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One of these days, I need to finish the Karnstein Trilogy from Hammer Studios. I’ve seen the first two movies, The Vampire Lovers and Lust for a Vampire, but I’ve yet to finish the story. I was reminded of this when I watched The Blood-Spattered Bride (or La novia ensangrentada) today. It didn’t specifically feel like the same story until, in an old family estate, our characters find a portrait of a woman named Mircalla Karnestein.
The reason for this is that both the Karnstein Trilogy and The Blood-Spattered Bride are based on the novella Carmilla, written by Irish author Sheridan le Fanu about 25 years before Bram Stoker wrote Dracula. These are not unique in finding Carmilla to be influential in their story telling—aside from Dracula itself, it is by far the most referenced vampire work around, having some impact on films like Dreyer’s Vampyr, on Dracula’s Daughter, Blood and Roses, Crypt of the Vampire, Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust and others, and that’s just looking at film.
Anyway, Susan (Maribel Martín) is newly married, but very much seems ill at ease in the marriage. While still wearing her wedding dress, she has a violent fantasy of being ravaged by an unknown man. Eventually, she and her unnamed husband (Simón Andreu) arrive at the house where he grew up. Susan sees a vision of a woman that she had a vision of earlier, while in the house she discovers that there are portraits of her husband’s ancestors, but only the male ones—all of the female ancestors have had their portraits consigned to the basement. When she discovers them, she also discovers that one of them—a woman named Mircala Karstein—has had her face cut out of the painting. According to the legend, Mircala murdered her husband on her wedding night because he forced her to commit terrible acts.
Through all of this, Susan is having violent dreams about killing her husband, and she awakens to find a dagger that looks like the one in Mircala’s portrait under her pillow. And soon after that, she is having dreams about Mircala, telling her to murder her husband in the way that she did.
But hey, we need the real Mircala to be a part of this, don’t we? So, soon enough, Susan’s husband is walking on the beach where he discovers a woman buried in the sand. He digs her out and brings her home. Naturally, she is a dead ringer for Mircala and her name is Carmila (Alexandra Bastedo)—an anagram. For what it’s worth I don’t know why they dropped the second “l” from the names.
You should know where this is going at this point. Carmila/Mircala is a vampire, and is the ancestor of Susan’s husband. Soon enough, Carmila/Mircala is drinking Susan’s blood and commanding her to murder her husband. And, naturally, there’s going to be a great deal of implied lesbianism going on as well. Most of this happens off-screen, but with audio, which is almost embarrassingly dubbed.
So, here’s the thing. The Blood-Spattered Bride isn’t really the best version of this story, although it probably is the most lurid and violent version of it, at least up to a point. When Susan has fully enmeshed herself in the vampire lifestyle with Carmila, she attacks people wildly with the dagger in question, and isn’t shy about using a shotgun on people as necessary as well. Of course, we’re just going to see the aftermath of all of this—this is from 1972, after all. It’s also probably the version with the most nudity, most of which is near the start and at the end.
The problem with The Blood-Spattered Bride is that everyone acts like an idiot. Near the end, Susan attacks her husband with the dagger and he manages to evade her. And what does he do? He hangs around and sets a few bear traps in the woods to catch them. Leave, dude. Seriously.
Look, if you’re into horror movies because of nudity, I get it, and there’s a decent amount of it here, and frankly, both of the women are truly beautiful, so you could do a lot worse. If that’s low on your agenda for why you’re watching something, though, there’s not a lot here that’s going to be very interesting. There’s clearly a story here that is worth pursuing, evidenced by the number of times this has been adapted wholly or in part a bunch of times. It’s just not adapted very well in this case.
Why to watch The Blood-Spattered Bride: It’s based on a classic horror tale.
Why not to watch: Everyone acts like an idiot.