The Blood Spattered Bride 2000 Horror Movie Review

Spanish cinema veteran Vicente Aranda, best known for such art-house fare as The Lovers and Libertarias, first hit the international scene in 1972 with this sexy vampire thriller. Simon Andreu is a young and inexperienced new bride whose violent nightmares are invaded by a mysterious woman in white. Her husband (Dean Selmier), who at first appears sensitive and consoling, has a tendency for rough lovemaking, and his practical jokes show a strange, sadistic streak. Andreu discovers a vandalized portrait of her husband’s ancestor, Mircalla Karnstein, a young bride found a century ago lying next to her dead husband in a blood-soaked wedding dress. Mircalla’s mysterious phantom soon emerges from Andreu’s dreams and enters her world. This twist on Sheridan Le Fanu’s story “Carmilla” (which also inspired Carl Dreyer’s Vampyr and a host of erotic horror films in the 1970s) suggests that this vampire is less an agent of evil out to corrupt the innocent maiden than a physical manifestation of the maiden’s own subconscious sexual fears and fantasies. The mysterious blood-spattered bride rises from her grave like an avenging devil. Her “official” entrance, buried naked on an empty beach and breathing through a snorkel, is one of the most memorable images in modern horror cinema. It seduces Andreu, too, unleashing her repressed psychosis in a bloody homicidal frenzy. Aranda’s style is earthier than French or British vampire films, less a dream world than a world invaded by nightmares. It’s handsome and accomplished—spooky, edgy, sexy, and startlingly violent. —Sean Axmaker