Into her lying down head / His enemies entered bed
La Novia ensangrentada (Blood Spattered Bride) - dir. Vicente Aranda (1972)
70's Spanish horror movie industry seems dwarfed in comparison to the vast amount of Italian exploitation churned out at the time. Spanish directors, however, were able to produce films of unparallelled strangeness with considerable consistency. As for the reasons, one needs only to consider the cynical outlook and disillusionment in movies like Eloy De La Iglesias' Murder in a Blue World or Claudio Guerin Hill's A Bell from Hell to see that the oppressive Franco regime (General, not Jess) must have had it's role in shaping these and many other early 70's works. Furthermore, after the Spanish censorship loosened in the early eighties, a short but glorious period of trashy, imaginative and sleazy cinema would follow: José Larraz' Black Candles and Juan Piquer Simon's Pieces provide just a couple of fine examples.
Spanish films also tend to have a unique, exaggerated visual flare echoing, but not exactly aping, the stylizations of the Bava school. In many cases this alone can save an otherwise flawed product such as the Paul Naschy/Leon Klimovsky vehicle The Werewolf Versus Vampire Women. Already the fourth and probably the most applauded feature of the Waldemar Daninsky werewolf series, the film attempts a surreal atmosphere by slow motion shots of bouncing, greenish vampire chicks, with results decidedly more hilarious than ethereal. Of course there's nothing wrong with that, as long as you're in the mood for a bit of silly amusement.
Aranda's treatment of Sheridan Le Fanu's Carmilla has also been accused of being too slow and repetitive for it's own good, but here I'll have to disagree vehemently. The bizarre love triangle is set to a swirling, downward spiral atmosphere of recurring nightmares slowly taking over reality. The director paints the picture as bleak as his colleagues mentioned above, but his criticism deals neither with church, state nor society as a whole. Instead, in La Novia ensangrentada we're treated to a merciless analysis of the power struggles in a relationship, with strong emphasis on the masculine and feminine roles and stereotypes. While many Spanish films past and present comment on machismo, typically directors opt for a more comic approach. Aranda, on the other hand, quite literally skewers out the heart of power-obsessed, control freak male chauvinism, leaving the viewer with little hope or comfort at the results of this dissection.
Whenever a low budget horror film has serious overtones, the results tend to relate to what I call the Rollin dilemma: the more obvious the film's aht-ful intentions, the more conspicuous are the seemingly unavoidable goofs. Only a couple of minutes into La Novia ensangrentada there's an exemplary piece of editing magic: First, a scene ending in a close-up of a girl's pubes... Cue to a gardener, trimming the hedges. This could be just a bit of lowbrow comedy thrown in, but since the preceeding scene depicts a rape fantasy, it would be a case of highly suspect sort of humour in a remarkably comedy-free environment. It's not the only instance of unintentional hilarity either; still somehow the heavily Freudian imagery manages to maintain it's intensity throughout.
For reasons not quite clear to me, many lesbian vampire flicks of the time seem curiously stingy on the blood department. As the title might suggest, Blood Spattered Bride takes care of this issue. The climactic scenes show the vampire girls splashing about in crimson liquid with such an unrestrained fervour that this alone makes the film a compelling watch. But instead of just providing cheap thrills, I'd say the considerable amount of blood on screen is almost indispensable for both the story and the poetic qualities of La Novia ensangrentada. All the elements of a conventional sexy vampire romp are included, right down to Le Fanu's often filmed story, but what we see here is a decidedly more pungent and - dare I say - feminist approach to the sex vampire theme. Someone in need of further proof might want to seek out Aranda's later films, for example La Mirada del otro (The Naked Eye) - while not a thoroughly successful work, it does testify to the insistent nature of his nihilist and singular outlook on sexual relationships.
70's Spanish horror movie industry seems dwarfed in comparison to the vast amount of Italian exploitation churned out at the time. Spanish directors, however, were able to produce films of unparallelled strangeness with considerable consistency. As for the reasons, one needs only to consider the cynical outlook and disillusionment in movies like Eloy De La Iglesias' Murder in a Blue World or Claudio Guerin Hill's A Bell from Hell to see that the oppressive Franco regime (General, not Jess) must have had it's role in shaping these and many other early 70's works. Furthermore, after the Spanish censorship loosened in the early eighties, a short but glorious period of trashy, imaginative and sleazy cinema would follow: José Larraz' Black Candles and Juan Piquer Simon's Pieces provide just a couple of fine examples.
Spanish films also tend to have a unique, exaggerated visual flare echoing, but not exactly aping, the stylizations of the Bava school. In many cases this alone can save an otherwise flawed product such as the Paul Naschy/Leon Klimovsky vehicle The Werewolf Versus Vampire Women. Already the fourth and probably the most applauded feature of the Waldemar Daninsky werewolf series, the film attempts a surreal atmosphere by slow motion shots of bouncing, greenish vampire chicks, with results decidedly more hilarious than ethereal. Of course there's nothing wrong with that, as long as you're in the mood for a bit of silly amusement.
Aranda's treatment of Sheridan Le Fanu's Carmilla has also been accused of being too slow and repetitive for it's own good, but here I'll have to disagree vehemently. The bizarre love triangle is set to a swirling, downward spiral atmosphere of recurring nightmares slowly taking over reality. The director paints the picture as bleak as his colleagues mentioned above, but his criticism deals neither with church, state nor society as a whole. Instead, in La Novia ensangrentada we're treated to a merciless analysis of the power struggles in a relationship, with strong emphasis on the masculine and feminine roles and stereotypes. While many Spanish films past and present comment on machismo, typically directors opt for a more comic approach. Aranda, on the other hand, quite literally skewers out the heart of power-obsessed, control freak male chauvinism, leaving the viewer with little hope or comfort at the results of this dissection.
Whenever a low budget horror film has serious overtones, the results tend to relate to what I call the Rollin dilemma: the more obvious the film's aht-ful intentions, the more conspicuous are the seemingly unavoidable goofs. Only a couple of minutes into La Novia ensangrentada there's an exemplary piece of editing magic: First, a scene ending in a close-up of a girl's pubes... Cue to a gardener, trimming the hedges. This could be just a bit of lowbrow comedy thrown in, but since the preceeding scene depicts a rape fantasy, it would be a case of highly suspect sort of humour in a remarkably comedy-free environment. It's not the only instance of unintentional hilarity either; still somehow the heavily Freudian imagery manages to maintain it's intensity throughout.
For reasons not quite clear to me, many lesbian vampire flicks of the time seem curiously stingy on the blood department. As the title might suggest, Blood Spattered Bride takes care of this issue. The climactic scenes show the vampire girls splashing about in crimson liquid with such an unrestrained fervour that this alone makes the film a compelling watch. But instead of just providing cheap thrills, I'd say the considerable amount of blood on screen is almost indispensable for both the story and the poetic qualities of La Novia ensangrentada. All the elements of a conventional sexy vampire romp are included, right down to Le Fanu's often filmed story, but what we see here is a decidedly more pungent and - dare I say - feminist approach to the sex vampire theme. Someone in need of further proof might want to seek out Aranda's later films, for example La Mirada del otro (The Naked Eye) - while not a thoroughly successful work, it does testify to the insistent nature of his nihilist and singular outlook on sexual relationships.