THE LEGEND BEHIND THE STORY

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. 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. "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." Story goes the Elizabeth grew up experiencing uncontrollable seizures and rages. She might have been epileptic or suffered some other disorder, but whatever the problem was, it appeared to contribute to her aggression. When she was 15, she married a sadistic man, Count Nadasdy, who shared her interest in sorcery and who became known as the "black Hero." He taught her how to discipline the servants, such as spreading honey over a naked girl and leaving her for the bugs. He also showed Erzebet how to beat them to the edge of their lives, although some accounts describe her lesbian affairs with them as well. She also used them in her diabolical experiments and had a habit of biting them, sometimes to death. It was clear that she favored the dark side and developed a lust for cruelty, mentored by her own childhood nurse, a practitioner of witchcraft. After Nadasdy died in 1604, Elizabeth moved to Vienna. She also stepped up her cruel and arbitrary beatings and was soon torturing and butchering the girls. She sent her maids to lure children and young women to her quarters, so she could satisfy her lust. She might stick pins into sensitive body parts, cut off someone's fingers, slit her skin with knives, or break her face. In the winter, women were dragged outside, doused with water, and left to freeze to death. In a dungeon, girls were chained to the walls, fattened up, and "milked" for their blood. Sometimes they were set on fire. Even when Elizabeth was ill, she didn't stop. Instead she'd have girls brought to her bed so she could bite them. The villagers could do nothing to stop her, because she had too much power. Elizabeth went through two separate trials, and during the second one, a register was discovered in her home that included in her own handwriting the names of over 650 victims. Accounts of her tortures by witnesses made even the judges blanch, and they could not imagine how a single person had devised so many different types of tortures.