The Blood Spattered Bride

The young, virginal Susan (Maribel Martin – herself only 18 at the time the film was made) has just married an older and more experienced man (Simon Andreu). En route to their country home, the newlyweds stop off at a hotel. Susan hallucinates that a masked man – who could be her husband – leaps out of the wardrobe, tears off her wedding dress and sexually assaults her. Understandably distressed, she doesn't want to stay at the hotel a moment longer.

The couple arrive at their new residence, where Susan is introduced to the servants and their 12-year-old daughter, Carol. Later Susan and her husband consummate their relationship. Disturbingly, he starts off acting like the man in Susan's nightmare.

The next morning Susan begins to explore her new home. She wonders why all the portraits on display are of the males of the family. The females, it transpires, have been hidden away in the cellar for decades. One of their number, Mircalla Karnstein, married into the family and murdered her husband on their wedding night when he tried to get her to do "unspeakable things".

That night Susan receives a visitation from Mircalla, who leaves her dagger behind. A very concrete nightmare, or someone playing a sick joke?

Worried, Susan's husband calls for the doctor. Perhaps given Susan's somewhat infantilised state, it's simply a reaction to the loss of her virginity?

Going to bury the dagger on the beach, where his wife should be unable to find it, Susan's husband notices a hand poking out of the sand. Digging, he unearths a young woman, naked but for her diving mask and inwards-pointing rings.

He takes the woman back to his house. Over dinner she introduces herself as Carmilla (Alexandra Bastedo) but otherwise divulges little.

That night, Susan has another visitation. There is a definite similarity between the woman in (of) her dreams and Carmilla. They look alike and wear their rings the same way.

In the morning Carmilla/Mircalla has gone. But she will soon return in one way or another…

Although there had long been female vampire films (Dracula's Daughter) and adaptations of Sheridan Le Fanu's novella Carmilla (Vampyr, Blood and Roses) their heyday was surely the early 1970s, with Hammer's Karnstein Trilogy and Countess Dracula, Jose Larraz's Vampyres, Harry Kumel's Daughters of Darkness along with this film and many others.

It doesn't take a genius to work out the reasons behind this mini-boom: A relaxation of censorship allowing more to be shown – i.e. boobs, bum, bush – than was possible even a few years before, coupled with the emergence of feminism with its challenge to patriarchy and – in its more radical forms at least – questioning of compulsory heterosexuality.

What the makers of The Blood Spattered Bride are trying to say here isn't totally clear. Early on we are invited to identify with the female, with Susan's husband being shown to have a cruel, domineering streak and his family as having long suppressed their female side, as represented by the madwomen in the basement (attic). But as the film progresses, particularly after Carmilla appears and the nature of the two women's relationship becomes ever more apparent, the film-makers increasingly invite us to identify with the male:

Doctor: How well do you really know [Susan]? For example suppose she and Carmilla were friends at school. Close like two sisters – or even closer.
Husband: Are you mad. What are you implying? That she's a lesbian?
Doctor: No, but she's being dominated by a lesbian.
Husband: That's enough! How could you imagine such a foul thing!

Yet, even if the film ultimately endorses patriarchal authority, that it was at least being opened up as a topic for discussion – in however crude a form – coupled with the fact that, as per the traditional order/disruption of that order/restoration of order structure, the new order with which the film closes is not and cannot be identical to the old order with which it opened, are important in themselves.

What are we to make of the removal of Mircalla's face from her portrait, leaving only a blank, empty space? Does it signal the absence of the female presence from history (his-story)? Or that Carmilla is an everywoman, a vacant position into which any woman could insert herself if she so desires? Or Mircalla's rings? Does their inverted, inwards, position signify homosexuality? Their intruding/extruding position female/male genitalia?

Are we reading too much into a Euro exploitation film in a pathetic attempt to provide intellectual justification for our enjoying it? Or picking up on those things that the film-makers cunningly included in the hope that we might give their film more attention than it otherwise warranted?

While The Blood Spattered Bride does not shy away from explicit gore and nudity – with that title it all but promises some of the former – Vicente Aranda's direction is otherwise surprisingly restrained, favouring long masters and elegant tracking shots over crude shock effects.

The director's greatest achievement lies in maintaining a strong fantastique atmosphere until the very end. Rather than clearly signalling dreams, nightmares and fantasies as such, they are generally presented with a similar ontological status to reality. This not only keeps the viewer intrigued as to what is going on but also means that otherwise bizarre incidents, like the discovery of Carmilla on the beach appear somehow plausible and reasonable. (A brief shot from Carmilla's point of view here, complete with sand on the mask, not only pays homage to Dreyer but also suggests where Aranda perhaps derived his dream = reality idea from.)

Aranda also makes good use of colour association, with the changing relationship between Susan and Carmilla being signalled not only by the obvious device of Susan's wearing her rings back to front – which receives comment within the film – but also by the use of Carmilla's colour, violet – which does not.

Anchor Bay's Region 1 DVD of The Blood Spattered Bride presents the film uncut, reinstating some 18 minutes of footage previously excised from its US release, and in its original aspect ratio of 1.85:1. The anamorphic transfer is virtually free from damage and exhibits solid colours and deep blacks, but also looks a touch soft and shimmers noticeably in places. There is also a moment at the 40 minute mark when sound then picture go choppy for a few seconds.

The only extra is a silly combo trailer for the film and I Dismember Mama which, if nothing else, illustrates the problems that horrors like The Blood Spattered Bride so often have in getting taken seriously by the critics and why they are thereby a largely untapped route to the concerns of their times.