The Brides Wore Blood (1972) User Reviews

The Brides of Blood - nice little horror oddity

[Oslo_Jargo · 5/10 · 21 November 2022]

*** This review may contain spoilers ***

*Plot and ending analyzed*

A nice little oddity of 1970s horror, I enjoyed this movie for what it was. It is fairly competent for its minuscule budget.

There is harrowingly creepy music, and two prime examples of no-budget monsters that were actually impressive. One was a ghoul, and the other was a vampire that aged after he was exposed to sunlight. His death scene was compelling, as his face bloated due to the exposure of daylight.

The story of the vampiric curse was not that disagreeable either, and the actors were fairly decent. I especially liked the old man, who remembered his lines reasonably well.

It probably has one of the most effective horror movie posters I have seen. Much like the movie posters of Mardi Gras Massacre (1978), The Dead Are Alive! (1972), Superstition (1982), and Garden of the Dead (1972). Based on that alone, I wanted to watch the movie, but it was so rare though, and never available.

I finally saw it this year and I liked it.

One odd thing about it was when the mute manservant "Perro" (word for dog in Spanish) suddenly takes a dive from the staircase after letting out the pregnant woman from her confinement. Did a supernatural force push him? Did he trip? We don't know.

If you enjoy extremely obscure horror movies, then this should work out fine.

With better horror elements this could have been a better addition to the horror genre

[kevin_robbins · 4/10 · 9 February 2023]

The Brides Wore Blood (1972) is an English horror movie that I recently watched on Tubi. The storyline follows a family that is cursed after a devil worshipping ritual goes wrong. As the curse is passed down generation to generation a father is worried about his son. He gets advice from an old lady on how to change his fate. He's told to invite four young ladies to his house and sacrifice them and the family curse will be lifted. The journey begins to see if the old lady was right.

This picture is directed by Bob Favorite (Riverboat Mama) and stars Dolores Friedline (Indian Raid, Indian Made), Jan Sherman (The New People) and Bruce Kerr (The Man from Snowy River).

This is a movie that had some potential with a classic horror storyline, solid settings, perfect background music and a well selected cast. The ladies selected for the cast were perfect. There's also a solid needle opening scene. Unfortunately, most of the kill scenes are pretty weak including the final sequence where the face melts. Overall, with better horror elements this could have been a better addition to the horror genre. I would score this a 4/10 and only recommend watching it if nothing better is available.

Out of the ether!

[BandSAboutMovies · 5/10 · 17 November 2022]

The poster to this movie is all it took to get me, but then I discovered that hardly anyone has watched this, that it was shot in Jacksonville, Florida for nearly no money and it goes all out occult weirdness in the midst of sunlight sleaze. All of this and more, please.

A psychic tells a young blonde named Yvonne (Dolores Heiser) that she needs a new life and should move to Florida, which brings her into the world of the DeLorca family. They have a curse upon them as once there was a ritual to conjure evil spirits that got interrupted, so now each male son becomes a vampire, which kills the mother upon the second birth.

The family has a plan: Madame von Kirst explains to them if they lure four girls -- remember the young lady I discussed above? -- to their house and do a new ritual, they can escape the pox upon their clan. There are also three other girls -- Laura (Jan Sherman), Vickie (Rita Ballard) and Dana (Delores Starling) -- as well as a hunchback and a wild sunlit home, which seems like not the place for vampires to live, but hey, I'm not a cursed vampiric madman, so what do I really know?

The occult influence on this film comes directly from all of Anton LaVey's appearances in men's magazines, focusing on his use of nude women as altars. Obviously, I am scandalized by all of this.

additional review from DVD-drive in and historical background

[shawnavery1 · 16 October 2006]

additional review from DVD-drive in... (George R. Reis) Shot in 16mm in Jacksonville, Florida, late director Bob Favorite proves that he can make a vampire film that stinks worse than Staten Island -- ahhhh, I mean stinks worse than Andy Milligan's vampire films, not the actual Staten Island. This rarely-seen effort tells the story of a pretty young blond who moves to Florida after a psychic tells her to go there to start a new life (I only wish it was that easy, I'd be on a plane tomorrow). She runs into an old man who invites her and three other young girls on a free tour of his ancestral mansion. The next day, the girls are invited to come back and meet his unattached nephew, whom he wants to marry off.

