1972’s The Blood Splattered Bride opens with a quote from Plato. Already I was thinking of how many lousy novels are preceded by a quote from Shakespeare, and I feel a Greek philosopher would be held in similar regard. In this case, the quote is: “The good ones are those who are content to dream what the wicked actually practice.”
I don’t know if I ever dreamed of doing almost everything Maribel Martin does in this, whether in dreams, her imagination or, eventually, in reality. She is particularly fond of stabbing to death various men with a ceremonial dagger. Fortunately, we’re spared close-ups of most of her handiwork, though there are still copious, borderline hilarious, fountains of blood. There’s also lots of gross squishy sounds on the soundtrack, which is sufficient for my imagination. Still, the carnage in this film is quite strong, such as when she unmans a corpse using a shotgun. Never mind the guy is already dead, or that we don’t see that shotgun blast as it happens, but that is just nasty.
There are a few threats to the genitals a another man in this picture, that being Simón Andreu as Martin’s husband. At one point, Alexandra Bastedo commands her to “Destroy his masculinity!” Yikes!
Bastedo might be a ghost. She has attributes indicating she is a vampire of some sort. There is a more than passing similarity between her and one of Andreu’s ancestors, Mircala Karstein. A doctor played by Dean Selmier tells Andeu she is something more lethal and nefarious than that. Dare I say the word? She is a…[gasp] lesbian!
This picture comes from one seriously warped point of view. I’m not sure I have ever seen a more misogynistic film, and not many that are more homophobic. In the end, almost every female in the movie is a man-hating harpy conspiring to destroy men. An astonishingly violent and bleak ending has them paying for that with their lives in an extreme manner.
An even more unusual aspect of the picture is the weird personality flip it does with Andeu roughly halfway through the runtime. Before the honeymoon night, he is a complete gentleman, and even a bit shy. The morning after, he starts being a bit creepy, congratulating his wife with “You’ve lived through your wedding night.” Interesting how Hallmark never put that in a greeting card.
The creepiness continues with him doing such things as sneaking up behind her in the woods, grabbing a handful of hair and actually lifting her a foot off the ground. He also wants sex a great deal. We don’t know the timeframe, but I get the feeling he demands it several times a day.
The scene I have the biggest issue with is him shotgunning a fox that is caught in a trap. Right before that, the groundskeeper (Ángel Lombarte) told him that is a female and he watches disapproving as the gun is raised. That a fox is really killed on-screen crosses a line for which I will never forgive this film.
Apparently, the men of the family have had a poor regard for the fairer sex going back at least a century. In the main gallery, there are portraits of all the men in generations of the family, while those of the women are scattered around the cellar. That of Micala’s has the additional indignity of the face being cut out.
The big change in his personality happens abruptly once Martin starts having disturbing nightmares. Suddenly, he expresses nothing but concern and we see no further signs of his earlier behavior.
Those nightmares are something. While they are happening, we are as uncertain as Martin as to whether what we are seeing is real or not. At first, she’s flailing away with a ceremonial dagger at men who later prove to be alive. Later, it will turn out she is not just sleepstabbing, a new word I demand be added to the vernacular of psychiatry.
One of those dreams provides a visually startling moment. Bastedo appears at Martin’s bedside in a strobing series of white flashes that get faster over time. I’ve never had a seizure before, but I still felt compelled to look away for a few seconds.
Another memorable visual is Andeu seeing what is obviously a mannequin hand poking out of the sand on the beach. I thought he would dig out the rest and it would come to life and become Kim Cattrall. But this isn’t Mannequin, and I’m not still not sure why the artificial hand was there. I forgot about it as soon as he spies a snorkel also protruding upwards. Scraping away some sand, he discovers Bastedo has been buried and breathing through that. He doesn’t have as many questions concerning what she’s been doing as I would have. I also like to think I could restrain myself from doing what he does, which is to immediately excavate her bare breasts.
We see a lot of flesh in this movie, particularly of Martin’s body double. The director clearly is a big fan of full-frontal nudity and we see more bush here than I think of any film I have seen set in the Australian outback. Although I won’t deny being an admirer of the female form, the leering camera in this film takes on a different tone at the conclusion, when the women meet a bloody end.
The Blood Splattered Bride is a deeply unpleasant movie. There are some moments of interest in it, and I wish they had been in a different, better picture. I think one can regard it as a critique of Spanish machismo, but I’m not buying into that interpretation. I suspect the intense fear, and seething hatred, of women on display are what the filmmaker actually felt.
Dir: Vicente Aranda
Starring Simón Andreu, Maribel Martín, Alexandra Bastedo
Watched on Mondo Macabro blu-ray