard BU fare! It WOULD be nice to collect all of BU's Franco titles – including the disappointing MARQUIS DE SADE'S JUSTINE (1968), which I did watch (or rather Anchor Bay UK's R2 equivalent) though only as a rental – but, at least, in the case of the two awful Fu Manchu films I had an excuse to buy them (that excuse, of course, being THE BLOODY JUDGE itself…even if the remaining title in 'The Christopher Lee Collection', CIRCUS OF FEAR {1966}, is actually superior)!]I refer to other quotes from online reviews I have read of this DVD: Glenn Erickson once again hits the nail on the head (sorry, Tim) with the following stance:'Even less understandable is the championing of Jess Franco's direction, which is only slightly better than his sloppy work on the Fu Manchu series. The liner notes make the laughable assertion that the battle scene herein proves that Franco was clearly the auteur behind the much-applauded knight's battle in CAMPANANDAS A MEDIANOCHE (CHIMES AT MIDNIGHT), the great Orson Welles film on which Franco assisted. The generic and lackadaisical fight in the woods here looks like random coverage. We have no idea who is fighting who or which side our rebel heroes are on. If the color, costumes and location weren't such a good match, we might think it was stock footage from another show. Franco may very well have done the excellent, unique battle scene in the Welles film, but I doubt it, and wouldn't trust Franco's word on the matter. THE BLOODY JUDGE would be the last film to suggest a connection.'Having only recently viewed Welles' Shakespearean masterwork for the first time myself, I was immediately struck by the realism of the battle sequence, its rough-and-ready quality as much the result of a limited budget as Welles' own penchant for skimping over the 'details'. Still, I could detect little if any similarity to what Franco shot for the later film; it's one thing to provide a hastily-assembled skirmish (viewed from both sides) but another thing entirely to do so in style, and the equivalent scenes in THE BLOODY JUDGE struck me as very ordinary indeed!And this from the 'Monsters At Play' review, penned by Carl Lyon: 'This group, which include a guy named Satchel(?) and one of the creepiest executioners ever, even have a calligraphic letter 'J' emblazoned on their chest like demented superheroes.'This anachronistic flourish is perhaps an amusing reference to the many vaguely cartoonish spy-spoofs Franco made during this same era (including the two Fu Manchus), thus linking the rogues-in-high-places of yesteryear – flanked by their amoral henchmen who seem to have crawled from under stones – to the power-mad villains of modern times and their endless parade of 'faceless' subordinates.My rambling thoughts on this film lead me now to examine some of its more noticeable deficiencies: · first of all, the double irony of the ending as it stands now – Jeffreys awaiting to be executed but dying instead of a heart attack – was probably unintentional, but the fact that three separate endings were shot and used for different versions (which is not the same as having a more explicit take of a given scene) speaks volumes about the film's essential lack of focus, resulting in audience frustration and subsequent detachment· none of the characters is very interesting and the two that are – Lee and Genn – are poorly developed; Maria Schell's grave-sounding blind woman is an unfortunate miscalculation, in my opinion, especially as she doesn't add that much to the proceedings (why is there such a VITAL need, then, for the young lovers' union to be blessed by her, rendering their capture by Jeffreys' men all-too-convenient)!· the incessant mumbling of peasant-folk at Jeffreys' trials is positively irritating!Finally, we come to the DVD itself: picture and sound quality are of the standard we have come to expect from Blue Underground. The extras are a well of information (and entertainment): the controversial featurette is a very well done piece, perhaps the best one yet on a Franco/Blue Underground DVD.In all fairness, Christopher Lee did not deserve the backlash that he received for his comments: first of all, he admits that he doesn't like the 'modern' trend in horror films and, therefore, he is right in claiming that he has not made one for a long time; as for his 'disgust' at the exploitative content of the film itself as well as Franco's subsequent work, he is only offering his personal opinion and, so, none of us should take offence! What IS rather hard to believe, however, is that he did not know such scenes were in the script to begin with: it's true he isn't in any of the footage concerned (at least physically), but really the script is so filled with this execrable material that I doubt they were added later – unless he only read his lines when given the script, or else he accepted the part without reading it at all, which then means that he got all that he deserved!It's a pity that the lengthy deleted scene could not be reinstated into the film (probably due to its ragged state) as it certainly smooths the passage from Rohm's grief over her sister's death to her blooming romance with Hass, which is now rather too precipitous. The rest of the supplements – alternate footage, trailer, poster/stills gallery, talent bios – are rather nice to have, too.