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The Blood Spattered Bride
Average Customer Review : 3.5/5 based on 14 reviews
List Price : $29.98
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Editorial Reviews
Spanish cinema veteran Vicente Aranda, best known for such art-house fare as The Lovers and Libertarias, first hit the international scene in 1972 with this sexy vampire thriller. Simon Andreu is a young and inexperienced new bride whose violent nightmares are invaded by a mysterious woman in white. Her husband (Dean Selmier), who at first appears sensitive and consoling, has a tendency for rough lovemaking, and his practical jokes show a strange, sadistic streak. Andreu discovers a vandalized portrait of her husband's ancestor, Mircalla Karnstein, a young bride found a century ago lying next to her dead husband in a blood-soaked wedding dress. Mircalla's mysterious phantom soon emerges from Andreu's dreams and enters her world. This twist on Sheridan Le Fanu's story "Carmilla" (which also inspired Carl Dreyer's Vampyr and a host of erotic horror films in the 1970s) suggests that this vampire is less an agent of evil out to corrupt the innocent maiden than a physical manifestation of the maiden's own subconscious sexual fears and fantasies. The mysterious blood-spattered bride rises from her grave like an avenging devil. Her "official" entrance, buried naked on an empty beach and breathing through a snorkel, is one of the most memorable images in modern horror cinema. It seduces Andreu, too, unleashing her repressed psychosis in a bloody homicidal frenzy. Aranda's style is earthier than French or British vampire films, less a dream world than a world invaded by nightmares. It's handsome and accomplished--spooky, edgy, sexy, and startlingly violent. --Sean Axmaker
Spotlight Reviews
Horrible movie (2008-04-30)
Customer Review : 1
This has to be the most idiotic, boring piece of trashy horror I have ever seen.
just okay.... (2008-01-23)
Customer Review : 3
I get the point of the film, I really do. And I actually enjoyed the concept of it. But it was very slow moving, and the acting really jsut wasn't believable. I understand why Susan reacted the way she did to the rape, it becomes apparent later in the film, but there were no real surprises, no real suspense at all. Just a movie about man putting woman down and showing the ugly extremes of feminism. Not a horrible flick, but not great either. Can't really recommend it.
A CLASSIC of Fear (2006-06-16)
Customer Review : 5
In tradition Spanish Horror movies. Not a ton of depth but enough action going on to keep you fully entertained.I really enjoyed this movie! It has every incrediate to be a CLASSIC.
Good looking and sexy, but not much depth (2006-01-26)
Customer Review : 3
The Blood Spattered Bride is an easy film to enjoy aesthetically, but quite hard to appreciate plot-wise. The film concerns two young newlyweds whose lives are overturned by the arrival of a mysterious woman who proceeds to seduce the wife and cause general death and mayhem alll round. The film does look gorgeous, and both female leads, (Maribel Martin as the young wife, and Alexandra Basteda as the mysterious intruder) are very sensual and beautiful, even if for a lot of their screen time, they appear in silence or staring enigmatically into thin air, particularly in the case of Martin, who is required to take on an almost comatose blankness a lot of the time. I mentioned that the plot is a problem with this film, and as the character of Susan is pivotal to the story, it's often quite difficult to work out what's actually happening as this character is extremely reticent in demonstrating what she is thinking. Right at the start of the film, Susan is undressing on her wedding night, only to be raped in her hotel room by a masked attacker. When her husband finds her later and asks what is wrong, her only comment is: "I don't like this hotel"...!! What does this mean? Is she deeply traumatised, or not that upset, or was the whole attack just a fantasy? You wouldn't know either way, as the matter is never referred to again. Still more unusual is that Susan is definitely the heroine for the first half of the film, confused and isolated, and constantly pestered for sex by her sleazy husband (whose character is never fleshed out at all). She makes it clear that she is unhappy, yet carries on drifting through life in a semi-dazed state.
That is, until the character of Carmilla arrives on the scene. In one fell swoop, the unlikeable husband suddenly becomes the innocent victim in the proceedings, and the second half of the film charts his investigations into why Susan and Carmilla are spending more and more time together, and what they are plotting to do together. It's an odd switch to turn Susan into the villainess of the movie after making her so sympathetic in the early stages, but when I thought about it I realised that maybe Susan was never meant to be a sympathetic character, but instead her refusal to concede to her husband's sexual advances was designed to earmark her as the pervert instead of him...!
Well, I'll leave other viewers to work out their own explanations, but I found the overall tone of the film rather unpleasant if the solution to Carmilla's evil influence (at least Carmilla is unambiguously evil all the time!) was to lump poor Susan in as "evil" as well, rather than have the husband try and rescue her. That aside, I do appreciate the film on several other levels. It's gorgeously filmed, in many stunning locations, and it's full of many, many stylish touches. Look out for the recurring image of Carmilla's inverted rings, the ornate dagger that refuses to stay hidden, the bizarre discovery of Carmilla buried in sand, and the scene in which Susan locks herself in a large cage of fluttering birds to avoid her husband's advances. Plus the film has several moments of extreme violence, most noticeably a dream sequence in which both women stab and mutilate the husband while he sleeps. It's very gruesome, and the DVD has the the longest version of the scene I have ever witnessed among the various releases of this film. It also includes the notorious ending that was always cut on past video releases - however this is more infamous than graphic and very little is actually seen on screen. Animal lovers need to know that a live fox caught in a trap gets blasted with a shotgun at one point, which is the type of thing I hoped never to see again outside of the "cannibal" genre, but apart from that, all the violence is well intergrated into the story.
If you can forgive the meandering plot and main characters whose motives and emotions are hardly ever made visible, there's a lot to enjoy in this film. Alexandra Bastedo makes a superb Carmilla, and her designs on Susan are bewitching to watch. Add that to all the potent imagery on display and you can possibly forget the rather abrupt macho retribution that passes for the happy ending.
brilliance (2003-10-05)
Customer Review : 5
yeah well, i wanted to watch it because of the genre and boy was I pleased!yeah it was good, didn't really get much of the plot, or anything else for that matter, kept my eye out for a bit of the..you know...action
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