Turns out that the nephew is a vampire, and the screen's dullest one at that (picture Don "American Pie" McLean wearing a cape in 1972). One girl is turned into a vampire with exaggerated dime store fangs, and she must of learned how to act like one by watching "The Groovy Ghoulies" Saturday morning cartoon show. Another girl (a stuck-up photographer) is drained of blood in a gratuitous "needle" scene, and after her useless boyfriend tries to save her, they're both killed by a hideous guy who looks like half of the two-headed monster in THE MAGIC SWORD.

The blond girl is chosen as the bride and to continue the family bloodline, and she is kept prisoner by an idiot (hunchback?) with a mid-60s "British Invasion" hairdo. The vampire is killed by sunlight in a lame attempt to recreate Hammer's remarkable Dracula climaxes. Actually, the vampire's death scene resembles a ten-year-old's Super 8 remake of the end of HORROR OF Dracula. Amateurish in every way, THE BRIDES WORE BLOOD is badly shot and terribly acted, and the Florida background feels totally inappropriate here.

Retromedia has rescued this baby from almost total obscurity (unless you count the out-of-print Regal tape). Considering that this was shot in 16mm, the film source is remarkably well preserved, making for a pleasing DVD transfer. Colors sometimes look muted, and there is a fair share of grain evident, but this is due to the film's low-rent production values. The mono sound is perfectly acceptable. No trailer for the film is included (I doubt one exists), but it's introduced by Ohio TV horror host Son of Ghoul. See the Ghoul teach his dwarf friend about hygiene by shoving red toothpaste and green mouthwash down his throat! (George R. Reis) HISTORICAL INFO: here's my observations... ever October i rent ever increasingly obscure horror movies in an attempt to re-connect to my indie horror roots. my dad used to work on gore films... most notably, faces of death 4... and i remember loving moves like children shouldn't play with dead things, when i was a kid. so naturally, a low budget 70's horror titled, "brides wore blood" is gonna get my vote.

i noticed early on in the film that this movie seemed to be shot in Florida or a place that looked like Florida. a few times i even thought it might be europe, based on the marina, the characters and the mansion.

but then i saw something interesting. in the scene when the would-be protagonist, talks at a pub with the bartender, the name of the pub JUMPED out at me. the white lion pub. i've been here! and as a matter of fact... i lived in this town! this wasn't europe... this was st. augustine Florida. i also noticed that the "mansion" was in fact the historical flagler college, built by R/R tycoon henry flagler as a resort. i used to work for flagler college radio in the 90's.

from the best that i can gather, based on the clothes, the wind, etc... this movie was likely filmed during spring break 1972.

oh... and the movie? WONDERFULLY cheesy and horrible.

The screen played crap.

[[e-mail] · 2/10 · 5 December 2005]

I watched this little nothing some months ago. As a struggling law student, I often rent and watch budget cinema because it's good background noise and it doesn't matter if I'm studying during it because I won't miss anything anyway. This flick was no exception to the general rule. It starts off with a guy and girl finding a diary (after having a little basement bam-bam) and reading about how the guy's family has a curse on it where the first born male becomes a vampire. Cut to some time in the past (I think, it wasn't really well defined what time the main part of the story was supposed to be taking place in) when this brat's uncle was trying to get the kid's father(?) to hook up with some young ladies. They come to the house for dinner, complete with drugging one of the young lasses to be used by uncle in a ritual to stop the vampirism (I don't know what the hell they were thinking when they wrote this). There's some pointless psychic's babble, a few gory scenes and no plot.

