Search - The Blood Spattered Bride on DVD

Battle of the sexes......with hot vampires!

trashcanman | Hanford, CA United States | 07/09/2009

(3 out of 5 stars)

"There is probably no less appreciated and poorly-utilized character in cult cinema history then Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu's Carmilla. The novella is in it's own way nearly as classic and influential as Dracula in vampire lore, single-handedly creating the female vampire genre as it continues today. Heck, even the undead king himself has taken to using anagrams of his name on occasion, which originated in "Carmilla". But while Drac is a household name and has had countless high-profile adaptations that nearly always treat his character with great weight and respect, his sister-in-undeath is seldom utilized with any effectiveness. While Hammer's excellent The Vampire Lovers very successfully adapted the story while accentuating the thick feminine sexuality that permeated the novel but was not expounded upon, it seems every adaptation since has treated the story and character flippantly. From the terrible love scene in Lust for a Vampire featuring Carmilla at the mercy of a human man who seduces and conquers her to the absolutely godawful recent "film" Vampires Vs. Zombies, which poorly attempted to modernize the tale and added zombies for no reason other then to utilize the attention-grabbing title, Carmilla has been to cinematic hell and back.



"The Blood Spattered Bride" has a lot of strikes against it, but a lot going for it as well. As an adaptation of "Carmilla" -as it purports to be- it fails miserably. Hell, they didn't even spell her name right. But as a 70's grindhouse cult classic it definitely succeeds. I'll tell you right now that if they had left Le Fanu's name off of this, it would have gotten an extra star. The film is dark, unique in tone and theme, and sometimes explosively violent. One scene in particular is sure to make men and women alike seriously uncomfortable. The premise is somewhat similar to the original work, but centers on a newlywed who seems quite uncomfortable with her new husband, whose attitude and sexual appetites are a bit gruff. She is stalked from afar by a mysterious woman in white, who begins appearing in her dreams. A strange dagger begins appearing around the house, and the dreams intensify and begin driving the girl mad as she is plagued by visions of her using the blade to slaughter her husband. Then one day, the man happens upon a beautiful woman buried in the sand on the beach. This is among the oddest scenes I've ever seen, by the way. I'm not sure what makes it so; maybe it's the fact that the legendary vampire queen was using a freaking snorkel to breath from under the sand or the way that the man quickly clears the sand away from her breasts leaving us to stare at an angelic blue-eyed face behind a snorkeling mask with only her [...] visible beyond that. Who the hell came up with this? Anyways, long story short: with the bride under the thrall of the she-vamp the girls form a bit of an anti-male crusade. But can two super-sexy immortal supernatural beings possibly overcome a viral and boorish embodiment of testosterone? Not in a Spanish movie in the 70's, sorry. Boo.



For a film that has 3 (okay maybe 2 1/2) instances of full frontal female nudity in the first 20 minutes or so, the rest of the film is sexually tame in comparison. One would think that an opportunity would be taken to juxtapose the rough sexual approach of the husband with a more sensual approach from the lesbian vampire to highlight the gender war, but the girl-girl sexual element is small; real small in comparison to the initial assault of brutish male conquest in the early scenes of the film. There are serious pacing and balance issues all around on this one. Also of note is a scene where the male characters shoot an agonized fox with his leg caught in a trap in the head. This scene is not fake. It is thankfully recalled in a scene later in the film so as not to make such a sickening spectacle as completely pointless as it appeared to be, but I simply do not enjoy seeing something like that. Fake violence, people; I like my violence fictitious. Still, the film gains a lot of exploitation points for it's brazenness. And if you think the fabulously evocative title sounds familiar to you, one Quentin Tarantino utilized it in the homage-heavy exploitation-fest Kill Bill.



So while the results are a bit disappointing considering what could have been, "The Blood Spattered Bride" is certainly worth a peak if you're a 70's vampire fanatic. It may be artistically half-baked, but it delivers plenty of cheap thrills and chills and has at least one scene that is an absolute must-see classic of violent imagery. The men vs women approach is pretty fresh from this perspective and I just wish it had been handled a little better because this film had "potential classic" written all over it. It's almost nothing like the supposed source material, but as a stand alone story it's pretty damn good. Sadly, it should have been great, but seems to have been weighed down by the misogyny of the time and place it was made. Pity.

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