Movie about infamous Hungarian countess boasts record budget

A Czech-Slovak-English-Hungarian produced biopic of the infamous 16th Century Hungarian countess Erzsébet Báthory will begin its run in Hungarian cinemas next Wednesday.

"Bathory", shot over two years at 45 locations in Slovakia and the Czech Republic, and with 4,000 extras, cost Ft 3 billion, making it the most expensive Eastern European film ever. UK actress Anna Friel stars as the much maligned aristocrat.

The subject of the film has long been considered the "female Dracula", famed for torturing and killing hundreds of young girls just so that she could bathe in their blood and preserve her youth. However the film's Slovak director Juraj Jakubisko apparently sought to reappraise the life of the countess.

Historian Gábor Várkonyi said "recent historical research suggests that members of her court may have fabricated these charges in order to acquire her vast wealth. The director said he wanted to show that Central Eastern Europe has a major history and large-scale personalities, since many people do not know that "the West was spared Ottoman rule because of us."

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