The Blood Spattered Bride (1972)

Fresh and Exciting

It was OK. I don't see why everyone loves it so much. It wasn't very smart or deep or well-directed.

The acting in this movie is really good.

Actress is magnificent and exudes a hypnotic screen presence in this affecting drama.

Just one of many adaptations of J. Sheridan Le Fanu over the decades, "The Blood Spattered Bride" adheres to many of the traditions of Eurotrash horror: blood (and lots of it), sex appeal, atmosphere, and artiness, with some provocative themes underlying the plot. It's not for all horror fans; indeed, it's rather light on conventional "horror" for much of the running time. Instead, we get an interesting psychological approach to such subjects as virginity and marriage. The pace is unhurried, so people with shorter attention spans may start to fidget around a little.The sultry Maribel Martin stars as Susan, a virginal newlywed rather uncomfortable about her new married life. The hunky Simon Andreu plays her unnamed husband, who becomes worried when he thinks that Susan is imagining the presence of a mystery woman (the intoxicatingly sexy Alexandra Bastedo). Well, "Carmila" (Bastedo) does exist, and with a subtle intensity, she worms her way into Susans' life and encourages her to think beyond being "trapped" by this male presence.In general, the performances are decent, with Martin making for a reasonably sympathetic figure. Andreu offers a stolid screen presence, never changing his facial expression very much. Dean Selmier is superb as a well-meaning doctor who naturally does not put much stock in superstition. Bastedo is very easy to watch, and Rosa M. Rodriguez does a respectable job as a precocious youngster.There's a mild dose of delectable female nudity, as a viewer would come to expect from the genre, and the violence is extremely effective whenever it takes place. (The film is not wall-to-wall gore, but still manages to live up to its title.) And the music score composed by Antonio Perez Olea is appropriately haunting. Director / writer Vicente Aranda also adds an appreciable amount of surrealism when Carmila is discovered under the sand at a beach - this is quite a memorable scene.Recommended for lovers of the genre, who should also enjoy similar entries such as "Vampyres" and "Daughters of Darkness".Seven out of 10.

The Blood Spattered Bride is one of the Spanish entries in the erotic horror boom of the 1970's. For my money it's one of the best out there and definitely inhabits the higher quality end of the Euro vampire spectrum. It's not quite at the level of the seminal Belgian entry Daughters of Darkness (1971) but it's one of the ones that hover not too far below that one. It's an unusual and effective bit of genre cinema with some truly exceptional moments. A newly wed virgin bride becomes wary of her husband and his aggressive sexual advances while honeymooning at the latter's ancestral family home. On arrival the bride begins to have erotic nightmares featuring an enigmatic female vampire and before long a woman called Carmilla appears on the scene that bears a striking resemblance to her. She immediately starts drawing the bride away from her husband and begins an erotic affair with her. Events soon turn deadly.This one really benefits from being very well shot in ways that makes good use out of its leafy and sandy locations, ruins and crypts. The erotic and gory horror moments benefit also from excellent cinematography. At times the imagery is in fact sublime such as the incredible moment when Carmilla is found buried in the sand on the beach, naked except for goggles and a snorkel; the tip of the latter protruding above the surface along with one of her hands. It's an inspired scene of brilliant surrealism. The image of a naked female vampire buried in a beach wearing diving goggles and snorkel is one of the most strikingly unusual in all 70's horror. More typical stuff comes by way of the visceral dreams experienced by the bride where she violently stabs her husband repeatedly with a dagger with the assistance of Carmilla; the blood flows freely here creating the indelible imagery that gave the film its title. These dream sequences are properly well executed but truthfully there is a dream-like nature to the actual plotting of the film on the whole with a story-line that often feels like it could be a dream itself, where one strange event follows another and where even side characters such as the strange young girl Rosa make an impact and interact with others in odd ways.What helps matters further is that we have a good set of performances underpinning things. Alexandra Bastedo is well suited to the enigmatic character Carmilla, Simón Andreu is does well as the largely unsympathetic husband and, best of all, the very beautiful Maribel Martin leads the picture very well indeed as the pivotal bride, in a role that has quite a bit going on in it. Unusually, around about the half-way point the film switches perspective from the bride to the husband's point-of-view. This allows for the first half to focus on the bride's sexual anxiety and fears, and for the latter half to be more of a direct story about vampires. It all ends with a somewhat grim set-piece which was well executed, although it did nevertheless feel slightly abrupt ultimately. Still, this is hardly a deal breaker and doesn't detract from the excellence of this movie in general. For me, this certainly goes down as one of the high points of the vampire genre and of eroticised horror in general. It gives you all that you expect from these types of films but with the addition of visual elegance, moments of well-executed surrealism, good acting and a story-line that intertwines psychological elements into its vampire narrative. It all adds up to something genuinely great.

The wet-blanket editors at "Maltin's Movie Guide" have done it again. "Poorly done," they sniff, giving a measly 1 1/2 stars to Spanish director Vicente Aranda's 1972 offering, "The Blood Spattered Bride." Countering this claim is the very laudatory review in "DVD Delirium," which describes the picture with words such as "bizarre," "visceral," "sexy" and "dreamlike." I concur. This film, I feel, presented in its uncensored form on this great-looking DVD from Blue Underground, should prove a godsend of sorts for all lovers of adult Eurohorror. In it, a new bride moves into the childhood home of her husband, and is soon plagued by stroboscopic and hideously, uh, heart-gripping dreams featuring a beautiful blond woman. When her husband finds this dream gal buried naked at the beach, with only her snorkel protruding from the surface (one very strange scene, lemme tell you!), and brings her back home, that's when the fun begins, as the woman, Carmilla (yes, this IS another variation of Sheridan Le Fanu's oft-filmed 1871 novella), turns out to be nothing less than a bloodsucking...but perhaps I've already said too much. Featuring uniformly fine acting by all (sexy Maribel Martin as the young bride, giallo favorite Simon Andreu as the perplexed husband, the ridiculously gorgeous Alexandra Bastedo as Carmilla, and Rosa Rodriguez as a pretty 12-year-old who, in perhaps the film's strangest scene, drinks from a humongous cup of coffee), a subtle yet effective score by Antonio Perez Olea, beautiful outdoor photography of woodlands, seaside and moldering crypts, and some genuinely shocking bursts of gory carnage, this movie is my idea of an almost perfect horror package. Peppered with psychosexual allusions and concluding on a note both bleak and grisly, the film was a very pleasant surprise for me, and one that I do highly recommend. If you love the great "Daughters of Darkness," you should certainly suck this one right up. Don't trust Maltin here; trust me!

Heard a lot of this flick, not easy to find over here but by looking overseas I caught me my copy. Immediately from the start I found out for me that it was a Giallo. It is a slow starter, it takes exactly 40 minutes before the real stuff is happening. The storyline is okay and acting is okay, but there is some suspense missing for me, I'm not that Giallofreak as others so it has really be good for me to find it a good flick. I have seen the uncut version so the nudity, typical for those area of giallo's, is intact. At the end you have a bit of that Giallotwist. Maybe it's a bit too old, 1972, to survive his age up to the standards of today. The blood runs now and then but it isn't flowing frequently enough to make it creepy. Anyway, it's watchable so if you can grab yourself an uncut version, don't hesitate.