Movie Details
| Title: | The Blood Spattered Bride | |
| Director: | Vicente Aranda | |
| Year: | 1972 | |
| Genre: | Lesbian Vampire | |
| Times Seen: | 1 | |
| Last Seen: | 04.29.06 |
Other Movies Seen By This Director (0)
| Date Viewed | Venue | Note |
| 04.29.06 | Alamo Downtown | This Screening is part of event: Best of QT Fest Saturday night during a QTfest means an all night marathon! Actually (as Quentin related to us something Linklater said: "yeah I remember when these things started we'd get out at five, six AM. Now they're not so much all nighters as all nighters and half of next day-ers... Like we get out and go grab some lunch."), in doing the math with the running times and the average breaks in between movies it was already pretty apparent that we wouldn't be getting out of the Drafthouse until well into Sunday morning. Fine by us! The night started with an assistant to the city mayor presenting Quentin with an official proclamation that today, April 29, 2006, was Quentin Tarantino Festival Day. The verbage written on the official parchment was pretty funny, with such terms as "lederhosen films" and "kung-fu epics" appearing under official City of Austin letterhead. QT took stage and informed us that it was also Uma Thurman's birthday today! Yay for Uma and Yay for Quentin and Yay for us because we now get to see six movies in a row! Quentin first started out by asking us who would be here at the end of this thing. I remember for QT6 a much larger response (and, ironically enough, a much smaller audience at the end of the night than what we had tonight). Quentin then laid out the rules for marathon viewing. He said that as the night goes on and you get a little looser, a little more delirious, you may find yourself becoming a bit more vocal. And that's ok, he said, as long as it's in the right direction. With that, he turned around and motioned that it was ok to be talking TOWARD the film, then turned around again and motioned the other way, saying it wasn't ok to go in this direction. This is the movie's job, let it go this way and you go that way. Then he ended the bit by slapping his ass and it was funny. Also, he said, if you're hear to see one or two movies then go home that's fine... no harm in that you won't be ridiculed or anything like that... you just can't say you went to the marathon. You went out tonight and saw a few movies, you didn't go to the marathon. And some people are big nazis about sleeping in these things... Quentin is not. He thinks sleeping is perfectly OK because you know if you fall asleep during one of these, you will wake up at some point with some completely context-free gross obscenity going on and in that moment between sleep and conscioussness when you're not even sure of where you are, the movie will create a memory that will live with you forever. Quentin introduced Blood Spattered Bride as a stick of dynamite tied to your crotch with a fuse so long that you forget it's burning. "You stop hearing the fizzle, you get comfortable, then BAM! your balls are blown off!" He likes this movie so much that he named a chapter of Kill Bill after it. He said it's his favorite lesbian vampire movie and when the chuckles started he had to educate: "No, this isn't one of these QTfest-only subgenres, it's an actual taught-in-schools established subgenre (lars nods in silent approval). Jean Rollin had a whole career with these movies, although this isn't directed by him but still." He then talked about when it played in QT2 and how he really made a mistake with it by making it the last film of the second marathon of the fest... people just weren't up for it, so this time around he's pulling it back in to give it the proper screening... right at the beginning of the night to set the pace. He also dedicated the screening to Unruly Julie (Quentin's longtime assistant and basically the person responsible for putting this whole thing on) and Rie Rasmussen (a very tall, very skinny hot model type that's also a director and is starring in Luc Besson's next movie... she's been in the audience for the past few nights). And with that, the movie started. So, I guess the story is this young girl is married to this dude and she finds out that his sexual appetites really border on rape. She goes along for a bit but at the same time there's some sort of thing about either a family ancestor or a haunted painting or maybe both. For whatever reason, this lesbian vampire makes night visits to the wife urging her to kill her husband and les out with her for eternity. She has her repeat mantras like "He pissed on my flesh to humiliate me, he spat inside my body to enslave me." and gives her a suitably wicked blade that leads to a sequence where she stabs her hubby to death and detaches his manhood. Of course this has to be a fantasy because it's against the rules to have a scene that awesome so early in a movie like this... so you have to wait another hour to see the same scene happen again. Although I can't say I didn't like the lesbian vampire stuff, I have to admit that the husband was my favorite character in the movie. He's such a pervert... so fixated with breasts and sex that it's really funny. He find a hand sticking out of the sand on a beach and a small tube nearby. He digs a bit to uncover a girl's face wearing a diving mask and snorkel. So i guess just to make sure, he digs a little more and perfectly exposes her breats but nothing else. very close to the oddly specific fantasies i had when i was like 13. At the end of the film, after he finally accepts that his wife's been turned into both a lesbian and a vampire, he cuts directly into a breast. Sure the papers say "heart cut out of two women" but they have to say that, don't they? They can't say "breasts cut off, heart also maybe removed." There's also a scene where the vampire is silently seducing the wife and the hubby has the most brilliantly inane babble going on in the background, talking to himself about how he has no vocation and he's quite happy. His time is perfectly occupied. he goes on like that for about three minutes until the scene ends. There are plenty of moments in Blood Spattered Bride to like, like the doctor character spying on some lesbo vampire getting-it-on and the smash cut to him asking the hubby "how well do you know your wife?" These moments are spread out through a pretty long and slow movie though... You really need to have patience with it or spend some time concocting your own lesbian vampire stories in your head in between the good parts on screen. I wouldn't say it's the perfect movie to lead off a marathon with but I will say I'm damn glad it didn't play last. |
