The thing I enjoyed most about the film is the fact that it doesn't shy away from being a super-sized-cliche;

Great example of an old-fashioned, pure-at-heart escapist event movie that doesn't pretend to be anything that it's not and has boat loads of fun being its own ludicrous self.

It's a movie as timely as it is provocative and amazingly, for much of its running time, it is weirdly funny.

One of the film's great tricks is that, for a time, you think it will go down a rabbit hole of unrealistic glorification.

Spoilers Yes, Joey Heatherton, who is best known for the sexy perfect sleeper advertisements, delivers some powerful lines near the ending of this one. You would need to sit through the rest of a lack luster movie to get to it, but finally, at the end she slams out some great stuff. She put it out of the park, a real home run. She stands toe to toe with her male lead (Richard Burton) and steals the scene and the movie, saying: Being impudent is a pitiful problem but YOU! YOU COVER UP YOUR PROBLEMS! YOU KILLED THESE WOMEN TO HIDE YOUR PROBLEM! YOU'RE A COWARD! YOU ONLY KNOW HOW TO MAKE WAR! NOT LOVE! YOU'RE ONLY HALF-A-MAN! (Burton) I'm a man! Heatherton (Angrily and quickly throwing off all her clothes.) Prove it!

Based on Charles Perrault's fairy tale which was written in the seventeenth century.This story was itself based on the life and times of Gilles De Rais,one of Joan of Ark's brothers in arms,who didn't kill women but children ,mainly young boys. Edward Dmytryk ,whose great movies ("Cross Fire" "The Juggler" "The sniper" "the Caine Mutiny" ) were a thing of long ago in 1972 ,only keeps the forbidden door from the original fairy tale and he replaced the bloody key by a photograph.Why not?One should note that the last wife is called Anne,like the famous sister of the story,herself replaced by a violinist . Perrault's heroine had no name."Blue Beard" was closer to the thriller (Blue Beard was a serial killer after all) than to Perrault's other tales and the screenwriters did not make any mistake when they made it a thriller.Christian-Jaque did the same in his own version featuring Pierre Brasseur and Cecile Aubry in 1951:it was a big failure.So is Dmytryk's movie.Most of the actresses were told to overplay and most of them (particularly the generally reliable Virna Lisi) are unbearable ,some of them even try lesbianism (Nathalie Delon,Alain's wife) or art or feminism.Their roles are what you can call "guest stars" ,so to speak .Dmytryk tried to combine Blue Beard with Nazism,but it is not convincing at all :the Crystal Night (November 1938) is sheer bad taste in this context.Richard Burton was an ideal Barbe Bleue and had he been well directed ,he could have been brilliant in and really frightening .But enough is enough and even the cold room episode fails to impress.

It's almost impossible to find the words to describe exactly how bad this film is. Or to describe how much fun it was to watch. Bluebeard is the story of a German Baron (Richard Burton) who has a, well, blue beard. When Joey Heatherington finds out that he has killed a series of wives and hidden the bodies she realizes that she is next. In attempt to delay the inevitable she gets the Baron to tell his story. What follows is a primer in how not to pick a girl.The dialogue is phony, the accents are terrible but the women are all beautiful and (at least partially) disrobed. Maybe not the intent but this movie is a great example of a 1970's campy sex movie.Sit back, relax and enjoy the ride.

BLUEBEARD is an oddly beautiful film with beautiful sets, beautiful costumes, beautiful European women, and Richard Burton's beautifully blue beard. The film is a retelling of the "Bluebeard" story that takes place in an "almost" Nazi Germany. The Nazi uniforms are not really Nazi uniforms and the swastika is not really a swastika, but this helps add to the fantasy aspect of the film. The idea of watching a pseudo-erotic, black comedy about real Nazis would be a little tacky even for BLUEBEARD, which is abundant in tackiness.The movie is about sex and sadism, but never goes far enough with either the sex or the sadism, even by 1972 standards. Baron Von Sepper (Richard Burton) attracts and is attracted to a series of beautiful women, whom he courts and then marries. Once married to the various objects of his obsession, the sticky part of consummating the marriage rears its ugly head (or fails to, more precisely). An Oedipus complex, a plane crash, and some kind of chemical reaction, that has turned Von Sepper's beard blue, have all combined to render the poor Baron impotent. To save himself from embarrassment, Von Sepper must kill off his wives once they discover his inability to perform. This is where the film is remarkably realistic with its examination of the lengths a man will go to hide that he is not a functional man.I bought Richard Burton as the reserved Nazi baron who is incapable of accepting his shortcomings. He is funny in the scenes where he is trying not to have sex. The many failings of the movie are the fault of the director, Edward Dmytryk. From the incredibly slow pace to the un-dramatic use of flashback right after flashback, the film alternates between the boring and the beautiful. The director also annoys the viewer with an obvious correlation between the sadism of Nazi Germany and the sadism of Bluebeard. Anyone familiar with history knows that the Nazis were sadistic. No one needs this movie to try to drive that point home.