Smuggling meaning… The Blood Spattered Bride (1972)

This film is deceptive and has clearly confounded a number of reviewers on horror sites and IMDB as it was intended to do to the Spanish censors at the time of release. To understand director and writer Vincente Aranda’s motives and meaning you need to consider the situation in Spain at the time, thirty-odd years after the fascists won the civil war and still some years away from the liberation that came following the death of Franco in 1975 and the restoration of democracy with the new Spanish Constitution of 1978. Liberalisation followed as did a new era of creative expression, La Movida Madrileña led by the likes of Pedro Almodóvar whose debut, Pepi, Luci, Bom (1980) reflects the spirit of the Madrid punk aesthetic of the time.

But in the early seventies, films were heavily censored and so artists like Aranda had to be careful in their critique of a society that was heavily regulated and which favoured “traditional” values and militaristic hypermasculinity. One reviewer, who I won’t quote directly, discusses this film’s feminism in terms of modern US/UK views on the “patriarchy” and “wokeness”… which is deeply a-historical and shows the dangers of the assumption that our entitled rights are guaranteed no matter what “nonsense” the youngsters favour. Make no mistake, women were second class citizens in Franco’s Spain and were expected to provide loyal family support, be mothers and barred from not only becoming judges but even testifying in trial.

Alexandra Bastedo

This film which seemingly fits into the lesbian vampire sub-genre, was made in a country in which homosexuality was illegal until 1979 with the fascists having established special prisons called "galerías de invertidos" ("galleries of deviants") for both sexes. In this film and in his earlier superb, deeply encoded masterpiece, The Exquisite Cadaver aka Las crueles (1969), Aranda covers same-sex relationships with levels of artifice which add enough element of doubt to avoid censorship. In both cases the English language versions of the films are more specific in meaning than the Spanish at least as far as I can tell from the subtitles!

Both films directly address the position of women in society and far from being an attack on the patriarchy that the modern right does not accept even exists, is a plea for basic rights and equalities that were absolutely denied.

OK, but what about the “blood spattered” bit? I hear you ask… well, there is a fair amount of blood and it is spattered throughout this film. Let me take you through it. The story if loosely based on the vampire novella Carmilla (1872) by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu that was also the inspiration for many films not least The Vampire Lovers (1970), Lust for a Vampire (1971) and Twins of Evil (1971) – the last two featuring Judy Matheson who worked with Aranda on Las crueles in which she is superb! Here, as with that film, Aranda is happy to centre the women in the narrative in ways that were atypical even in more liberal filmmaking environments.

Maribel Martín

The film begins with a young bride, Susan (Maribel Martín), still in her bridal gown, heads off on honeymoon with her, unnamed husband (Simón Andreu) simply “He” in the script to denote his everyman status or that patriarchy? Susan sees a beautiful woman (it’s the sublime Alexandra Bastedo!) wearing bright pink and watching from the shadows and shortly after has a nightmare about being sexually assaulted by a masked man in her hotel room. She tells her husband that she cannot remain at the hotel and so he takes her to his family pile in the country.

Once there Susan remarks how none of the family portraits are of women and her husband tells her, with no other explanation that they are downstairs in the basement. Once there they find a portrait of Carmilla who had apparently killed her husband on their wedding night… her face has been cut out of the painting. Susan’s wedding night passes with her husband rather energetically ripping her clothes from her body… how much events are seen from her heightened imaginative view we are unsure but that’s the director’s choice.

Susan has a vivid dream in which the woman in pink arrives to give her a long knife with an ornate handle, the woman encourages her to use it to kill her husband and then stands over his dead body to remove his manhood… there’s copious amounts of dream blood spattered everywhere. Susan awakes to find him awake and alive but the dagger is very much real and underneath her pillow.

