n my opinion it was a great movie with some interesting elements, even though having some plot holes and the ending probably was just too messy and crammed together, but still fun to watch and not your casual movie that is similar to all other ones.

Simple and well acted, it has tension enough to knot the stomach.

At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

Mostly, the movie is committed to the value of a good time.

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.

There have been no less than FIVE classic European horror films based on the Sheridan LeFanu classic story "Carmilla". There was the creepy, expressionistic Carl Theodore Dryer film "Vampyr" back in the 30's. There was the famous Hammer period horror film "The Vampire Lovers" (which itself inspired two sequels). There was Roger Vadim's very French New Wave "Blood and Roses". There was Harry Kumel's superior, if somewhat overrated, "Daughters of Darkness". And there was this one, a Spanish film, which is perhaps the most exploitative and also the most bizarrely surrealistic of all of them.The plot involves a man (Simon Andreu) and his young bride (Maribel Martin), who are on a seaside honeymoon. The woman suffers from a kind of sexual hysteria where she hallucinates strange men coming out of the closet and raping her. Interestingly though, it is the man who first discovers the lesbian vampire (Alexandra Bastedo). In what is undoubtedly the most arresting image in the film he digs her up from the beach sand where she is buried (for some reason) wearing nothing but a snorkel mask! (And demonstrating the film's exploitative pedigree, he first uncovers her sizable breasts). Of course, it isn't long before the lesbianism starts in earnest. The film is marred somewhat by a very ham-handed ending, but one that is also quite a statement (perhaps unintentionally so) on the reactionary machismo of Spain in the late Franco era.This movie has an interesting if somewhat obscure cast. Simon Andreu was in a number of Italian giallo thrillers with fellow Spaniard Nieves Navarro (aka Susan Scott) and her Italian director husband Luciano Ercoli. He would stage a kind of comeback years later with a supporting role in Roman Polanski's "The Ninth Gate". The young and beautiful Maribel Martin was in three classic Spanish horror films in the late 60's/early 70's--"The House that Screamed", "A Bell from Hell", and this one--so it's both strange and regrettable that she completely disappeared soon after. British actress Alexandra Bastedo had a much longer career, going back at least to William Castle's "13 Frightened Girls" in 1963 and as far forward as Freddie Francis' "The Ghoul" in 1975. But she was almost always relegated to supporting roles, so it's good to see a lot more of her here (both in terms of the size of her role and the sparseness of her wardrobe).The ending of the available prints seems rather truncated, perhaps suggesting censorship (although it's doubtful even this print ever played in Franco's Spain). It would be nice if someday another print would turn up with a smoother ending (and maybe a longer nude, lesbian clinch between Bastedo and Martin). Here's hoping anyway.

Susan (Maribel Marten) is a hallucinating nut-job who goes with her newlywed hubby to a castle. Once there she freaks out and becomes a man-hating lesbian vampire or some such nonsense in yet another film that basis itself (extremely loosely) on the novel "Carmila". A good deal of this is boring, and what isn't boring (Ie. a naked women wearing a snorkel buried in the sand) doesn't make a lick of sense. The feminutzis DO get what's coming to them so it's not totally without merit, but I wouldn't watch it again anytime soon.My Grade: C-DVD Extras: Uncut version; a combo trailer for this and "I Dismember Mama"Eye Candy: Maribel Martin gets fully naked; Alexandra Bastedo shows breasts