Carmila indulges the murderous fantasies of Susan (Maribel Martín).
sealing their “pact” by biting her throat. Awaken- ing to find the actual dagger in her room, Susan begins to fight against the hatred she feels for her husband, believing that she is being supernaturally compelled to kill him. Although the mystery ap- pears to be cleared up when Carol admits to re- ceiving the dagger from “a lady in the woods” and placing it in Susan’s bedroom, the homicidal night- mares continue, becoming more and more brutal. A physician (Dean Selmier) is called in, diagnosing the problem as simply a neurosis caused by im- mature rage over the loss of virginity, a loss which “is both desirable and abhorrent.”
When his attempts to hide the dagger within the house repeatedly fail, the Husband drives to a nearby beach, where, in one of the most original character introductions in genre history, he uncov- ers a beautiful naked woman buried in the sand, with only her hand and snorkel piercing the sur- face. Claiming to remember only her name— Carmila—the stranger (Alexandra Bastedo) is invited back to the villa, where Susan immediately recognizes her as the mysterious woman from her dreams. Carmila exerts a powerful influence over Susan, rendering her even more hostile and dis- tant toward her husband, and leading her outside the villa for long periods during the night. After Susan begins wearing her rings in the inverted style favored by both Carmila and Mircala Karstein, sports bite marks on her neck, and actually at- tacks her husband with the hidden dagger, her
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spouse begins to believe that Carmila is in fact Mircala Karstein, who has returned from the dead to goad Susan into murdering him. When he then discovers that their nightly wanderings involve sex and bloodletting, he angrily enlists his male allies in an attempt to reclaim his wife. After both the Doctor’s and Carol’s father’s efforts to capture Carmila lead only to their violent deaths, the Hus- band soon discovers her and Susan in the family crypt, peacefully sleeping nude in a coffin. He riddles the coffin with bullets, and then executes Carol, who is revealed to be Mircala’s agent. The film then ends abruptly with a newspaper headline revealing that he later cut out the women’s hearts. THE BLOOD SPATTERED BRIDE has long been met with confusion and frustration not only by those who expect a faithful adaptation of CARMILLA, but also by those hoping for the grind- house gore-fest promised by its title. This confu- sion has persisted largely because the film is never discussed for what it is: a darker remake of Vadim’s BLOOD AND ROSES (as evidenced by the shared bride and rose motifs completely absent from the source material, not to mention actor Simón Andreu’s strong resemblance to Vadim himself) that serves as a stunning criticism of its predecessor. Aranda’s subversive agenda is made clear with the numerous references to the earlier film that are here altered to suit the film’s darker tone. While both films feature a vampiric blood-stained bride returning from the dead, the Mircalla of Vadim’s
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