For God's sake, don't watch this unless you can spare a few brain cells or have a twelve pack that needs to be drunk in about an hour and fifteen minutes (maybe I should have tried watching this thing drunk).

An authentically grimy piece of 70's drive-in horror junk

[Woodyanders · 8/10 · 28 May 2008]

The wealthy De Lorca family has suffered from the curse of vampirism throughout the centuries. Suave patriarch Carlos (decently played by Paul Everett) invites four lovely young women to his creepy isolated opulent estate. Carlos singles out rich blonde Yvonne (the supremely snotty and unappealing Dolores Heiser) as the ideal candidate to be impregnated by his vampire son Juan (the pitifully unscary and unconvincing Chuck Faulkner) and uses the other luckless gals as mere disposable canon fodder. Man, does this gloriously ghastly abomination possess all the right wretched stuff to rate as a choice chunk of cheapo dime-store cinema cheese: fumbling (non)direction by Robert R. Favorite, mostly atrocious acting from a lame no-name cast (Bob Lelizia cops the top thespic dishonors with his singularly stinky portrayal of pathetic mute idiot hunchback servant Perro), a sluggish pace, rough, grainy, ugly-as-dirt cinematography, shoddy make-up (one bloodsucker babe sports a mouthful of obvious chintzy novelty schlock shop plastic fangs!), an annoying generic ooga-booga synthesizer score by Lee Peters, tacky gore, and a seriously depressing surprise bummer ending. Moreover, we also got a smidgen of gratuitous female nudity, a grotesque demon dude running amok, and a hot belly dancer doing her sexy thing at a local tavern. The seedy backwater Florida locations add a tasty regional flavor to the gloomy proceedings. In fact, this flick often plays like a lurid Southern-fried version of your basic paltry Andy Milligan fright feature. To sum up, it's worth a watch, but only if you are a really hardcore aficionado of deliciously dreadful micro-budget obscure dreck.

mildly interesting modern vampire/occult tale

[Jenabel_Regina_del_Mundo · 6/10 · 3 June 2004]

Maybe it's just that I watched this film right after my first dumbstruck viewing of Andy Milligan's "Bloodthirsty Butchers." I guess it can only be up from there huh? As a fan of the entire spectrum of horror cinema, I quite enjoyed this dated no-budget obscurity from Florida. It operates on 2 levels: as unabashedly cheesy bad cinema, and as unassuming little rough diamond.

Things I sincerely liked about this film include the general storyline, which blends a family curse with vampirism and ritual magic. The sets and cinematography were OK. The Delorca family house is a typical cozy Gothic mansion, with a gargoyle around every corner, and a Temple dedicated to the Black Arts in the basement. The acting, save for the blatantly bad performance of Bob Letizia as Perro, a Torgo-like troglodyte complete with silly walk, was acceptable and even unusually restrained for this level of cinema.

Things I enjoyed for their abominable badness: the wardrobe, hair and make-up. The female lead is a frosted confection of frosted bleached hair, frosted blue eyeshadow and frosted pink lipstick. We can only hope that look never comes back into style, ACK! Wait, if you think she looks bad, check out the vampire makeup. I thought at first that one of the vampires had a pair of toothpicks protruding from her lip, till I subsequently observed that they were in fact a pair of those cheap plastic kiddie vampire fangs you buy for a buck at the drugstore around Halloween. Laughably lame and unscary. The heroine's makeup was a lot more frightening than any of the vampires. Finally, to draw attention again to Bob Letizia's portrayal of the idiot servant Perro, he was so bad that he made the guy who played Torgo in "Manos, The Hands Of Fate" look like an accomplished thespian.

No name cast and a director with about 2 other happily unknown credits.

Rewarding if you're searching for offbeat, seldom viewed horror, and equally effective as an amusing excursion into the warped, fascinating world of archaic bad cinema.