Based on Sheridan Le Fanu’s seminal novella Carmilla, The Blood Spattered Bride holding up as one of Spanish horror’s best vampire films. On its surface, this sexually provocative classic centers on a woman whose new marriage is a bust, due to how much she loathes her domineering husband, and who finds solace with, not to mention sexual satisfaction and neck-draining from, a beautiful and seductive centuries-old bloodsucker. Beneath its visual splendor and kinky vampire elements, though, Vicente Aranda’s film is a sneakily shrewd dissection of his country’s fascism and gender politics. -Matt Barone