Lack of good storyline.

I am only giving this movie a 1 for the great cast, though I can't imagine what any of them were thinking. This movie was horrible

There are moments in this movie where the great movie it could've been peek out... They're fleeting, here, but they're worth savoring, and they happen often enough to make it worth your while.

Worth seeing just to witness how winsome it is.

Are all French women bisexual? I know from watching Italian vampire films that getting bitten also gives the ladies a fondness for comfortable shoes and listening to that Horse McDonald guy, but French women just seem to be into everything, without exception. This is what gets Carmilla into so much trouble in this film, Blood and Roses aka Carmilla, The Grumpy French Vampire.Like George Romero's later vampire film Martin, you're never quite sure if Carmilla has just gone insane due to her uncontrollable jealousy or if the actual spirit of her vampire ancestor has returned to take over her body. You see, Carmilla seems to be both in love with her friend George and her cousin Leopoldo (a young Mel Ferrer), who are engaged to be married. This cause Carmilla to have a bit of a French hissy fit and stomp off into the graveyard of her ancestors, where fireworks set off a cache of hidden WW2 explosives, revealing the grave of her ancestor. Carmilla then of course starts dressing like her ancestor and generally putting the moves on Georgia, putting the bite on the locals and scaring the crap out of everyone else. The question is whether or not she is a genuine vampire or it's just that time of the month. That was subtle.The whole thing was filmed at the Roman ruin of Hadrian's Villa and every frame of the film looks like it was personally painted by Michaelangelo. The Emperor Hadrian was like a Roman Elton John and would often retreat to his villa when he was in some sort of huff about something. It's not far from Rome but it is not, as I thought, located in the town of Tivoli, but rather confusingly situated just outside of a town called Villa Adriano. When we went there I suspect that the bus driver told us to get off early as my son wouldn't stop screaming. It's worth a visit though - a huge estate of Roman ruins. It was November when we visited and we practically had the place to ourselves. I don't have much to say about this film.It's not the most action-packed but looks amazing, even drifting into black and white for a surreal dream sequence near the end. If you're a fan of vampire films this one will stand out a bit. Bof!

I took a chance on buying the 2014 German language "Filmclub Edition" release of "Blood and Roses", which is titled "Und Vor Lust Zu Sterben", and I am delighted with it. I only watched the French audio version that comes with the English subtitles, as that is the only version that I could understand, but it's a lovely, crisp, WIDESCREEN print of the movie, and therefore a million miles away from the full screen VHS version that i have had to live with up until now.The story is slight: Leopoldo Karnstein is celebrating his impending wedding to the beautiful Georgia, and everybody is happy except for cousin Carmilla, who is secretly jealous. As various festivities are enjoyed by the family, Carmilla sneaks off out of spite, and ends up exploring an ancient family tomb and finding the disturbed resting place of a famous ancestor who was rumoured to have been a vampire. What happens to her in that tomb is only hinted at, but she emerges changed from a lighthearted girl to a moody and troubled enigma. The rest of the film charts how Carmilla subtly begins to pull apart the happiness of the engaged couple, with tragic resultsThe plot of the film is not the main attraction here, it's the way the film is shot. It's almost like a watching a poem come to life on screen. There is a lot of stillness in the film, some scenes linger on very slow moving visuals for long periods of time, but it all comes together, if you have the patience to just enjoy what you are looking at. A lot of mileage is gained from the many scenes in which Carmilla drifts silently around the scenery in an extravagant white ballgown. Annette Vadim looks stunning in the main role of Carmilla, and even shots of her doing nothing at all still look superb. Her acting skills are up to the job, and she shows a surprising amount of different emotions in the role, whereas, if shots of her are just viewed in still images or short clips, the impression you get of her is that she is quite wooden, but when seen in the film as a whole, I think she is actually very good. Elsa Martinelli is also very good in the role of the innocent Georgia, and scenes of the two women together can look amazing, especially in a subtle but heavily erotic scene set in a greenhouse during a storm. Not much happens here, but the scene is electrifying all the same. As I said earlier, the film is actually pretty short on events but you'll still enjoy it due to the lush scenery, lighting and the visual beauty of the two lead actresses. The music also plays a vital role, with many scenes underscored by a delicate and melancholy classical soundtrack, which reminded me of the score to "Lisa and The Devil", which used music to a similar effect. The whole movie has a very European film to it, unmistakable as a product of 1960s France/Italy, and impossible to reproduce today.The only niggle with this release is some poor quality hiss and scratchiness of the French audio, but I forgive this for the stunning picture quality. I avoided buying this release for quite a while as I was hoping that an English audio version would eventually come out, because I prefer to soak up the visual atmosphere of a film like "Blood and Roses" without having to constantly read text, but I like this version now that I have watched it. The cast speak their dialogue in French (you can tell because the spoken audio synchs correctly to their mouths), so the dialogue looks authentic, and I happy to enjoy this with English subtitles.All in all, a superb movie.

