Reviews (3)

Horrible and Horribly Entertaining
I won't defend the indefensible filmmaking but this movie is worth more than other reviewers would lead you to believe. There are few films as fascinatingly bizarre as this one. Is it the plot? The premise? The characters? No. It's everything, start to finish. The is one of the most nonsensical movies I've ever had the privilege to watch. It seems grimly determined not to make sense. At every turn something eye-popping will happen, usually for no reason. From the Nazi S&M dream sequence set to the tune of "Frere Jacques", to the creepily (and seemingly unintentionally) suggestive holiday snaps the "hero" takes, to our brief and uncomfortably weird glimpse of the heroine's bathtime habits the wealth of strange and disconcerting background details adds up to a whopping great mountain of madness.

In the end you come away torn between thinking it's a terrible movie terribly made and thinking it's a genius movie terribly made. It has the same ability to send your jaw dropping to the core of the earth and to keep it there as Robot Monster, Plan 9, or Manos the Hands of Fate. By no means good, it is still infinitely entertaining. For the usual low price, how can you go wrong? I only hope we'll see a Region 1 DVD release soon. I'm wearing out my tape.

It is hard to kill Boris Karloff, even when he is blind...
Boris Karloff plays Franz Badulescu, a famous sculptor and who has been blind since his wife, Tania (Viveca Lindfors) tried to murder him for his fortune. Claude Marchand (Jean-Pierre Aumont) has come to the Spanish village of Pinderera to interview Badulescu for a travel magazine. Not surprisingly, Tania and her lover (Milo Quesada) are making a second attempt on Badulescu's life, but they kill a couple of other people first, apparently so they can hide the bodies the sculptor's statues; this looks good but makes no sense. I also have no idea why the evil couple waits until there is a visitor to try something as difficult as killing a blind man...

"Cauldron of Blood," originally titled "Blind Man's Bluff" and known as "El Coleccionista de Cadaveres" in Mexico, is one of Boris Karloff's final films, released after this his death. Ironically, although Karloff was ill with emphysema, he got this role because Claude Reins was too ill to accept the part. Certainly not as bad as the final quartet of cheap horror films Karloff made for a Mexican producer in 1968, "Cauldron of Blood" is still a cheesy movie. I would recommend you check out one of Karloff's lesser known horror films from the 1930s like "The Black Room" instead.

hmmmmm, it's over, at least
What a BORING movie.

This is the last Karloff film and I don't know why he accepted this weak script.

The story focuses arround a mexican comunity and its famous (blind) sculptor (Mr. Karloff), Mr Karloff wife is a sadistic assasin who hide her victims corpses inside her housband's sculptures and... THAT'S ALL, the film don't have any surprise or twist or... something.

Don't waste your time watching this awful movie, if you like to see a good horror movie watch: Suspiria, The Shining inclusive the Simpsons halloween specials are more scary that "Cauldron of Blood" ... Read more