Suicide Cult Director to Pitch Sexy Slasher Costume Drama

Question: What do you do after you've just completed a Hungarian-themed, low-budget movie about devilishly stylish but miserable people who can't stop from killing themselves? Answer: You make a Hungarian-themed, low-budget movie about devilishly stylish but miserable people who can't stop killing other people. That is the difficult-to-refute logic of Scott Alexander Young, the New Zealander who recently completed the documentary "A Café in the Sky," which tells the story of the Hungarian composer Rezső Seress, whose song "Gloomy Sunday" precipitated a veritable worldwide suicide epidemic in the 1930s. Now that "Café" is done and gone off to foreign buyers and wherever else artsy documentaries go, Young and his collaborators at Young Pictures/Future Threat Productions want to make a feature based on the life of Erzébet Báthory, the Hungarian/Slovak "blood countess" alleged to have murdered and bathed in the blood of 612 young maidens back in the early 16th century.

"It's a story torn from the pages of history," says Young. "And it's loaded with blood, guts and tits." Blood, guts and tits? Well that certainly gets our attention, and not just because it's Halloween...

The objective, says Young, is to make a "visually stunning" and, from what we can tell, slightly idiosyncratic costume drama based on Báthory's life, which is the subject of countless books and websites. (Including a wonderful Slovak site, which calls her "wonderful and cruel.")

Naturally, any apparently true story this graphic and nuts is also guaranteed to grab the attention of filmmakers from around the world, and Báthory's has. There have been numerous vampire pictures loosely based on the story. Meanwhile, Young says he knows of several more literal Báthory projects currently in the works. One is being driven by the French actress July Delpy - who was quoted as saying "I will play the leading role because I’m crazy" - and another is supposedly "attached to" director Ridley Scott of Alien fame and the hip young American actress Christina Ricci.

While Young says there is no sign of production having started on these or any other competing Báthory films, he says and it is only a matter of time before the evil countess again makes it onto the screen.

"We've got to beat them to the punch."

As for who would play the countess, Young says the long arc of the story would probably necessitate two actresses. He says the older Báthory should be played by a "name" European actress - he even mentions Catherine Deneuve - and says that "Bond Girl" Rachel Grant (left) is interested in playing the countess's younger self. Meanwhile, Young is working with an American artist on a "graphic novel" - that's a high-brow comic book - version of the story (above and below), with Grant serving as the model for young Erzébet.

By shooting from start to finish in the region in which the grisly events took place, Young believes his film would be far more authentic - not to mention cost-efficient - than any Hollywood or international production. "In-house" directors Sam Robinson-Horley and András Polonyi are working with him on a scale suitable for such a production. Young says hopes to raise something in the neighborhood of €5 million for the project, but not a great deal more. And while happy to take advantage of the generous tax incentives being offered by the government, he says is not interested in chasing after money from the Hungarian Film Commission, the primary source of financing for Hungarian films. "We are looking for one or more people with lots of money and some cajones," he says, adding that money could also be raised by inviting the world's legions of vampire fantasists to pay for the privilege of appearing as extras in the film.

Either way, Elizabeta offers a cast of characters more bizarre than most over-the-top horror classics, including a ruling prince of Transylvania, a notorious lesbian aunt, and a poet rapist who elaborately woos the young maidens he has already ravished.

"Everybody is evil," says Young, beaming.