💉 Blood and Roses(1960) : A Casket Lined With Lace and Nothing Inside

Blood and Roses should have been a bloody bouquet—what we got instead was a wilted corsage of perfume-scented nonsense and moth-eaten melodrama. Roger Vadim’s 1960 erotic horror misfire adapts Sheridan Le Fanu’s sapphic vampire classic Carmilla with all the sensual tension of a limp baguette and about as much horror as a Dior runway show. This film is less fangs and fear than it is frocks and fumbling, and while that might titillate some, genre fans craving actual horror or even a pulse will find themselves pounding nails into the coffin just to keep themselves awake.

☠️ THE “PLOT”: A Ghost of a Story

The skeletal remains of Carmilla are here—sort of—though they’ve been hastily buried under layers of chiffon, Technicolor smog, and existential ennui. Set in 1960s Italy (because apparently nothing screams gothic horror like post-war espresso bars), the story centers on Carmilla, a pouty aristocrat floating through Hadrian’s Villa in a satin fog of jealousy, repression, and cheekbone contouring.

Carmilla, clearly smoldering with some deeply unresolved feelings for her gal pal Georgia (played by Elsa Martinelli, who gives all the emotional range of a wax figure at a fashion museum), becomes unhinged when Georgia gets engaged to Carmilla’s cousin Leopoldo (Mel Ferrer, who appears to be sleepwalking through the role while mentally cashing his paycheck).

A masquerade ball leads to a fireworks accident—because that’s how vampire lore works now?—which awakens the spirit of Carmilla’s vampiric ancestor. Our modern Carmilla wanders into a conveniently exposed World War II munitions crater, finds her ancestor’s crypt (as you do), and then returns to the villa acting all… well, French. You know: listless, smoldery, occasionally murderous. Victims pile up. Georgia clutches her pearls. And the audience checks their watches.

🦇 VADIM’S VAMPIRE: CARMILLA, REDUCED TO A PERFUME AD

If Carl Theodor Dreyer’s Vampyr was an artful séance, Blood and Roses is a moody Instagram filter applied to a bar napkin. Roger Vadim—previously known for turning Brigitte Bardot into an international sex kitten—tries to do for vampires what he did for beach bunnies: make them chic. Unfortunately, he also makes them insufferably boring.

Annette Vadim (his then-wife, because of course nepotism doesn’t die) plays Carmilla like she’s perpetually posing for a Chanel ad: lips parted, eyes glazed, expression unreadable. There’s no menace, no ache, no danger. She’s a specter with perfect posture and zero dramatic stakes. Carmilla’s transition from pouty debutante to bloodsucking monster (or is she just emotionally unstable?) is delivered with the urgency of someone deciding between silk or satin for her next gown.

There’s one potentially interesting moment—a dream sequence in which Carmilla chases Georgia through mist and mirror—but Vadim shoots it like a Vogue photo spread. It’s haunting in the way a commercial for Dior Poison might be, if you squint and drink absinthe. A whole lot of visual suggestion, and absolutely no bite.

🧛 DIALOGUE TO DIE (OF BOREDOM) FOR

Then there’s the script, which plays like a Monty Python sketch on quaaludes. The dialogue is stilted, as though the actors learned their lines phonetically during a séance. Maybe they did—Vadim had his cast shoot scenes in both French and English, which might explain why no one seems to know what emotion they’re supposed to be feeling. The dubbing is a crime against both linguistics and atmosphere. Strident voices bark out “emotional” lines while the actors’ faces remain slack and unmoved, like mannequins lip-syncing to soap operas from another dimension.

Even the narrator sounds bored, as though he’s apologizing for the film’s existence while narrating it. The voiceover drops exposition like a professor phoning in his syllabus, and it manages to drain the few scenes that almost build tension.

🎭 THE COSTUMES: CURTAINS, DRAPES, AND COFFINS

Credit where it’s due: Blood and Roses is pretty. Claude Renoir’s Technicolor cinematography gives everything a rich, painterly sheen, and the locations—shot around Hadrian’s Villa—are genuinely gorgeous. But the film is all sizzle and no stake. It’s like decorating a hearse with Swarovski crystals: you’re still on your way to a burial, but now it’s fashionable.

Vadim substitutes horror for haute couture. Every scene is costumed to the nines, and yet somehow it all feels lifeless. The masquerade ball should be a visual feast of dread, but it plays more like a masquerade snooze, with the camera lingering on masks and gowns like a jealous lover. The sets are opulent, yes—but opulence can’t hide the emptiness at the heart of this film.

🕷️ THE SAPPHIC SUBTEXT: A WHISPER IN A WIND TUNNEL

Le Fanu’s original Carmilla is dripping with sensual tension and psychological horror. It’s a trailblazer of queer gothic literature. Vadim, ever the opportunist, exploits the queer subtext without ever doing the work to make it real. The eroticism here is mostly suggested via longing stares and breathy voiceovers. It’s faux transgressive: all tease, no climax. Georgia and Carmilla’s relationship could have been a powder keg of repression and unspoken desire—but Vadim reduces it to a soft-focus perfume commercial with vampire cosplay.

The lesbian lilt noted in a contemporary gay magazine review is there, sure, but it’s half-baked and handled with such coyness it feels almost insulting. Rather than exploring female desire with any depth, Vadim gives us a whisper of innuendo buried beneath 10 pounds of tulle and trauma.

🧟 FINAL STAKES: A TOOTHLESS TRAGEDY

Blood and Roses isn’t scary. It isn’t sexy. It isn’t even especially entertaining. It’s a confused, overdesigned relic of a director trying to be both a provocateur and an aesthete, but managing to be neither. Vadim wants to horrify us with elegance—but all he manages to do is lull us to sleep with set dressing.

It’s hard to overstate how frustrating this film is for fans of Carmilla, lesbian vampire lore, or just atmospheric horror. All the ingredients are here—beautiful setting, moody lighting, a rich literary source—but Vadim drains them of vitality like a vampire draining a victim through a paper straw.

This is not horror. This is haute horror, declawed and defanged, wrapped in a velvet shroud and buried under its own pretensions. It’s a ghost of a movie, wandering the fog-shrouded cemetery of squandered potential.

★ Rating: 1 out of 5 Arterial Sprays

For completionists and costume fetishists only. Everyone else—drive a stake through this one and move on to something with actual fangs. 🩸