Editorial Review:Amazon.com:Baron von Sepper (Richard Burton, who seems to sleepwalk through the film), a European aristocrat of vaguely Germanic heritage, marries and murders a succession of international lovelies (among them Raquel Welch, Virna Lisi, Nathalie Delon, and Marilù Tolo) before his seventh bride, peppy but coy showgirl Joey Heatherton, discovers his secret in a frozen basement museum. Would you believe the Baron is just a nice guy who's a poor judge of character? A man who loves deeply but perhaps not too wisely? Or that he harbors a deep, troubling psychosexual secret? Director Edward Dmytryk (
The Caine Mutiny), who also cowrote this Euro-pudding coproduction, tosses in a bit of all three as he barrels through his reign of terror. He even attempts to milk laughs from a few of the executions, but despite its upbeat pace it drags through unnecessary exposition and dull, dead patches of life-size kewpie doll Heatherton padding around his castle. Richard Burton struggles with a hoary stage beard and a dull screenplay that labors under the pretense of wit to deliver a bored performance. This 1972 production gets some mileage from its guest cast (most of whom offer a tantalizing flash of flesh before succumbing to the Baron's homicidal impulses), but winds up as lifeless as Burton's vacant, weary stare.
--Sean Axmaker
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Average Rating:
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Yet another movie in which Sybil Danning appears naked
Although she (Danning) isn't in it for very long. While I actually bought this strictly out of being a Danning completist, it's actually an interesting movie. A period piece of kinky and disturbed fetishism.
Rating: 
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Re-Issued By Lion Gate............
I am so glad that lions gate has just put this bacck in production i have been trying to get a copy of this movie for so long........great film vibrant and artistic...Beware do not be robbed by these prices for a movie that is no longer out of production....cheers.
Rating: -
Strange, Campy Tale....Works for the Most Part
Serial wife killer Bluebeard meets his match with Joey Heatheron in another spinoff from "Psycho". However, this film has more black humor and less horror than "Psycho".
Here, Richard Burton plays the killer with a mother complex that makes him sexually "harmless", and so kills his wives rather than consummate the marriage.
Most of the story is told in flashback, as Burton tells of the murders to his next victim, Joey Heatherton, before she is to "die at dawn" for discovering his secret.
The movie starts violently and has few laughs, so when the laughs start, about the time when Burton describes the murders, it's difficult to tell if the laughs are intentional. After one too many lines like "How else could I shut her up?" after Bluebeard describes a murder, it becomes evident the film is switching gears and playing as a black comedy.
Each murder is done in a creative, macabre manner, such as in "Friday the 13th" which came after. There is also the exposure of bare breasts from each of the victims, also similar to "Friday the 13th", with the exception of Raquel Welch. She plays a nun that gave up the convent to marry Bluebeard (Told you this was a strange movie). Add to that, Burton bouts with impotence, you can get a picture of the kind of movie this is. No offense to Burton, but Tony Perkins, he ain't. Impotence just isn't his role.
Perhaps the movie went on for one or two murders too long,as we have to go through all eight marriages and murders, but for the most part, it's a worthwhile guilty pleasure.
Rating: -
Classic example of the BAD MOVIE!!!
Richard Burton was one of those actors who just couldn't be bothered to show any discrimination in what roles he picked as long as he got a paycheck (and maybe a bottle of good Scotch and a comely starlet into the bargain). When he was good, he could be great; when he was bad, he could be a real gas. Consider "Bluebeard", where Burton plays the legendary killer of beautiful women while wearing one of the silliest stage beards of all time. It's a perfect example of the big-budget bad movie. The director couldn't seem to decide whether to make a Big Statement about Nazism (Burton's Bluebeard is a pseudo-Nazi leader, who probably would have been an actual Nazi except that the production ran afoul of German laws prohibiting the use of Nazi regalia in entertainment and had to use clumsy substitutes) or smack his lips over Bluebeard's seductions and murders of six gorgeous wives (and one lovely but unfortunate girlfriend of one of the wives). It ends up being unintentional and rather smutty black comedy.
Actually, I need to rethink the phrase "big budget"; the production apparently didn't have the money to be able to keep the actresses around to impersonate corpses in the Big Scene where Joey Heatherton, playing Bluebeard's latest wife (an American flapper who makes one glad that the Roaring Twenties ended with the Crash of '29) discovers the frozen bodies of the previous entries in the Wife-of-Bluebeard Sweepstakes. What she actually sees when she opens the door of Bluebeard's cleverly hidden freezer are seven department-store mannequins inexpertly dressed up to look like the previous victims. If they were able to get Karin Schubert to play dead for the disturbingly necrophilia-themed scene where Burton takes photos of her body as it lies laid out for her funeral, surely they could have collected the various actresses together to have them imitate Popsicles for this key scene. It's emblematic of how clumsy this production is.
Do yourselves a favor and Google for bad-movie maven Jabootu's review of "Bluebeard". It's a classic and says just about everything else I could have said here. Or you could, if you have a DVD player capable of playing Region 2 discs, look for the Italian comedy "Le sei mogli di Barbablu", which stars rubber-faced comedy legend Toto and features Sophia Loren in one of her very first roles.
All that said, should you get this movie? If you're a fan of bad movies...oh heck, YES!
Rating: 
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AVERAGE MOVIE - NOT WORTH BUYING
I've just received my DVD of Bluebeard.
The ONLY highlights were the gorgeous women. Other than that, the storyline is very average and Burton's acting was VERY WEAK for an Actor of his calibre. This was not the right movie for Burton, who should have declined it, when he read the script.
Dissapointing and not a movie I would recommend anyone buying.
Anyone looking for a second-hand copy ( 2 days old) ??
Derek
Johannesburg
S. Africa
