Boring

It isn't all that great, actually. Really cheesy and very predicable of how certain scenes are gonna turn play out. However, I guess that's the charm of it all, because I would consider this one of my guilty pleasures.

If you're interested in the topic at hand, you should just watch it and judge yourself because the reviews have gone very biased by people that didn't even watch it and just hate (or love) the creator. I liked it, it was well written, narrated, and directed and it was about a topic that interests me.

One of the film's great tricks is that, for a time, you think it will go down a rabbit hole of unrealistic glorification.

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.

After getting married with her husband (Simón Andreu), Susan (Maribel Martín) travels with him to his isolated manor. The sexual drive of the husband is intense, and Susan feels repulse for his sexual games and perversions. Susan notes that there are only paintings of his male ancestors and none of their wives and she learns that the pictures are kept in the basement. When she sees the painting of Mircalla Karstein (Alexranda Bastedo), a.k.a. Carmilla, without her face, her husband tells that Carmilla killed her husband in the honeymoon. During the night, Susan has dreadful nightmares with Carmilla.When Susan's husband finds a naked woman buried on the beach, he brings her home and finds that she is Carmilla. Susan is seduced by the woman and they have a lesbian relationship. Meanwhile her husband realizes that his life is in danger and Carmilla is a vampire. "La Novia Ensangrentada", a.k.a. "The Blood Spattered Bride", is an erotic and gore vampire film with an ambiguous story developed in a nightmarish atmosphere, but having a weak conclusion. The story is never clear that Mircalla Karstein is a vampire indeed and based on the news in the disappointing conclusion, the plot may be understood differently, with the disturbed and dysfunctional Susan meeting the deranged stranger and having sexual attraction and making lesbian love with her. My vote is six.Title (Brazil): Not Available

At the beginning of Vicente Aranda's The Blood Spattered Bride, newlywed virgin Susan (Maribel Martín) imagines herself being raped by a masked man who looks uncannily like her husband (Simón Andreu)—an early indication that this girl is fearful of the opposite sex and therefore not going to make the ideal spouse.When the time comes for her to put out on her wedding night, Susan discovers for real that her hubby lacks the gentle touch when it comes to making whoopee: he likes to be the one in control and, although he doesn't actually force himself upon her, he is more than a little predatory when it comes to sex.Susan finds herself beginning to hate her husband—feelings which are encouraged by a mysterious blonde, Carmilla (Alexandra Bastedo), who is found, by Susan's hubby, naked and buried in sand on the beach. Before you can say 'bean-flicker', Carmilla is sexing it up with Susan, biting her on the neck and fuelling her hatred towards men.Believing that Carmilla is actually his murderous man-hating ancestor Mircalla Karnstein, who has returned as a lesbian vampire, Susan's husband sets out to stop her any way he can.Made in the early 70s, when the battle of the sexes and the feminist movement were in full swing, The Blood Spattered Bride uses sexual domination as its central theme: both the husband and Carmilla seek to control Susan. Carmilla succeeds in turning Susan into a grade-A man-hater (to the point where she is willing to kill) and so the husband, out to prove his superiority, grabs his gun, and pumps his load into both women (oo-err, missus!).Whilst I am sure this intellectual subtext is all very interesting to some, I couldn't care less: I like my Euro-horror trashy and gory and my lesbian vampires to be sleazy, and although The Blood Spattered Bride has the occasional smattering of nudity and some bloodletting, it is way too reserved for my depraved tastes. Bastedo and Martín do get nekkid, but don't get down to any serious kinky stuff together, and the film doesn't go far enough with the gore: a couple of scenes almost make the grade (Susan dreaming that she is stabbing her husband and a gratuitous shogun blast to the crotch) but I was hoping for much more.The film ends very abruptly, just as the husband is about to remove the hearts of the dead women (a scene which is rumoured to have existed, but which has now apparently been lost). And I couldn't help but feel disappointed.