The horrific story of real-life Hungarian noblewoman Countess Elizabeth Báthory of Ecsed has spawned numerous works of art including literature and music, with plenty of films along the way including Countess Dracula, Immoral Tales, and Daughters of Darkness. Her exploits involving the supposed slaughter of hundreds of young women as a source of blood to keep her eternally young have linked her with vampirism in the public consciousness, though the validity of these tales has often been called into question as well as their influence of Bram Stoker's Dracula. In any case, there's no other interpretation out there quite like 1980's The Bloody Lady (Krvavá pani), one of two feature-length works by Slovak animator Viktor Kubal who churned out well over a hundred short films over the course of his decades-long career. His trademark style involving very simple lines, shapes, and colors was first put to use in commercials and child-friendly short subjects, but here he lends it to something much stranger and darker that feels like a Saturday morning cartoon splashed with nudity and blood.

The story here sticks mostly to the usual narrative as young Báthory enjoys a harmonious existence with her townspeople and with nature, including a Disney-like rapport with forest animals. One day she gets lost in a forest during a storm, but a woodsman rescues her. She pulls her heart from her chest and offers it in thanks, but the gesture transforms her into a cold-blooded predator who uses the villagers as her own personal beauty source with various methods used to create her blood baths along with the help of her faithful servant. Bookended with brief live action bits and narration, this is otherwise a dialogue-free fantasia that adds some interesting elements of the supernatural (especially the heart motivation) and handles the famous, inevitable fate of our anti-heroine quite effectively. The addition of silly cartoonish humor in a few spots makes it all even more disorienting, and it's a great introduction to Kubal's style. Previously out in a direct sale release from the Slovak Film Institute, the film was given its premiere North American home video debut in 2025 for general retail (following a very limited slipcover run) from Arbelos on Blu-ray, featuring an immaculate restoration that makes the film look brand new in every respect. The DTS-HD MA 2.0 mono track is obviously light on dialogue but sounds great, with subtitles provided in the few places they're needed.

The release is entitled The Bloody Lady and Other Works, and that means you get plenty more Kubal here starting with his other full feature, 1976's Jurko the Highwayman presented in an equally impressive restoration from the Slovak Film Institute. Touted as the first Slovakian animated feature, it's also driven by visuals rather than dialogue (there's a bit, mostly sing-song) as we get essentially the story of their local version of Robin Hood as the titular character and his cohorts conspire in a series of vignettes to bilk the wealthy out of their money to distribute it to the poor. Again the animation style here is very stripped down but colorful and even hallucinogenic at times; the tone is definitely more jaunty given the less gruesome nature of the story, but it still smashes together multiple genres into a crazy quilt that runs less on narrative and more on pure sensory experience. Also included here are the new U.S. trailer for The Bloody Lady and a huge heap of additional, lovingly restored Kubal short films including multiple recurring characters: his debut commercial gig The Mysterious Old Man (1944, 3m58s), Earth (1966, 7m12s), the cute slapstick farce Dita at the Post Office (1967, 7m10s), the classical-scored urban pileup Promotion (1968, 5m42s), Dita in the Air (1970, 7m), the whimsical western Two Good Friends (1972, 7m8s), Tom Thumb (1972, 7m24s), Tom Thumb at the Magician's (1973, 7m24s), Chess (1974, 4m45s), Tom Thumb and the Germs (1974, 6m49s), The Present (1976, 5m33s), the neat movie theater fantasia Cinema (1977, 6m49s), The Ladder (1978, 5m14s), Only Child (1979, 6m46s), The Microscope (1981, 5m50s), What Happened to Johnny on the Road (1981, 5m33s), The Selection (1982, 5m4s), The Weatherman (1983, 9m6s), the not-quite-a-feature trip The Marzipan Comedy (1987, 41m57s), High Noon (1988, 3m44s), and The Idol (1989, 5m23s). The disc is packaged with an insert booklet featuring the essay "A Dot and a Line (Everything is Possible)" by Rastislav Steranka, which lays out plenty about the artist, teacher, and filmmaker's life and career as well as a handy summation of the Báthory story.

Reviewed on March 21, 2025