An art house horror movie. Probably missed by horror fans, the film depicts a vampiress as romantic. The music by Jean Prodromidès and the cinematography by Claude Renoir certainly add to the romantic feeling throughout. A Harlequin horror film? Even the long shots in this film have a grace seldom seen. It often looks as if one is viewing and Impressionistic painting.Carmilla (Annette Vadim) visits an abbey where the vampiress is buried and we see an immediate change in her mood. Was she possessed? It isn't clear.Don't look for blood and guts or lesbian scenes. Everything happens off screen, even in the original version. But, it was a beautiful love story.

Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu’s classic horror short story “Carmilla” (which I own and have read) spearheaded the trend for cinematic tales of lesbian vampires. This is the second film adaptation of it – the first, a very loose one, was Carl Theodor Dreyer’s magnificent VAMPYR (1931; soon to be regaled with two fully-loaded SE DVDs on both sides of the Atlantic) and it was followed in quick succession by the Spanish/Italian co-production CRYPT OF THE VAMPIRE (1963; starring Christopher Lee, a quite good version, of which I foolishly erased a VHS copy I had recorded off Italian TV – the only edition currently available is the Retromedia R1 DVD which, unfortunately, presents the film dubbed in English), the Amicus/Hammer collaboration THE VAMPIRE LOVERS (1970; starring Ingrid Pitt and Peter Cushing) and Vicente Aranda’s eerily erotic THE BLOOD-SPATTERED BRIDE (1972).Director Vadim is better-known for having had great tastes in women (counting Brigitte Bardot, Catherine Deneuve and Jane Fonda among his discoveries/lovers) than for his film-making talents; I myself have only been truly impressed by one of his movies – THE GAME IS OVER (1966) – out of the seven that I’ve watched so far (including this one). BLOOD AND ROSES could well have been the second…were it not for the fact that the edited 74-minute version I watched – prepared for U.S. home video consumption and sporting the Anglicized original title AND DIE OF PLEASURE – is a bit of a mess (the full-length French version is 87 minutes long), English-dubbed (naturally), panned-and-scanned (of course), and preceded by one of the phoniest credit sequences I’ve ever witnessed (that said, a reasonable photo gallery was included with the DivX copy I acquired, which starts automatically soon after the main feature). Needless to say, I’d long wanted to watch this – but, bearing in mind the state of the edition I ended up with, in spite of its many pictorial rewards, it wasn’t an ideal viewing experience…and one can only hope that, given the amicable relationship between Paramount (who owns the U.S. rights for BLOOD AND ROSES) and Criterion, the film will turn up someday – in the original French language and uncut – on a decent official DVD (after all, the latter’s vast and considerable collection already numbers Vadim’s debut feature …AND GOD CREATED WOMAN [1956] among its releases).Anyway, the cast is an interesting combination of international movie stars (Mel Ferrer – who, coincidentally, has just died aged 90 – and Elsa Martinelli), newcomers (Annette Vadim nee' Stroyberg) and even a director (Marc Allegret, who had given Vadim an early start when he engaged him as his assistant). The film makes a fair attempt to update the LeFanu original to contemporary times – though, rather than make Carmilla and Millarca one and the same, we get the former being possessed by the latter: this is quite subtly done (at least in this reduced form) as Millarca’s personality in Carmilla manifests itself in her suddenly knowing the steps to an ancient dance and her incongruous preference for a classical record! As a matter of fact, this medieval quality permeates the whole film – thanks also to Jean Prodromides’ haunting melancholy score (which is then effectively speeded-up during the ‘horror’ sequences). Incidentally, the film was clearly intended for the Art-house crowd (resulting in being fairly talky for the first two-thirds) – even if it’s not quite in the same league as Georges Franju’s EYES WITHOUT A FACE (1959), an altogether more accomplished and successful marriage of the highbrow and the exploitative.That said, it contains any number of striking sequences: the costume party (with a fireworks display for backdrop) in which Ferrer dons a bat mask fitted with a pair of wings!; Stroyberg’s wraith-like pursuit of her first victim (her stilted performance is actually just right for the character) – despite its being obviously shot day-for-night; the wilted rose on Carmilla’s white dress turning to a huge blood stain (incidentally, this vampire registers in a mirror!); Stroyberg’s seduction of Martinelli on a rainy night inside the Karnstein family greenhouse (both women also love Ferrer, though he and Stroyberg are related!); Martinelli’s surreal, erotic and blood-spattered black-and-white dream sequence towards the end (in which, among other things, Stroyberg as Millarca operates on her naked self as Carmilla!) – which is the film’s undeniable tour-de-force; Carmilla’s demise as she gets staked during an explosion (the location being a cemetery holding remnant shells from WWII); and the very last image when another wilted rose betrays the fact to the audience, but not the oblivious Ferrer, that Martinelli has herself been turned into a vampire (the latter starts off as an ingénue but slowly, and believably, matures through her attachment to Carmilla).By the way, some weeks back I happened upon a recent TV interview with Martinelli; she seemed deservedly proud of her cinematic legacy (including a successful stint in Hollywood) but, unsurprisingly, this film – or another good one where she was also involved in lesbianism, Lucio Fulci’s giallo ONE ON TOP OF THE OTHER aka PERVERSION STORY (1969) – wasn’t mentioned at all…