Stay Alive Movie Trailer. The game of Stay Alive chills the blood and pumps the adrenaline of its players in part because it based on a story of murder and bloodthirsty madness that is itself disturbingly and hauntingly real. At the center of the game’s action is an actual historical figure who was quite possibly the world’s most prolific serial killer ever: Elizabeth Bathory, the alluring 17th century aristocrat whose bizarre thirst for human blood garnered the nickname “The Blood Countess.” Bathory’s almost unspeakably depraved biography remains a chilling reminder that within humanity, evil monsters lurk in all guises.
Explains Matthew Peterman: “Brent and I both felt strongly that the very scariest stories you can tell almost always come from real people and incidents. So we started looking into historical figures who were considered particularly mean and nasty and that’s we came across probably one of the scariest and nastiest women who ever lived: Elizabeth Bathory. Her story still haunts anyone who hears it.”
Adds William Brent Bell: “With Elizabeth Bathory, we felt like we found a new kind of horror icon, someone far more sophisticated than the typical guy in the mask chopping up teenagers, and someone who could really drive this story because she’s not just a made-up character in a videogame – she’s someone from history who remains truly frightening and gruesome.”
Born into a powerful noble family in the 17th Century, Elizabeth Bathory started out with every advantage. She was rich, well educated and a renowned beauty said to have been possessed of glowing raven hair and pale, luminous skin. Married off for political reasons at the age of 15, Elizabeth instantly became the Countess of Transylvania (where Count Vlad Dracula had ruled a century before) and was whisked to a mountain-top fortress in the Carpathians, where she was installed as the Lady of the Castle of Csjethe.
There, while her soldier husband (himself known as “The Black Hero of Hungary”) was away on various war campaigns, a bored and alienated Elizabeth searched for ways to amuse herself. Drawn to the darker side of life, she took up the study of “the sinister arts” and, as a hobby, began gleefully torturing local debtors in the castle dungeons.
But it was after her husband’s death that things took an even grimmer turn. In an increasingly desperate effort to maintain her waning youth and vitality, history has it that Elizabeth made the accidental and unfortunate discovery that fresh blood could purify and smooth her skin. Thus, she began a ruthless rampage through the countryside, kidnapping, torturing and killing numerous young peasant girls in order to bathe in their moisturizing blood. To create an even steadier supply of virgins for bloodletting, she later opened up a school in her castle, taking in 25 girls at a time from rich families, who were subjected to unsettling cruelties and mass fatalities.
It was a mistake. Though the deaths of impoverished peasant girls might have been overlooked by the authorities, the murder of noble children was not. Soon, rumors of Elizabeth’s terrible crimes began to spread. Forced to act, the Hungarian Emperor, Matthias II, mounted an investigation, which turned up rooms of lavish torture racks and mutilated, bloodless corpses in Elizabeth’s castle. Elizabeth was put on trial, but refused to attend the proceedings, ultimately admitting nothing about the 650 missing girls of whom she was suspected of killing.
In the end, the Countess’s alleged accomplices were all convicted of being witches and executed, but Elizabeth herself escaped that fate due to her noble birth. She was never even convicted. Instead, she was declared a menace by her family and condemned to live walled up inside her castle, driven insane by solitude, for the rest of her days. It is assumed she died there – but in STAY ALIVE it appears Elizabeth’s spirit was able to escape and set up a new lair across the oceans in another famed haunt of vamps and vampires: the city of New Orleans.
Today, the Blood Countess is considered one of history’s first and most voracious serial killers and an inspiration for numerous vampire legends, including the creation of “Dracula” by Bram Stoker. Although a few contemporary novels and comic books have been written about the Blood Countess, her legend primarily faded into obscurity – another reason why Bell and Peterman felt she would make the perfect villain at the heart of STAY ALIVE.
Bell summarizes: “When we started reading about Elizabeth Bathory, it was like ‘why haven’t we ever seen a movie about her? She’s so dark and fascinating and she’s absolutely real. Virtually everything she does in the movie is based on things she actually did according to various histories, which gives it all a very chilling power that affected us even on the set.”
Stay Alive (2005)
Directed by: William Brent Bell
Starring: Jon Foster, Samaire Armstrong, Frankie Muniz, Sophia Bush, Adam Goldberg, Milo Ventimiglia, Nicole Oppermann, Monica Monica, Maria Kalinina, Billy Slaughter
Screenplay by: William Brent Bell, Matthew Peterman
Production Design by: Bruton Jones
Cinematography by: Alejandro Martínez
Film Editing by: Harvey Rosenstock, Mark Stevens
Costume Design by: Caroline Eselin
Set Decoration by: Kristin Bicksler
Art Direction by: Alan Hook
Music by: John Frizzell
MPAA Rating: PG-13 for horror violence, disturbing images, language, brief sexual and drug content.
Distributed by: Buena Vista Pictures (United States), Universal Pictures (United Kingdom)
Release Date: March 24, 2006
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