(aka Il Trono di Fuoco (Throne of Fire)/Der Hextentoter von Blackmoor (The Witch-Hunter of Blackmoor)/El Juez Sangrieto/El Proceso de las Brujas (Trial of the Witches)/Night of the Blood Monster/Throne of the Blood Monster). Great Britain/Spain/ Italy/Germany/ Towers of London Productions.

Starring Christopher Lee, Leo Genn, Maria Rohm, Maria Schell. Written by Enrico Colombo and Jesús Franco. Directed by Jesús Franco

Color, running times vary (BU disc runs 104 minutes) from Blue Underground

The Bloody Judge is Franco’s visually impressive but muddled entry in the “witchhunt” subgenre that sprung up in the wake of Michael Reeves’ Witchfinder General (1968; see also The Devils, Mark of the Devil and Franco’s The Demons, which concerns the same subject as this film). Franco’s film focuses on 17th century English judge Lord George Jeffreys, who earned the “bloody” moniker from the sadistic pronouncements he handed down to accused witches and other dissenters to the court of King James II. Lee is typically commanding in the title role and takes pains to preserve some historical accuracy in his portrayal (shifting uncomfortably to mimic the kidney stone agony that reportedly spurred Jeffreys to pass his savage judgments), and Franco’s direction is competent—he even pulls off a passable battle sequence—but any good intentions are dragged down by a proliferation of torture scenes involving half-naked women (presided over by a gleeful Howard Vernon, who’s tricked out like Boris Karloff in Tower of London). In the disc’s supplemental material, Franco blames the film’s attention deficits to conflicting requests from the international producers (including the notorious Harry Allan Towers, who cast his paramour Maria Rohm as the object of Jeffreys’ repressed lust), but the leering camera work in these scenes is vintage Peeping Jesús, and will undoubtedly upset more straight-laced Lee fans. Likewise, those in the “Franco is genius” camp will find little here to support their cause—The Bloody Judge is a straight-ahead costume drama (well abetted by the opulent set direction by frequent Franco performer Jack Taylor) that offers little opportunity for him to unleash his free-form surrealism. But for those who believe that Jess is an eccentric hit-and-miss artist, The Bloody Judge is another opportunity to applaud his skill at inserting his personal obsessions into a film, no matter how inappropriate. That sort of consistency is worth your time, if not applause.

Blue Underground’s widescreen DVD offers one of the longest and most complete versions of this frequently re-edited title, with several previously missing scenes inserted from a German-language print. A battery of deleted and alternate scenes from various sources is also included, as are several U.S. trailers from AIP and an interview with Lee (who hasn’t seen the film) and a chain-smoking Franco. The DVD is available as a stand-alone disc, and as part of The Christopher Lee Collection, a four-disc set that includes Franco’s Castle of Fu Manchu and The Blood of Fu Manchu and John Llewellyn Moxey’s Circus of Fear, a German Edgar Wallace thriller produced by Towers.

—Paul Gaita