Blood and Roses

Plot summary

Set in the modern day at a European estate, Carmilla is torn emotionally by the engagement of her friend Georgia to her cousin Leopoldo. It is hard to tell for whom she has the strongest unrequited emotions. During the masquerade ball celebrating the upcoming marriage, a fireworks display accidentally explodes some munitions lost at the site in World War II, disturbing an ancestral catacomb. Carmilla wearing the dress of her legendary vampire ancestor wanders into the ruins, where the tomb of the ancestor opens slowly. Carmilla returns to Leopoldo's estate as the last guests depart. Over next few days she proceeds to act as though possessed by the spirit of the vampire and a series of vampiric killings terrorize the estate.

Cast

Production

Blood and Roses was filmed at Hadrian's Villa in Italy.

Release

Blood and Roses was released in France on 14 September 1960. It was released in Rome in January 1961 under the title Il sangue e la rosa.

Reception

In a contemporary review Monthly Film Bulletin noted that "despite the elegance and beauty of the backgrounds in and about Hadrian's Villa" and "Claude Renoir's Tehnicolor-Technicrama photography, this expensive attempt at an art horror film is nothing short of a travesty-both of the genre and LeFanu's marvellous short story." The review noted that the film was "awkward and pedantic" and that the "vampire story is ruined by leaden dialogue, stridently dubbed, and by the sometimes bathetic acting" and that the "film suffers badly from comparison with Dreyer's much freer adaptation of the story, Vampyr."