31 Days of Horror: The Blood Spattered Bride (1972)

the blood spattered bride poster

The story Carmilla by Sheridan Le Fanu is one of the earliest known works of vampire fiction. It is also the origin of just about every lesbian vampire trope out there. The Blood Spattered Bride is one of many adaptations of that story to film. It is beautiful to look at, mesmerizing, and eternally slow.

It is about a woman, Susan (Maribel Martín), who has just married a man (Simón Andreu). He is unnamed in the story which suggests that he is not that important. They return to his ancestral mansion. She is a virgin on their wedding night and while she enjoys the pleasures of his company as the days and nights pass he is increasingly aggressive and demanding, which makes her grow distant.

She keeps having dreams about a strange woman. One day that woman, named Carmilla (Alexandra Bastedo) shows up. She looks just like one of her husband’s ancestors. The story goes that the ancestor slaughtered her entire household after going crazy

Carmilla seduces Susan and drinks her blood. Then she tells her to kill her husband.

It is all very dreamy. The ladies wear those flowing white gowns. The lighting is soft. It is like a renaissance painting (albeit with a bit more neck biting) come to life. It is definitely a film that is best to just allow it to flow over you. Don’t come in expecting lots of action and violence (though there is one scene that is pretty gory), and you might be pleasantly surprised.

31 Days of Horror: Near Dark (1987)

near dark

A couple of young guys are hanging out one evening on a sidewalk. They spy a pretty woman standing alone. One of the guys, Caleb (Adrian Pasdar) walks over to her. Or rather he struts. He’s full of confidence. He asks the girl her name – it’s Mae (Jenny Wright). He asks if she’s got a boyfriend. She says she needs a ride home.

In his truck, he is full of flirt. He asks her to slide over. He puts his arm around her. She asks him to stop so they can look at the night. He tries to kiss her, but she pulls away. Later they stop again. He literally lassos her and tries to kiss her again. She sees the dawn coming and says she has to get home. Now. He says he won’t take her unless she kisses him.

The beginning of Kathryn Bigelow’s Near Dark begins with a push and pull of the most interesting power dynamics. It is a situation most women will recognize, I imagine. A man offers kindness to a woman, but the wants something in return, and he gets more and more demanding if not immediately satisfied. But we know something poor old Caleb doesn’t – Mae is a vampire and she can bite him anytime she wants. She does exactly that when he tries to stop her from returning to her home before daylight.

When he turns, she introduces him to her band of fiends which includes Lance Henriksen as the defacto leader who has been around since the Civil War, Jennette Goldstein, Joshua John Miller who plays a vampire who was turned when he was just a kid and Bill Paxton whose channeling his Aliens character’s energy, but without the fear and a whole lot of nutso bravado. If you are paying attention you’ll notice that half the cast was also in James Cameron’s Aliens. He was dating Bigelow at the time and basically told her his cast would be perfect for her film and she agreed. So do I.

It is a western take on the vampire story and it is rather glorious. Shot in parts of Texas and Oklahoma, Bigelow fills the screen with this wideshots of beautiful, desolate landscapes. There are bar brawls and shoot-outs. The violence is stylish and brutal. The story – which winds up being about Caleb’s reluctance to take human life – is a bit too familiar, but I love the way it is told. And Paxton is bloody fantastic.

31 Days of Horror: The Velvet Vampire (1971)

velvet vampire

This extremely low-budget vampire flick from Stephanie Rothman isn’t exactly good, but it does have its charms. A young, hippie couple are invited to spend a few days at a mysterious woman’s isolated desert ranch. Naturally, she turns out to be a hundred-year-old vampire who has more than fun in the sun in mind for the two.

The acting is mostly terrible and the lack of a budget certainly shows, but Celeste Yarness shines as the vampire and there is enough style to keep vampire fans interested. There are a few dream sequences of the young couple making love on a bed sitting out in the lonesome desert and a magic mirror that are worth watching the film for alone.