Maribel Martín and Simón Andreu

Carol (Rosa Maria Rodriguez) the young daughter of the couple who look after the house is accused of hiding the knife and confesses even though the parents suspect she is hiding something. But there’s something about the knife and, again in a dream, the lady in pink arrives having collected the knife from Susan’s husband’s hiding place and the dream slaughter ensues. The following day Susan knows exactly where the knife is… Her husband begins to suspect that there is more to these dreams but the family doctor (Dean Selmier) reassures him that, essentially, his wife is tired and emotional and needs to rest. They both agree that Susan is "like a child" and clearly she has no part in decision-making about her own health.

Determined to really hide the dagger, the husband drives to the beach to bury it only to find a woman’s hand sticking out of the sand. He looks closer and sees the tube of a snorkel and then wipes away sand to reveal the still breathing face of a blonde woman. It’s an extraordinary moment – surrealist and unexpected – and the naked woman rises to reveal herself as Susan’s lady in pink, Mircala as she calls herself after accepting a lift back to the man’s house. Susan had been drawing this woman from memory and now, sketching Mircala she realises that they are one and the same.

Alexandra "Sandy" Bastedo uncovered on the beach

That night she leaves the marital bed to join Mircala in the woods only to return at dawn with the other woman apparently gone but with what looks like a bite mark on Susan’s neck. The young woman is not herself though and after Carol’s father (Ángel Lombarte) reveals that he had seen the two women engaging in some ritual in the woods, the Doctor follows the next night to see the same in the ruins of a church on a hill within the grounds of the estate. Next Mircala is teaching Carol’s class about the nature of human blood, and clearly is influencing the youngster as well as Susan.

From this point you’re on your own in terms of interpretation as the story heads towards a splattering conclusion that breaks down as women versus men. On the face of it the vampires must be stopped but is this what we’re really seeing as the weapons and the hunting devices are brought to bear in an attempt to keep the women in their place? Also… Mircala, hang on, is that an anagram!?

Some excellent framing from Aranda - amazingly, this was a four-week shoot!

Dusty Verdict: I watched the Mondo Macabra Blu-ray of The Blood Spattered Bride which includes a 4k transfer from a 35mm negative (hurrah!!) as well as outtakes, an alternate ending, a commentary from writers Samm Deighan and Kat Ellinger along with interviews, including one with Simón Andreu. Andreu has made many hundreds of films on TV and film and would rate this film as one of the dozen or so he is glad to have been involved in. He didn’t always see eye-to-eye with Aranda, who wanted more gore, more sex and explicitness, but perhaps he didn’t see the director’s hidden agenda? If the film translated well to the English-speaking market it would give him more revenue and also a bigger voice internationally at a time when the battle against Francosim was reaching a key stage.

Aranda’s direction makes the most of what has become an all-too-common storyline but which he uses to create mysteries and a haunting quality much as he did with Las Crueles. The actors all do well, despite Andreu’s comments, the director clearly was good with his players, and Martin, Bastedo and young Rodriguez are all very good as is he!

Highly recommended along with a study of Spanish history when the right wing really got a chance to govern as they wished. The Mondo Macabra Blu-ray is excellent and I only wish they or somebody would perform the same service with Las Crueles!!

PS Director Quentin Tarantino named a section in Kill Bill: Volume 1 (2003) after The Blood Spattered Bride. He knows…

 

 

 

Triumph TR4 sports car, oh my yes!!

 

 

 

Body of evidence... The Exquisite Cadaver (1969)

The seemingly clumsy title for this Spanish mystery is drawn from the practice of assembling a collection of words or images from a number of people none of whom has the complete picture or knows what the other has done. Invented by the surrealist movement, leading light André Breton reported that the exquisite cadaver started in fun, but became eventually enriching: presumably by being either a mess or revelatory.

On balance I would have to say this unusual film succeeds very well in the latter even though it does have the disjointed approach defined by the rules of the game: both narratively and literally as parts of a corpse are detached and sent to provide clues to one of four main characters, all acting independently.

Vincente Aranda directs with discipline and establishes the mystery well before resolving most of his entanglements in a pacier closing half hour. It’s kind of a love story, part-giallo and horror but all based on the existential crisis triggered by one man’s indifference to his lover’s passionate frailties and her lover’s determination to right her wronging.

