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Renowned artist Frédéric Lansac (Philippe Lemaire) has fallen in love
with lovely Anne (Anny Duperey), who soon enough becomes his muse and whom
he soon enough wants to marry. But unfortunately, rich society lady Moira
(Elizabeth Teissier) has always seen Frédéric as her own property so to
speak, and she doesn't approve his wedding plans at all, so much so that
at the proposed wedding, she accidently pushes Anne into an open
campfire, causing the poor woman to horribly go up in flames ...
Soon enough, Anne is pronounced dead, but actually, she still lives in
a castle with Frédéric and their two midget servants (Roberto, Johnny
Cacao), she just prefers nobody to know she's still alive. Eventually,
Frédéric hires nurse Agnes (Michéle Perello) to look after his wife,
but Anne soon gets jealous of the young woman's beauty, and it doesn't get
any better when she finds his husband in a moment of weakness in bed with
Agnes, of course. So Anne uses one of her husbands poisoned plants to accidently
kill Agnes - and she leaves it to her husband and servnts to get rid of
the body ...
Eventually, Frédéric runs across Romer (Howard Vernon), a brilliant
plastic surgeon who has lost is licence to perform surgery after he killed
one of his patients in an experiments, but who has after the accident for
a while been one of the top plastic surgeons of the underworld before he
got a decent job and gave up on surgery altogether. However, Frédéric,
who knows about Romer's past, blackmails him into working on his wife -
even if that would mean the death of whoever donates the skin for
the surgery ...
Frédéric and Romer have soon enough found a suitable donor, but
before Romer can start to operate, the midget servants try to rape the
poor woman and kill her in the process.
In the meantime, Agnes' sister Barbara (Olivia Robin) starts to worry
about Agnes, of whom she hasn't heard in quite some time, so she decides
to pay a visit to Frédéric's castle - not knowing that she that way only
presents herself as the next skin donor ... Soon Barbara realizes she has
to fight for her life, but to no avail it seems, she still ends up on
Romer's operating table, all tied up. However, she soon realizes that
Romer is not a monster like Frédéric and Anne and appeals to his
conscience - and overcome by guilt, Romer just hangs himself,
unfortunately though he forgets to free Barbara.
When Anne finds Romer hanged, unable to perform surgery on her, she
goes mad, and in the finale, she, her husband and the midget servants all
kill each other, only Barbara can manage to escape ...
Quite obviously, this film was inspired by Georges Franju's Eyes
without a Face from 1960 - which doesn't make The Blood Rose
any less appealing, it's a highly atmospheric and self-consciously
slow-moving blend of avantgarde and pulp cinema, of high class erotica and
sleaze, of art and smut if you may - and it's a film that's entertaining
and interesting throughout.
Recommended.
By the way, in the 1970's, Claude Mulot, the director of this film,
moved over to directing porn - using the name Frédéric Lansac,
the name of the lead of The Blood Rose.
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