The Friday Night Horror Movie: Thirst (2009)

thirst movie poster
My Letterboxd profile says that I watched this movie once before, but I have absolutely no memory of it. I’m about halfway through the film right now and nothing has rung a bell. I don’t know if I just logged it wrong (maybe I watched something else and thought it was this, or just accidentally logged it) or if my memory is just that faulty. But I’m glad I decided to watch it again because I love it so far.

Directed by the always fantastic Park Chan-wook, thirst is a vampire movie, and so much more. It stars Song Kang-ho as a priest who volunteers to take an experimental vaccine for a deadly disease. The trouble is he doesn’t actually have the condition so he also volunteers to get it.

It kills him and then turns him into a vampire. A Catholic priest vampire is such a cool idea that I’m surprised no one has thought of it before. His morals keep him from outright killing people so he finds creative ways to quelch his blood lust (volunteering at a hospital he sucks on the other end of an IV out of a comatose patient for starters).

He meets a woman (played by Kim Ok-vin) who is very unhappy and is also into a bit of masochism. The two form quite a pair and that’s about as far as I’ve gotten into the plot.

Chan-wood injects all of this with his usual visual flair and perverse sense of humor. My wife especially appreciated when a sick man is playing a flute and then vomits up a bucket of blood (I’m just kidding, she just happened to be walking by during that scene and cursed my name for letting her see it, then quickly ran away).

And now I must get back to watching it.

31 Days of Horror: Mark of the Vampire (1935)

mark fo the vampire

Thanks to tometheridge57 for recommending this one to me. Directed by Todd Browning, who had helmed Dracula just four years earlier Mark of the Vampire is another film where Bela Lugosi stars as a bloodsucker.

The story, frankly, isn’t that interesting. It involves a gothic castle, some folks showing up dead with bite marks on their necks and blood drained from their bodies, and a professor who has come to investigate the matter. There is a plot twist in the final act that I won’t spoil but that I found rather unappealing. But it oozes style and gothic charm. The castle sets are fantastic and the monster effects are quite wonderful.

Legosi doesn’t have that big of a role, but he’s wonderful, even if he is essentially reprising his role as Dracula. Lionel Barrymore plays the professor and I have really come to love him in just about anything he does.

So, if you’ve seen all the Dracula movies but still need a Legosi as vampire fix, this movie is for you.

The Fearless Vampire Killers (1967)

fearless vampire killers

Originally written and posted on November 25, 2006.

I’ve knocked off the “mini” in my mini movie review titles. I figure you guys can figure out it is “mini” by the length. The original description was really to designate a difference between my full-on, very well-written pieces and the smaller, quickly put-together reviews. The small reviews are designed to give a quick opinion of the films I see, whereas the longer reviews are meant to be better written and give more insight. A small distinction I know. But you guys are smart, you’ll figure out the difference.

Roman Polanski is one of those directors that I know of, but don’t really know all that well. In fact, I’ve only seen three of his films (Chinatown, The Ninth Gate, and this one) so it is difficult to compare The Fearless Vampire Killers to his other works. I’ve also heard various things about this film ranging from absolutely brilliant to rather dull.

And that’s pretty much how I’d describe it. It is beautifully and carefully shot. The mountainous landscape is gorgeous (even if half of it is painted) and the village/castle scenes are marvelous. The juxtaposition of the whiteness in the snow and baths with the dark red blood is a wonder to behold. The camera moves like a dancer.

Yet I never really found it all that funny. Perhaps it is that the film was made in 1962 and I’m too young to ever really get it. Or perhaps it is too British for this dumb American to understand. Whatever the reasons, while much of it was rather silly and a bit of a goof I never found myself really laughing at the events onscreen.

All of this tended to make it a rather beautiful bore.

The plot is your basic gothic vampire tale. A Van Helsing-like vampire hunter enters a small eastern European village with his assistant. The lovely ladies begin winding up dead with two small holes in their necks. Being a comedy the two vampire hunters aren’t very good at vampire hunting and supposed hilarity ensues.

It is a film I won’t be watching again I suspect, but one I wouldn’t mind recommending as it is beautifully shot and the humor could befall someone with different sensibilities.