First time watching “The Blood Spattered Bride” yesterday it was not a case of wow but a typical early seventies horror. The film was powerful/strange, violent, symbolic, in its own bizarre and often twisted fashion, and I liked it.
It has to do with a young virgin bride, Susan (Maribel Martin) living in the family home of her slightly older husband (Simon Andreu). Her husband is almost obsessive about seeking sexual pleasure from his young bride, and she begins to grow repulsed by his overt sexual dominance. She is also growing fascinated by the family legend of Mircalla Karstein (Alexranda Bastedo), an infamous ancestral figure who killed her husband on their wedding night. Susan starts to have violent (and I mean violent!) nightmares about Mircala, and becomes convinced that her ghost is attempting to push Susan towards killing her husband.
The main "problem" with The Blood Spattered Bride is that the first half and the second half are quite different. The first half of the film is reminiscent of Hitchcock's Marnie, the tale of a woman's sexual frigidity and its ensuing effect on her life and mental stability. The first half of the film is easily my favourite, for it manages to be probing AND erotic at the same time...not to mention extremely violent. Although The Blood Spattered Bride is not actually a "gore movie", some of Susan's sexual nightmares are among the most graphic sequences captured in cinema in the day. They are also fascinating to watch, and there is something strangely sexy about the execution of these scenes..., which is perhaps symbolic of Susan’s sexual frustration, and fear of insanity.
The second half of the film involves the appearance of Carmila, a strange woman who bears an uncanny resemblance to the woman of Susan's nightmares. I don't want to give too much away, but anyone with a familiarity of the film knows that it was one of the early films in the "lesbian vampire" subgenre, so you can probably guess where it's headed...
The second half of the film is probably more erotic almost as violent as the first half, and it pushes the female sexuality exploration in a completely new direction. However, this is where the vampire aspect comes into play in a big way, and the film at times feels more like a Hammer film. I could not help but feel that the ending was a bit of a letdown. It's not a bad ending by any means-it's definitely a major shocker-but it was also quite abrupt, really. The turning point in the film is her husband's discovery of Carmila on the beach, easily the film's weirdest and most surreal scene. And for the rest of the film, when the vampire themes come into play as her husband discovers her latent lesbianism and relationship with Carmila. No wonder the husband wasn’t getting any. As such, it could easily be interpreted as a nightmare about killing her husband and then being killed...hence the abrupt, seemingly misogynistic ending.
The Blood Spattered Bride is not a perfect film, but in my opinion, but fun to watch. The performances are all wonderful (this is some of the best casting for this European horror), and it's one of the rare Euro Horror films in which the performances are crucial to the effectiveness of the film.
My Rating
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