Capucine

The few reviews there are online on IMBD et al are rather faint in their praises but I’d say this was one smart and engaging story and Aranda sets out the pieces of the puzzle carefully for them all to make sense later one, whether it’s the tranquilisers the young woman Esther (an excellent early performance from Judy Matheson, later Judy Jarvis) is playing with when she meets her man (Carlos Estrada) or even his throwing away of his children’s tortoise: he’s no time for sentiment and is as driven in his private life as he is in business.

There are two more sides to this bizarre love quadrangle and they are the man’s wife, Spanish actress Teresa Gimpera and Esther’s next lover, Lucia Fonte (the beyond glamorous Capucine). It is quite a line up and the four interact in unexpected ways throughout… there’s just a touch of Luis Buñuel about Aranda’s style: we think we know what’s happening, but nothing is necessarily as it seems and even at the end there are possibilities to consider.

The exquisite Judy Jarvis née Matheson

In the same way as the best horror films use mood and tonal signals to create audience anxiety so too does this film steer away from specific explanations until the very end. It creates a note of unresolved uncertainty that keeps you engaged throughout.

The set up is pure Giallo with a boorish publisher of horror fiction being interrupted by the delivery of a box containing a severed hand. We’ve already seen a young woman head down to place her head on an isolated railway track and assume that this belongs to her body.

The man buries the hand after initially thinking it was fake sent by one of his writers… his reaction makes us think the same. Another parcel arrives at home following a message read by his wife asking if he wants a forearm next time.

Carlos Estrada and Capucine

Too panicked to open the parcel he walks into town and leaves it on a bench hoping someone will steal it, but it ends up back at the house where his wife opens it to find a dress and a photograph of a woman, Lucia Fonte not, as we expected, Esther.

The man’s explanations do not convince his wife and she starts to follow him when she notices a glamorous woman in a chauffeur-driven Citroen following him as well…

The man gets driven by Lucia – calling herself Parker – to her mansion where she has the strangest of encounters with him. She has an artificial hand, did she cut it off to scare him?  She makes him take LSD and leads him deep into the house listening to recording of Esther’s voice before revealing her perfectly-preserved body in a fridge.

She knows... Teresa Gimpera and Carlos Estrada

The man wakes up at home on his couch, was it a dream – did anything actually happen?

Lucia had called his wife to her house after, she says, he turned up looking for her… neither wife nor watcher are now sure who or what to believe. There’s a neat Antonioni-esque moment at the park when the could fail to communicate whilst young men are flying a toy plane – it buzzes around like nagging doubt before the man breaks it.

Finally, we discover the relationship Esther had with the man… a brief fling according to him and years according to Lucia. Esther was full on and wanted truth in her life even at the extent of her own death… she was broken by the man.

But what happened and who stands to gain what… the twists and turns continue right to the end.

Dusty verdict: This is such a powerfully performed film and Judy Matheson is superb as the conflicted women who flutters between life and oblivion. Judy later went on to feature in a number of Hammer horrors as well as Peter Walker’s excellent Flesh and Blood Show which has something in common with this film: she is an actor with nuanced expression and here is indeed exquisite, creating a character we instantly connect with - perhaps the truest of any in the film.

 Around her Carlos Estrada is suitably broody and reminds me of an Antonioni male, lost in the subtext of life while all the while expecting that success and dominance will enable him to have his way. This affair is clearly not the first and Teresa Gimpera’s portrayal shows she has already reached a position of little trust, batting away his excuses and feeble explanations and following him to find out the truth.

Capucine is high intensity and as ever has intelligence and protean depths that convince you that her character is capable of anything. The film’s final twist is not something those other reviewers seem to have picked up and even then, we can only imagine what is going to happen…

The Exquisite Cadaver deserves to be less obscure and hard to find – there are currently no official home video releases and I got my copy from a US supplier of out of copyright schlock horror flicks a genre of which this most certainly is not! Seek it out if you can, hopefully it will get restored and re-released.