Una gota de sangre para morir amando (1973)

Director:

Eloy de la Iglesia

Writers:

Eloy de la Iglesia (story) &
José Luis Garci (story) ...

Release Date:

April 1975 (USA)

Genre:

Crime | Drama | Thriller

Tagline:

Brutal Savagery in a Future World !

Plot:

Set in the future, the story follows a nurse who tries to bring her own style of relief to people condemned to die. Her identity is a mystery and she may not be quite what she seems. |

Plot Keywords:

Future | Female Psychopath | Sexual Assault | Robbery | Serial Killer

Cast

Sue Lyon	...	Ana Vernia
Christopher Mitchum	...	David (as Chris Mitchum)
Jean Sorel	...	Victor Sender
Ramón Pons	...	Toni
Charly Bravo	...	Bruno
Alfredo Alba	...	Román Mendoza
Antonio del Real	...	Mick
David Carpenter	...	Phil
Ramón Fernández Tejela	...	Nicola (as Ramon Tejela)
Fernando Hilbeck	...	Marido en la casa asaltada (as Fernando Hilberck)
Eduardo Calvo	...	Rehabilitado
Fernando Sánchez Polack	...	Rehabilitado
Paul Pavel
Manuel Guitián
Jean Degrass

Also Known As:

Clockwork Terror (USA)
Le bal du vaudou (France)
Murder in a Blue World (UK) (video title)
To Love, Perhaps to Die

Runtime:

Spain:100 min | UK:101 min (cut version) | UK:98 min | USA:88 min

Country:

Spain | France

Language:

Spanish

Color:

Color (Technicolor)

Aspect Ratio:

2.35 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono

Certification:

Spain:18 | UK:18 | USA:R

Filming Locations:

Madrid, Madrid, Spain

Company:

Intercontinental Productions

Movie Connections:

References Lolita (1962)

Don't be fooled--this is not just a "rip-off"

This movie is OBVIOUSLY (and quite blatantly) inspired by Stanley Kubrick's "A Clockwork Orange". In fact early in the movie, right before a family is attacked by a group of "droog"-like bikers with bull-whips, they are actually settling down to watch "A Clockwork Orange" on TV!(it's hard to imagine even in a futuristic film like this THAT movie showing on television in what was still Franco's Spain at the time). There's also other blatant references to other Kubrick movies. The female protagonist has a copy of the infamous Vladimir Nabokov novel "Lolita" on her nightstand, and the film adaptation of that was also directed by Stanley Kubrick--and Kubrick's "Lolita", of course, was played by Sue Lyon, who plays the female protagonist of this movie! So pat yourself on the back if you notice all this and then move on.

I kind of have a problem with people that simply dismiss Italian and Spanish films like this as "rip-offs". First they seem to assume that bigger-budgeted Anglo-American/Hollywood films are all completely original (nowadays Hollywood "remakes" a lot more Spanish films than vice versa). Moreover, they don't seem to realize that a lot of these movies were blatantly aping popular Hollywood films on the surface, but were often doing something quite interesting and even subversive underneath. The most interesting part of this movie, for instance, isn't Chris Mitchum and his "droog"-like gang, nor is it Lyon's boyfriend (played by Jean Sorel) who works at a "Clockwork Orange"-type behavior modification institute. The most interesting part is Sue Lyon's character, a respectable nurse and "pop" art collector, who likes to pick up beautiful young men, take them home to bed, listen to the post-coital beating of their hearts, and then stab them to death with a surgical scalpel! The director of this Eloy Inglesias was a famous and supposedly gay Spanish director (although he has a son Alex Inglesias, who is also a film director in Spain today). The bizarre scene where Lyon dresses up as a man and picks up an effeminate (but closeted) homosexual, or the scene where she picks up a narcissistic and (even more closeted)male model give a very noirish psychosexual--and decidedly homoerotic--ambiance to this film that has little to do with "A Clockwork Orange" and a LOT to do with the rest of the director's oeuvre like his most famous film, "Cannibal Man" (aka "Week of the Killer"). Inglesias didn't make a whole lot of films, but I would advise anyone to check out some of the ones he did before dismissing him as some kind of rip-off artist. He was, in fact, one of Spain's most interesting and courageous directors.

The English-language title of this, "Murder in a Blue World". is interesting, but even more interesting is the Spanish title which loosely translates to something like "A Tear of Blood for Dying Love" or "A Bloody Tear for Loving Death". This colorful title serves to connect this film (despite its futuristic sci-fi elements)to the Italian/Spanish giallo genre. This is basically a homoerotically-charged, futuristic dystopian, psychosexual giallo, which makes it pretty damn interesting--and original--in my book.