GamerTab That was an excellent one.

BroadcastChic Excellent, a Must See

Supelice Dreadfully Boring

Micah Lloyd Excellent characters with emotional depth. My wife, daughter and granddaughter all enjoyed it...and me, too! Very good movie! You won't be disappointed.

dbdumonteil ....Et Mourir De Plaisir.The first of the two fantasy and horror movies Roger Vadim made and without any doubt ,his best ;actually,it's arguably his very best movie ever,probably his best screenplay,a story which does not fall apart after the second reel;inspired by André Gide's diary in which the writer wondered why a vampire was always ugly :why couldn't it take the shape of a beautiful woman?The title may have been taken from Camille's lines in Corneille 's Horace (1640)after her lover's death caused by her brother (after all,the heroine is called Carmilla and the action takes place in Italy).Claude Renoir's cinematography is a feast for the eye ;it 's really a work of art ,when he depicts the splendid Roman landscapes or when he lovingly films the two actresses ,with subtle lesbian overtones.Till the end ,the director succeeds in sustaining ambiguity -we will never know whether there's a vampire curse or whether it all happens in Carmilla's troubled mind.At a time when unexpected ends often come at the most awkward moment,when they are almost De Rigueur,the last picture is a model of the genre ,a stroke of inspiration which should make today's directors drool.Although set in modern times,the spirit of Edgar Allan Poe wanders in these mysterious settings .One can wonder why Vadim totally failed when he adapted the American writer's "Metzengernstein" in his "spirits of the dead " (aka "Histoires Extraordinaires" ) segment.If you should see only one Vadim movie ,it is definitely the one to choose .

adriangr I took a chance on buying the 2014 German language "Filmclub Edition" release of "Blood and Roses", which is titled "Und Vor Lust Zu Sterben", and I am delighted with it. I only watched the French audio version that comes with the English subtitles, as that is the only version that I could understand, but it's a lovely, crisp, WIDESCREEN print of the movie, and therefore a million miles away from the full screen VHS version that i have had to live with up until now.The story is slight: Leopoldo Karnstein is celebrating his impending wedding to the beautiful Georgia, and everybody is happy except for cousin Carmilla, who is secretly jealous. As various festivities are enjoyed by the family, Carmilla sneaks off out of spite, and ends up exploring an ancient family tomb and finding the disturbed resting place of a famous ancestor who was rumoured to have been a vampire. What happens to her in that tomb is only hinted at, but she emerges changed from a lighthearted girl to a moody and troubled enigma. The rest of the film charts how Carmilla subtly begins to pull apart the happiness of the engaged couple, with tragic resultsThe plot of the film is not the main attraction here, it's the way the film is shot. It's almost like a watching a poem come to life on screen. There is a lot of stillness in the film, some scenes linger on very slow moving visuals for long periods of time, but it all comes together, if you have the patience to just enjoy what you are looking at. A lot of mileage is gained from the many scenes in which Carmilla drifts silently around the scenery in an extravagant white ballgown. Annette Vadim looks stunning in the main role of Carmilla, and even shots of her doing nothing at all still look superb. Her acting skills are up to the job, and she shows a surprising amount of different emotions in the role, whereas, if shots of her are just viewed in still images or short clips, the impression you get of her is that she is quite wooden, but when seen in the film as a whole, I think she is actually very good. Elsa Martinelli is also very good in the role of the innocent Georgia, and scenes of the two women together can look amazing, especially in a subtle but heavily erotic scene set in a greenhouse during a storm. Not much happens here, but the scene is electrifying all the same. As I said earlier, the film is actually pretty short on events but you'll still enjoy it due to the lush scenery, lighting and the visual beauty of the two lead actresses. The music also plays a vital role, with many scenes underscored by a delicate and melancholy classical soundtrack, which reminded me of the score to "Lisa and The Devil", which used music to a similar effect. The whole movie has a very European film to it, unmistakable as a product of 1960s France/Italy, and impossible to reproduce today.The only niggle with this release is some poor quality hiss and scratchiness of the French audio, but I forgive this for the stunning picture quality. I avoided buying this release for quite a while as I was hoping that an English audio version would eventually come out, because I prefer to soak up the visual atmosphere of a film like "Blood and Roses" without having to constantly read text, but I like this version now that I have watched it. The cast speak their dialogue in French (you can tell because the spoken audio synchs correctly to their mouths), so the dialogue looks authentic, and I happy to enjoy this with English subtitles.All in all, a superb movie.

Mikel3 The second offbeat Vampire film I watched today was 'Blood and Roses'. It was a story about a blonde female vampire that returns to possess the body of a lookalike descendant. She is released from her tomb by an accidental explosion during the fireworks display at a party on an estate. Yep, that's what I said…a fireworks explosion at a graveyard. It seems the grave yard had hidden munitions from the last war in it and the fireworks set them off. Usually I look for Italian and Spanish made horror films because…as I often repeat…they're different than the norm in USA films. This was made in 1960 and contains the sort of scenes that only appeared in foreign films of that time. There are scenes with strong lesbian under currents for instance. The blood on a lower lip caused by a thorn is used as an excuse for the female Vampire to want to kiss a woman. The thirst of blood is used as the only reason. The two are otherwise both attracted to and in love with the same man. There were scenes where they came close to nudity but the camera angles avoided it. For instance a topless woman's chest was conveniently blocked by a bed post in exactly the right place or a blanket was pulled up at just the right time as the camera panned. I figured this was because it was filmed in 1960. Yet strangely the same woman from those scenes, or a double, was later shown totally topless in a bizarre bondage dream sequence. The film did contain some artist film work and unusual characters. There were some strange surreal dream sequences like the one mentioned above and one where a victim is seen in a French doors window as if she is under water in a pool. The new victim opens that door and jumps into the water to join her. The water is vertically filling in the entire door opening. Sort of a Stargate effect if you're familiar with that movie. Unfortunately this movie dragged out for me and ultimately bored me. The attempt at a shock ending also fell flat. Frankly I'm surprised at the rather high rating, 6.7 out of it 10, it currently has at the IMDb. I give it 4 out of 10 tops and that's being very generous because the acting was okay.

lastliberal An art house horror movie. Probably missed by horror fans, the film depicts a vampiress as romantic. The music by Jean Prodromidès and the cinematography by Claude Renoir certainly add to the romantic feeling throughout. A Harlequin horror film? Even the long shots in this film have a grace seldom seen. It often looks as if one is viewing and Impressionistic painting.Carmilla (Annette Vadim) visits an abbey where the vampiress is buried and we see an immediate change in her mood. Was she possessed? It isn't clear.Don't look for blood and guts or lesbian scenes. Everything happens off screen, even in the original version. But, it was a beautiful love story.