Countess Erzsebet Bathory is proclaimed the most prolific murderess of mankind – torturing young virgins, tearing the flesh from their living bodies with her teeth and bathing in their blood in her quest for eternal youth. Through his lense of magical fantasy, director Juraj Jakubisko lifts the skirt on the horrific legend and presents its many faces in this provocative new film inspired by the life of this notorious woman.

Turn of the 17th century Europe heaved with religious conflict and war, and for two centuries Hungary had served as the bastion of Christianity. Ferenc Nadasdy (Vincent Regan), one of the country’s wealthiest noblemen and commander of the Hungarian army, fought tirelessly to protect the Holy Roman Empire from the Ottomans. Violence and cruelty were customary amongst medieval aristocrats and the rumored bloodlust of his negleced wife, Countess Erzsebet Bathory (Anna Friel), enraged the local clergy whose sermons of‚ bloodbaths behind castle walls‘ inflamed the malcontent simmering in Central Europe.

A noblewoman of luminous beauty, and more property and riches than King Mathias II (Franco Nero), Bathory’s alleged deeds play into the hands of Palatine Gyorgy Thurzo (Karel Roden), whose political allegiances were influenced by his thirst for personal gain. In a desperate bid to gain control of the Nadasdy-Bathory fortune, Thurzo bets on vengeance, setting in motion the case to destroy the widowed Countess.

Was Bathory a persecuted Renaissance healer whose enthusiasm for science spawned rumors of vampirism, or a lonely widow whose passion for life, love and the arts was turned against her in a century besieged by war and witch-hunts? Taking inspiration from the controversy, Jakubisko’s bloody fairytale brings fiction to life, shining fresh light on the dim corners of Bathory’s legend, her nemesis Palatine Thurzo, her would-be lover the famous Italian painter Caravaggio (Hans Matheson), and the local sage Darvulia (Deana Horvathova).