The Curator of Schlock #330 by Jeff Shuster

The Blood Spattered Bride

More lesbian vampires. Why not? 

Jervis invited me to a special dinner last night. The guest of honor was the descendant of Wallace Jameson Volkasin III whose name is Wallace Jameson Volkasin VIII. It’s so funny. He looks exactly like the guy in the portrait. Anyway, Jervis says he’s the new Master of the House. Not to worry, Wallace has big plans for me, but he wouldn’t tell what those are. Then Jervis served us some extra salty tomato bisque as the first course. I love tomato bisque.

Tonight’s movie is 1972’s The Blood Spattered Bride from director Vicente Aranda. From the looks of it, the movie appears to be an adaptation of the classic horror novel Carmilla by Joseph Thomas Sheridan Le Fanu. It stars Simón Andreu as the husband and Maribel Martín as his wife, Susan. For the remainder of the review, we will refer to Simón Andreu’s character as Susan’s husband. Any of you remember Simón Andreu? He played the creeper in The Forbidden Photos of a Lady Above Suspicion. Remember that one? Good times!

The movie begins with Susan’s husband driving them to a hotel. Susan is still in her wedding dress and plans to get changed, but as she enters the hotel, she notices a mysterious blonde woman (Alexandra Bastedo) starring at her from afar. Yeah, it’s probably a lesbian vampire out to seduce her away from her creepy husband. Susan imagines a rapist jumping out at her from the hotel room closet and decides she doesn’t want to stay at that hotel. So the newlywed couple go straight to the husband’s ancestral home where she catches a glimpse of a strange woman in a white veil that we all know is the same mysterious blonde woman from earlier.

Susan wonders why there are only portraits of the men of her husband’s family hanging up for all to see. Her husband says all of the portraits of the women of the family are tucked away in the basement. Susan investigates the basement and finds one curious portrait in particular. The face is cut out of a portrait of a regal woman with several rings on her fingers, but stones on each ring are turned on the inside of her hand. Very curious. Turns out her name was Mircalla Karnstein, an old ancestor of her husband’s.

Later on, Susan has vivid dreams of murdering her husband with a crooked dagger while under the influence of the mysterious woman we’ve seen. Speaking of said mysterious woman, Susan’s husband finds her buried underneath the sand at the beach. She’s naked except for a snorkel she was breathing through the sand with. Naturally, he brings her home to be their dinner guest for the evening. She says her name is Carmilla and she wears the rings on her fingers in the same manner as the faceless woman in the portrait.

It’s not long before Carmilla is seducing Susan and dragging her off in the middle of the night to drink her blood and pollute her mind with more suggestions of murdering her husband in a violent manner. This is why you can’t invite vampires over for dinner. Soon they’ll be seducing your wife and plotting to murder you.

The Blood Spattered Bride was released as a double feature with I Dismember Mama. I need to hunt that one down.

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Jeff Shuster (episode 47, episode 102, episode 124, episode 131, episode 284, episode 441, episode 442, and episode 443) is an MFA graduate from the University of Central Florida.