The director of the film, Jorge Grau, is less known than other Spanish "fear maker" of his generation like Jesus Franco or Paul Nashy. But with only three films (this one and the excellent Pena de Muerte and No Profanar el Sueño de los Muertos) he proves an incredible ability to create disturbing and compelling horror films. Ceremonia Sangrienta is for my not only their masterpiece, is also the best try to do horror cinema in Spain as good as in other countries with longer tradition like United States, United Kindom or Italy. The story is fascinating. It propose a new point of view of the classic myth of the vampire, more realist than used to be in the moment that was made the film, and really visionary. Later horror masters like George A. Romero with Martin, Abel Ferrarra with The Addiction or John Carpenter with Vampires made similar treatments of the myth but we can't forget that Jorge Grau was the first. Visually the film is equally splendid. The photography of Fernando Arribas, present in a lot of Spanish horror films like La Cruz del Diablo, Horror Express or the recent Memorias del Ángel Caído, is simply extraordinary giving the film the appropriate colour and light. The cast is perfect, specially the sensual actress Lucia Bosé, but is the work of Jorge Grau behind the camera that makes this film so interesting. The tempo have not ups and downs and progress with the force of a train in the night, the mise in scene is classical and styish at same time, and I have not any doubt that Grau had known how to capture the essence of the vampirism in images.