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The Blood Spattered Bride

La Novia Ensangrentada (English: The Blood Spattered Bride ) is a 1972 Spanish horror film written and directed by Vicente Aranda, based on the vampire story, "Carmilla" by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu . It stars Simón Andreu, Maribel Martín, and Alexandra Basteado. A well known trailer advertising a double feature paired with the 1974 film I Dismember Mama was filmed in the style of a news report covering the "story" of an audience member who had gone insane while watching the films. The film has reached cult status for his mix of horror, vampirism and seduction with lesbian overtones.

Plot

A beautiful young woman, still in her bridal gown, is traveling with her husband on their honeymoon and arrives at a hotel. The bride, Susan, briefly glimpses a hooded woman in a nearby car; the woman seems to be watching her. While Susan, is briefly alone in her hotel room waiting for her husband, whose name is never given, she has a short, brutal fantasy of a man leaping out of the wardrobe and raping her. When the husband arrives, Susan tells him that she does not want to stay at the hotel anymore and they leave.

The couple arrives at a house where the husband apparently grew up in. This is where the rest of the story unfolds. The wife sees the woman from the hotel in the woods on the property but she does not tell her husband. Susan notices in the house that there are paintings up of male ancestors but none of the wives. She is told by the servants' daughter that the wives' paintings are in the cellar. Susan notices that one of the paintings of the wives has the face cut out of it. Susan's husband tells her that the woman in the painting is named Mircalla Karstein one of his ancestors who two hundred years before murdered her husband on their wedding night because he supposedly made her commit unspeakable acts. Susan has violent dreams involving the mysterious woman she has been seeing. She wakes up and finds a dagger under her pillow. At his point, Susan starts to become detached from her husband. The husband calls on a doctor to figure out why she is having all of these dreams and what is wrong with her. Soon Mircalla is invading Susan's dreams, persuading her to use a mysterious dagger, which keeps reappearing no matter where it is hidden, to butcher Susan's husband as Mircalla did hers.

One day while strolling out on the beach, the husband discovers a naked woman buried in the sand, with only her snorkel proving for air. He digs her out and takes her home where she reveals herself to be Carmilla. Susan falls under Carmilla’s spell, a man-hating vampire who seduces Susan and puts the bite on her to drink her blood and possess her in a lesbian relationship. The husband finally catches on that Carmilla is really his ancestor Mircalla Karnstein and a vampire, and that his life is in danger. The repressed Susan's desires are awakened in the intense lesbian love affair and she embarks on a spree of bloody mayhem. They kill the doctor, the guardian of the property and they try to kill the husband too, but he kills them while the two women are resting in their coffins as vampires.

Cast

Simón Andreu ... The husband
Maribel Martín ... Susan
Alexandra Bastedo ... MircallaCarmilla
Rosa Maria Rodriguez ...Carol
Dean Selmier ... Doctor

DVD release

The film was first shown in the USA under the title Till Death Do Us Part in a cut version and release on DVD uncut and uncensored as The Blood Spattered Bride. The DVD was first released by Anchor Bay Entertainment on January 30, 2001. It is presented in English language, no subtitles or additional audio tracks are provided. The film was later reissued on DVD by Blue Underground as part of a two-disc set with another lesbian vampire film from the early 1970s, Daughters of Darkness.