Home | Movies By Year | Movies from 1960
Blood and Roses
Buy Blood and Roses now from AmazonFirst, read the Wikipedia article. Then, scroll down to see what other TopShelfReviews readers thought about the movie. And once you've experienced the movie, tell everyone what you thought about it.
Wikipedia article
'Blood and Roses' is a 1960 erotic horror film directed by Roger Vadim. It is based on the novella 'Carmilla' (1872) by Irish writer Sheridan Le Fanu, shifting the book's setting in 19th-century Styria to the film's 20th-century Italy.
Plot
Set in the modern day at a European estate, Carmilla is torn emotionally by the engagement of her friend Georgia to her cousin Leopoldo. It is hard to tell for whom she has the strongest unrequited emotions. During the masquerade ball celebrating the upcoming marriage, a fireworks display accidentally explodes some munitions lost at the site in World War II, disturbing an ancestral catacomb. Carmilla wearing the dress of her legendary vampire ancestor wanders into the ruins, where the tomb of the ancestor opens slowly. Carmilla returns to Leopoldo's estate as the last guests depart. Over the next few days she proceeds to act as though possessed by the spirit of the vampire and a series of vampiric killings terrorize the estate.
Cast
*Mel Ferrer as Leopoldo De Karnstein
*Elsa Martinelli as Georgia Monteverdi
*Annette Vadim as Carmilla
*Ren-Jean Chauffard as Dr. Verari
*Marc Allgret as Judge Monteverdi
*Alberto Bonucci as Carlo Ruggieri
*Serge Marquand as Giuseppe
*Gabriella Farinon as Lisa
*Renato Speziali as Guido Naldi
*Edith Peters as The Cook
*Giovanni Di Benedetto as Police Marshal
*Carmilla Stroyberg as Martha
*Nathalie LeForet as Marie
Production
'Blood and Roses' was filmed at Hadrian's Villa in Italy.
Release
'Blood and Roses' was released in France on 14 September 1960. It was released in Rome in January 1961 under the title 'Il sangue e la rosa'.
Thus far the only DVD of Blood and Roses is a German one with German language and French with English subtitles options.
Reception
In a contemporary review 'Monthly Film Bulletin' noted that "despite the elegance and beauty of the backgrounds in and about Hadrian's Villa" and "Claude Renoir's Tehnicolor-Technicrama photography, this expensive attempt at an art horror film is nothing short of a travesty-both of the genre and LeFanu's marvellous short story." The review noted that the film was "awkward and pedantic" and that the "vampire story is ruined by leaden dialogue, stridently dubbed, and by the sometimes bathetic acting" and that the "film suffers badly from comparison with Dreyer's much freer adaptation of the story, 'Vampyr'."
See also
* List of French films of 1960
* List of horror films of 1960
* Lesbian vampire
*Vampire film
References
Buy Blood and Roses now from Amazon
<-- Return to movies from 1960