Blood Spattered Bride

[FearlessFreep]

Recently, I watched 1972's Spanish horror  film Blood Spattered Bride

Although the title and box art would lead you to suspect this was a slasher film, it's not.  It's a little bit more of a classic-style horror movie relying on suspense and subtle events

The basic story is that  a newly-wed couple return to his family home.  The young wife is starting to have nightmares about being attacked and about killing her husband.  Her husband starts acting a little odd and she starts to fear him.  In her dreams, she sees a woman, who it turns out is a long-distant bride who killed her husband on their wedding night.  Nightmare and reality start to merge as the husband finds the woman on the beach and welcomes her into their home.  The woman starts to seduce the young bride and turn against her husband to eventually try to kill him.  

What I liked:  The film has a good atmosphere.  It was creepy in a slow and steady way,  The music contributed well to this.  Also, the movie didn't pull any punches in that  the final scene involves shooting a young girl.

What I didn't like:  The story is inconsistant. and seems to have scenes for the sake of setting up tension that really don't hold together.  Why does the young bride have a vision of being raped in a hotel before reaching the castle? Why did the man find the woman buried on the beach?  Why are none of the pictures of the family women on display but rather hidden in the cellar?  Why does the man start acting so strange.  These events seem to be designed to set up a mood or tension but they need to be explained in terms of later events and they are really not..  Some almost seem to be a bit of a misdirection, but if you are going to use misdirection to make the viewer think you're going in a direction you are not, then you have to be able to look back and see how the misdirection really fit in the final direction.  Also the movie tends to drift a bit.  It starts out seeming like a 'crazy ghost from the past back for revenge' or maybe even 'haunted ancestoral home' or 'young bride marries psycho'  and ends up being about  a feminist vampire..  All told, the story very much feels like it was written linearly from scene to scene and the writer didn't know where it was going.  In the end, you have several stories that start and stop and change focus



Post Edited (01-18-04 18:06)

[Scott]

Spanish Horror is always high on my list of films to see. This one sounds interesting. I'll try to check it out someday.

[The Burgomaster]

I bought the DVD a couple of years ago.  It would make a good double feature with DAUGHTERS OF DARKNESS.