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Blood and Roses

Country: France, Language: French, 87 mins

Original Title

Et mourir de plaisir
  • Director: Roger Vadim
  • Writer: Claude Brulé; Sheridan Le Fanu
  • Producer: Raymond Eger

CGiii Comment

This is a bit of a shocker...

Great cinema should be able to withstand the trials of time...this falls flat on its face.

The vampire genre is a super-saturated franchise...even the Hammer output is superior to Vadim's breathy arthouse vision of the vamps.

Brilliantly bad.


Trailer...

The(ir) Blurb...

Young Carmilla is jealous of her friend's engagement, and her obsession leads her to the tomb of a female vampire. The vampire possesses her and leads her to kill and terrorise the inhabitants of the estate. But is it all in her mind, or is she really under the control of an ancient vampire ancestor?


As historian Andrea Weiss perceptively observed, “Outside of male pornography, the lesbian vampire is the most persistent lesbian image in the history of the cinema.” Blood and Roses, a re-creation of the same Sheridan Le Fanu novella that inspired Dreyer’s Vampyr, is a high point of the genre. On the eve of her cousin’s wedding, glamorous aristocrat Carmilla tells a tale about the history of vampires in her family, all of whom were destroyed hundreds of years ago, except for one. Lured by unseen forces to an abandoned abbey, she encounters the tomb of her ancestor and becomes possessed by the bloodthirsty spirit, haunting the grounds of her estate thereafter in a flowing white gown, seeming only to crave the flesh of the women she encounters. A film that draws generously from the visual legacy of Cocteau, Blood and Roses proves to be sapphic horror story of a thoroughly stylish sort.

Cast & Characters

Mel Ferrer as Leopoldo De Karnstein;
Elsa Martinelli as Georgia Monteverdi;
Annette Vadim as Carmilla;
Alberto Bonucci as Carlo Ruggieri;
Rene-Jean Chauffard as Dr. Verari;
Gabriella Farinon as Lisa;
Serge Marquand as Giuseppe;
Edith Peters as The Cook;
Peters Catalano;
Nathalie LeForet as Marie