A young member of the Spanish or Mexican (the film's never clear about it; everybody is very American here) family of the de Lorcas finds a journal hidden by his grand uncle. Not that the young man himself is going to be of import - the film consists of a long flashback sequence into the tale the journal tells, and will in fact never return to the young guy. That's probably for the better, because the end of the film makes his existence rather illogical anyway.
The true story goes something like this: Since the time when an ancestor once botched some occult experiments, the de Lorcas are cursed. Every male descendent of the line will some day transform into a vampire, killing his wife after the birth of a son.
Grand uncle doesn't want his nephew to transform, though, so he conspires with a clairvoyant only known as Madame von Kirst (and damn, she doesn't even have a nice tarot set - she's using standard playing cards instead) to lift the curse.
How do they go about it? Inviting four young women to the family home, using one of them as an "altar"/source of blood for a transfusion (I suppose) and drugging another one for impregnation, of course! Unfortunately the dear nephew is already vamping out, and so the uncle's plans don't go too well. I'm not sure why uncle and nephew are at odds anyway - they both are into kidnapping and impregnating women, but hey, what do I know.
What follows is a sequence of barely holding together moments of vampirism, possessed mute semi-hunchbacked servants, some moldy guy who lives in the cellar being rude and other inexplicable things.
The Brides Wore Blood has all the hallmarks of a regionally produced (Florida, home of more zoned out filmmakers than should be possible) low budget piece of puzzlement. There's the semi-professional (at best) acting, the technical mediocrity of the filmmaking (and let's be honest, mediocrity is brilliance in this context; sometimes there's even camera movement!) and the classical WTF of the script.
Nonetheless (or probably even because of) those flaws, it's well worth watching. Some of the actors chance on an acting style that hasn't much to do with good acting, but still achieves some interesting effects. Especially the uncle is rather interesting when he starts to explain his outrageous theories in a droning, bored sounding uncle voice most people would reserve for the explanation of taxation laws. (And wouldn't that make a nice horror movie, too?)
The mute, semi-hunchbacked (which means the production couldn't be arsed to provide the poor guy with as little as a cushion to stuff under his shirt, so he's just going very very stooped) is another favorite.
I also highly approve of the film's interpretation of vampires: the main vampire is just a slightly pudgy guy with a ridiculous taste in shirts and seems to have developed the art of hypnotizing people with the pure boredom he exudes (also great: his backrubs seem to lead to pregnancy), while a hench vampire mostly acts like a heavily drugged (and not very talented) mime, something that can't help but make the customary staking quite satisfying).
And, having all this silliness and very little sense in the movie, the film still has some typical 70s horror elements of ruthlessness, a downer ending of course included. Logically, the stupid and the depressed should not work very well together, but I still found myself affected by the later parts of the film (especially the just plain nasty ending) when an honest sense of hopelessness steps out from behind the usual ineptness. This is more than one can hope for from this kind of film.
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