The Blood Spattered Bride (1972)

I’ve been hooked on The Blood Spattered Bride for quite some time now, one of those films that always seems to call me back. Every now and then a feeling of Déjà vu will leave me longing to return to that old family mansion that radiates with ancestral significance and a haunting history of mariticide. The men of this house seem to die young. Nearly every generation for two-hundred years, the wives seem ambivalently intent on murdering their husbands shortly after their weddings, a curse that began when Mircalla Karnstein joined the family and was entombed with the dagger she murdered her husband with on their wedding night. This curse led to a type of stigma towards the women of the family, with the result that all the family portraits of the women be buried away in the cellar like some kind of shameful family secret.

Still in their wedding clothes, the current master (Simón Andreu) and his new young bride, Susan (Maribel Martín of A Bell from Hell), will be arriving to the aforementioned cursed house to spend their honeymoon, deep in the forested countryside. He hasn’t been to this place for years, but the servants are still employed, and everything is made up for a pleasant stay for the newlyweds. Shortly after the consummation, and the loss of Susan’s virginity, a ghostly bride begins to visit Susan in her nightmares, offering her an undulated dagger, imploring her to use it on her husband for defiling her.

Spain’s take on Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu’s classic novella, Carmilla, is a damn fine Eurocult horror with some beautifully evil ambiance (no surprise there) and rather twisted sexuality (no surprise either). It’s very well made and doesn’t feel cheap enough to call exploitation, even if it is, and it actually succeeds at being pretty creepy. I’m hesitant to call this "erotically charged" horror, since I feel that something erotic should be capable of sexual arousal, but the sexual situations are twisted and awry, to say the least. The rape scene, awkwardly placed at the beginning, gives it a bad initial taste; the relationship between Susan and her chauvinist husband is not romantic, and the meetings between Susan and Carmilla feel more tragic than kinky since Susan is seduced and dominated and more or less a poor victim of the female vamp. It’s obvious this one is trying to disturb and unease rather than supply cheap sexual thrills.

Venomous Vixens: Kali Hansa

Kali Hansa, born Marisol Hernández, sort of put a spell on me with her role as Tunika in Amando de Ossorio’s THE NIGHT OF THE SORCERERS. I would have dreams that were kind of like my own imagined sequel to the film, where, in a sickly state, I would travel to the African forest where this film took place. Knowing my time was running short, due to some sort of terminal illness, I would travel up a mountain and to a place where I knew I would find Tunika, in her vampire form. Longing to end my suffering, I would find her in a shallow moonlit river where she would welcome me, and through an act of vampiric intercourse, she would make me like her, curing me, making me immortal, and also inflicting her curse upon me. 

Thus is the effect her presence in THE NIGHT OF THE SORCERERS had on me. With her constantly lingering in my mind, I eventually viewed several more films that she was in, sometimes credited as Gaby Herman or Kali Hansen. I was slightly saddened to find out that she was usually just a supporting/minor character and had an acting career that didn’t really take off, and it seemed to have ended circa 1976 after shooting a hardcore porno for Jess Franco, WHITE SKIN BLACK THIGHS and an erotic comedy, GIRLS IN THE NIGHT TRAFFIC. Despite usually having small roles and frequently being killed off, she visually stood out the most amongst other characters and gave off an ‘Oh-wow, who’s-that?’ impression. She apparently vanished after filming her last movie. She is from Cuba and was the girlfriend of Alberto Dalbes.

(Rumor bin: According to Jess Franco she moved back to Cuba to use her exceptional strength to fight against Fidel Castro!!!) 

For this tribute to Kali Hansa, and possibly a new series for AT THE MANSION OF MADNESS (Venomous Vixens), I’ve organized a few thoughts and images from a selection of some of her films.