Mesmerizing and surreal, Blood and Roses may be the ultimate "horror-art film." Certainly, it's the quintessential "romantic vampire film."
As mythological creatures go, the vampire comprises so many conflicting aspects (Satanist, monster, victim, parasite, aristocrat, immortal), most films focus on only some of the creature's traits. Blood and Roses focuses on the romantic rather than monstrous. Romantic, in a melodramatic, steamy, Harlequin romance sort of way, yet in a way that is also sensuous and classy.
Blood and Roses is loosely adapted from J.S. Le Fanu's 1871 novella, Carmilla. In Vampire Movies, Robert Marrero describes Blood and Roses as "the only serious (faithful) attempt to adapt le Fanu's Carmilla on to the screen." Well, no. Hammer's The Vampire Lovers (1970) is faithful in ways that Blood and Roses is not, and visa versa. But then, Marrero also misidentifies a still from the film as being from its "classic nightmare sequence."
The novella features a young lesbian vampiress who seduces her contemporaries. Blood and Roses updates the story, then spans time periods. In the film, the vampiress's 18th-century spirit (Mircalla) possesses a 20th-century woman (Carmilla Von Karnstein, played by Annette Vadim), then through her body pursues the man they both love (her Von Karnstein cousin, played by Mel Ferrer). Together, Mircalla/Carmilla seduce, drain of blood, and kill Ferrer's fiancée (Georgia, played by Elsa Martinelli), hence a tepid lesbian scene.
Although tepid by today's standards, the scene was excised from the film's initial US release. Nor is there much blood in Blood and Roses. Deaths, when they occur, occur offscreen. Even so, Carmilla's (offscreen) murder of a servant girl is emotionally horrific, because we feel sympathy for both vampire and victim, all-too-rare in horror films, where the vampire is usually either monster or sympathetic hero.
Blood is used artily rather than gorily. Bright red blood soaks through a bright white dress, but as it's only a dream, the horror is mitigated. Bright red blood also provides the sole color in a surreal black and white dream sequence. (You know you're watching an art film when some of it's in color, some in black and white).
Blood and Roses is gracefully shot. Early on, as Carmilla relates her ancestor's (Mircalla) history to assembled guests, a fluid POV shot ambiguously suggests the presence of her spirit. Carmilla speculates about her ancestral vampire's thoughts and feelings as the POV glides through the room, her guests staring back into it (reminiscent of Last Year at Marienbad). The "entity" behind the POV may be the vampire's spirit, or it may be the imaginings of the storyteller and her guests.
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