The Bride

Franc Roddam, 1985

"You didn't create me!"

So, like most Americans, I frequent the local Wal-Mart. I’m no Wal-Flower about it either. When I go into that Meca of the Mid-West, I dive into the bargain bins like their ball pits at Showbiz Pizza. Of course, my favorite sale bin is the $5.00 DVD vat. This is a bin of movies that either aren’t very good, have completely lapsed from the public consciousness, or both. There are a few movies that you will find in this vat regardless of Wal-Mart and regardless of time. These are movies that, for whatever reason, Wal-Mart ordered roughly a gagillion copies of and are desperately anxious to get rid of, but not so desperate that they’ll let them go for under a five spot. These are movies like Bedazzled, the Brendan Frasier remake, not the excellent Peter Cook/Dudley Moore original, Killer Klowns from Outerspace, and assorted TV series compilations. In any event, it’s a good place to look for movies you’ve never heard of before. One that I’d never heard of before is a little movie called The Bride. Now, this sucker is clearly a remake, reimagining, rewhatever of The Bride of Frankenstein. One look at the DVD packaging, though, tells you to stay away. First off, the thing stars Sting, who’ll you’ll recall is a poor man’s David Bowie at best, and Jennifer Beals. That’s right, Flashdance is the bride in question. Besides that, the cover for this thing is so excessively cheesy that you know immediately that it is either a direct to video crapfest, best watched through the goggles of a Svengoolie or with occasional breaks to stare at Elvira’s breasts, or a Sci-Fi Channel original movie. In any event, while tempted by the sheer promise of crap, I decided to avoid this sucker like the plague.

Fast forward a week or two. I’m at the local Goodwill, looking at their videos and wondering how a second hand store can expect to get $3.00 for a video tape of The Making of Apollo 13 when I spy a video copy of The Bride. Something’s wrong, though. This doesn’t look like the same movie Wal-Mart can’t sell for a fin. It’s old. Eighties old. I check out the box. Sting? Check. Flashdance? Check. Frankenstein movie? Check. The hell? This new box is a whole different story. It displays stills of perfect eighties cheese, involving nutty effects work and overly ornate wardrobe. It tells me the movie has a midget, specifically David Rappaport, one of the screen’s finest midgets, and, as the monster, Clancy Brown. Now, I adore Clancy Brown and have gone on about him before in these pages. Outside of masterful turns in The Shawshank Redemption and HBO’s underrated Carnivale, he’s the best Lex Luthor there ever was, appearing regularly on Warner Brothers’ Superman and Justice League cartoons for the past few years. He was also apparently in The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension. He’s the monster! Suddenly, a piece of direct to video crap becomes sweet eighties cheese and I must buy it. Well, but it I do. I even watch it and it’s. . . well, it’s only okay. Don’t get me wrong, it’s certainly watchable and there’s some nice bits of business in there.

Essentially, what you have here is two movies. Movie A is the Frankenstein monster, here named Viktor, and his midget pal Rinaldo heading off to join the circus. Seriously. Movie B is Baron Charles (?!) Frankenstein, remember, Sting, hanging around his mansion with Flashdance, who he’s told is an orphan he found in the woods, despite the fact that we all watched him slap her together and shoot her full of 1.21 gigawatts at the start of the movie. Anyway, Movie B is pretty much Sting saying “Monster, old pal, I made you a woman, but she’s pretty hot. So, I’m gonna keep her. Get lost,” which the monster does, beginning Movie A. Meanwhile, Movie B involves a lot of hanging around a castle with Flashdance wondering who she is and Sting teaching her about the world and science and literature while nurturing an unhealthy, pseudo incestuous lust for her. At least, that’s what we’re supposed to think is going on. There are lots of scenes with inappropriate staring and claims of ownership by Sting to his creepy pals. He even threatens to beat the tar out of Cary Elwes when he catches the man in tights trying to boink Flashdance. Still, Sting can’t be bothered to sell any of this. Really, he couldn’t be much worse. He shows up, states his lines matter of factly and devoid of emotion and leaves. I’m sure the producers wish they’d have shelled out the cash to just go ahead and hire an authentic David Bowie instead. Still, Movie A isn’t all bad. Flashdance is actually pretty good and you do feel for her and there’s a nice scene at an overly elaborate dance involving equally elaborate costumes that just glows with the sort of trumped up production values I hoped would fill the whole movie.

Then there’s Movie A, which is surprisingly touching. Again, Clancy Brown in the monster and his story begins as he flees Sting’s castle. You see, the monster knew that Sting had, at least initially, built Flashdance for him. So, after she awakens, there’s some clumsy fumbling around and then Sting says, “Get lost.” Now, our monster is an interesting one. He is not the angry Karloff monster or the incredibly erudite version of the monster that has become so en vogue of late in things like USA’s recent, intriguing Frankenstein TV, featuring Parker Posey and Michael Madsen, movie or Grant Morrison’s excellent Seven Soldiers: Frankenstein mini-series for DC Comics. Instead, Brown’s monster is simple and compassionate. He does not attack unless provoked, and he has to be provoked pretty hard, but, instead, hobbles around the countryside looking for friendship and understanding, which he finds early on in the form of Rinaldo. Now, Rinaldo could very easily be a comedy relief character, but David Rappaport, whom you might remember as the lead midget in Time Bandits, infuses him with palpable pathos. His life as man used to being shunned by the world around him makes him the perfect teacher for the monster, whom he dubs Viktor. The two very quickly become friends and the bond between them is perfectly displayed. Soon enough, they come to the circus and engage in an act where Rinaldo goes up on the trapeze and clowns around for a little while before seemingly falling off, only to be saved at the last minute by an elastic cord. Viktor, meanwhile, runs around below, dressed as a woman, screaming about his “poor baby.” Well, as things tend to go at the circus, some jerk carny cuts Rinaldo’s cord and he falls to his death, leading to the most touching scene of the film and, indeed, a much more touching scene than you would expect from it. Viktor kneels outside the tent, gently cradling the broken body of his only friend in the entire world. Rinaldo says his goodbyes to Viktor and passes on. Viktor clutches the little man’s body tightly to his own and as the scene fades to black, says, simply, “I love you.”

After this, Movies A and B come together rather predictably as Viktor has to beat up Sting to save Flashdance, who has begun to understand what she really is. The movie, of course, ends with she and Viktor sailing off into the sunset. A parting thought, it’s really a lot like Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes, in that it takes a well worn, semi-pulpy work and tries to legitimize and romanticize it, often unnecessarily, making it into a Heritage Film, like Howard’s End or Remains of the Day. So, there it is, The Bride. It’s a solid little movie, more interesting for Movie A than B, but still worth your time, should it come on WGN in the afternoon. Two and a half stars.