Blood And Roses (1960) Absolute mandatory viewing for those of us (BQ included) who savor, adore and treasure batshit crazy movies from the 1960's...........
And who better to kick off the decade than continental softcore-cinema guru Roger Vadim..........a barely competent director who nevertheless surfed the top of the Euro-Trash wave......with the help of the gorgeous actresses he bedded, married, mentored and cast in his films (Brigitte Bardot, Jane Fonda, Annette Stroyberg, etc, etc.....
As we pointed out in our post on "Barbarella", we're no big fan of his.......once you get beyond Jane Fonda's main title zero gravity striptease, the rest of the movie's a static, boring morass.
Think about it........this guy makes a movie with spaceships aliens, mutants, dominatrix babes, intergalactic angels, killer dolls, killer canaries, all of them ripping his wife's clothes off every ten minutes.........and it still puts you to sleep.
Seven years before
that disaster, we have Vadim's take on vampires......with the Be-Still-My-Heart duo of renowned cutie Elsa Martinelli and Vadim's babe-wife of the moment , Annette Stroyberg.
Stroyberg, apparently cloned from one of Brigitte Bardot's fingernails, plays an aristocratic hottie who seethes with jealousy at the idea of her cousin (Mel Ferrer) marrying a rival bombshell (Martinelli)......
Possessed by the spirit of an entombed lady bloodsucker, Stroyberg goes off on a seductive Fang-You-Very-Much spree.......and nobody's safe when she's on the prowl in her blindingly white gown (sometimes soaked with blood)…...
The kind of lush, langquid eroticism on display was Vadim's specialty.......and he'd invite you to sit back and luxuriate in the stunning beauty of Stroyberg and Martinelli..........if nothing else, Vadim maintained his reputation as a connoisseur of ripe cinema dreamgirls.
The vampire stuff? Hardly there. You can tell from the get-go that Vadim's more into the sex than the blood........(you want dripping teeth? Go see Christopher Lee....) He does take a flying leap at a wacky nightmare sequence that goes so far beyond his imaginative abilities, it looks like Fellini's worst outtakes cobbled together......
But when Vadim stays in his own little backyard (holding the camera steady on his sparkling starlets), "Blood And Roses" rises to attain its own limited goal.......a sumptuously photographed bad dream with ethereal but deadly temptress floating at its center.......
Sniffers of cult 60's weirdness......this bouquet of roses is for you......everyone else, you're better off avoiding it......2 & 1/2 stars (**1/2)
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