While resurgences of some of the other, classic monsters (Dracula, the Wolf Man) are to be expected, the current run of film based around Frankenstein’s Monster has yielded some surprising fruit, most notable of which is the Oscar nominations scored by Guillermo del Toro’s impressively lush Frankenstein remake. However, not to be undone is Maggie Gyllenhaal, who has realised that throughout the entire pantheon of movie monsters, surely the one who gets the least of the spotlight is arguably one of the most iconic – the Bride Of Frankenstein.
Barely given any screen time in the 1935 classic that bore her name, the Bride – with that column of Marge Simpson hair with a jagged white streak running through it – nevertheless is one of the most recognisable faces in classic horror and a rare female presence in the horror hall of fame. And yet, subsequent attempts to render her on film have proven to keep her fully in the tragic victim section – will Gyllenhaal’s noisy, spirited opus give the character the voice she’s usually been denied?
The year is (fittingly) 1936 and somewhere in the smokey clubs of Chicago, the spirit of Mary Shelley selects a hooker to become her vessel in order to help tell a story the afterlife dwelling author has been desperate to weave ever since her death. Causing the woman to go into a tourette’s spouting trance, she starts blurting out the private (and very damning) details of a prominent mob boss who allegedly had a clutch of women killed under suspicion of being snitches. Of course, the result of this gets the woman hurled down a flight of stairs which snaps her neck and silences her mouth, but while Shelley cackles in the afterlife, fate is going to ensure that her story will indeed be told.
After a life of agonising pain and a loneliness that’s threatening to kill him once and for all, Frankenstein’s Monster seeks out mad professor Dr. Cornelia Euphronius in order to carry out his desperate wish – make him a bride so that he may finally feel companionship in a world that continuously despises him. After digging up you-know-who from a nearby graveyard, the woman is resurrected, but retains no memory of her previous life and despite the random barks of Shelley’s voice erupting from her own, stained lips, the woman accepts “Frank’s” explanations that she’s his bride.
However, as the two make an odd looking couple at the best of times, it isn’t long before trouble comes looking for them and after Frank violently protects his Bride, the two have to go on the run for murder. But as the Bride settles into her new existence, both the spirit of Shelley and the knowledge that lurks within her concerning the injustice women face causes her rage at the patriarchy to start a feminist movement wherever she and Frank go. With a detective who knows of the Bride’s past hot on their trail, can this undead version of Bonnie & Clyde ever find peace?
At one point, Annette Benning’s Dr. Euphronius ironically berates Frank’s method of creation, stating that randomly stitching parts from random bodies together isn’t actually that conducive to creation – which is something like director Maggie Gyllenhaal calling the kettle black as her angry, energetic and somewhat muddled version of the character is obviously guilty of doing the exact same thing with The Bride! Taking the basic beats laid out by James Whale’s 1935 classic and blending it thoroughly with the legend of Bonnie & Clyde, Gyllenhaal has created a monster mash-up that feels tonally similar to the lurid excesses of Todd Phillips’ much malinged Joker sequel, Folie à Deux. Now, I didn’t dislike that lambasted follow up as much as some, although I will concede that did come with an asylum full of inherent problems and sadly The Bride! also succeeds in tripping over its mismatched feet thanks to tonal inconsistencies, awkward storytelling and some impressively huge creative swings, but while it’s message is often lost thanks to its crazed attempts to overturn the applecart, there’s much about the film to embrace.
For a start, the smooshing together of Universal Monsters with the gangster genre proves to be incredibly exciting, especially when you realise that the film is set in the same time period that the Bride’s debut actually occurred. Furthermore, turning the Bride and Frank into a scarred, damaged, anti-establishment anti-heroes is an inspired touch that really does lean into the whole “here come the monsters” vibe that sees them inadvertently challenge much more than simply just the law. Furthermore, it allows Jessie Buckley and Christian Bale to deliver completely unrestrained performances that both challenge and honor the storied pasts of the characters they play.
Buckley goes full mania, switching accents and demeanor on a dime as her mind wiped, shock-haired hooker frequently vomits up raspy-voiced rants from the spirit of Mary Shelley that dwells within her, while Bale takes his creature into appropriately more sensitive arenas – although his love of musicals (featuring Maggie’s bro, Jake) and his habit of placing himself within them seem to feel far more indebted to Mel Brooks that James Whale. Similarly, trying to make this version of the Bride into a feminist icon fits considering how much the ressurected woman is used by the opposite sex simply to fill a void in their lives without any thought of what she might want. As a result, Gyllenhaal ensures that the Bride endures simular dilemmas from both her life as a hooker mixed up with the mob, her role to save the Monster from loneliness and her subsequent demonization by the law.
However, while Gyllenhaal’s intent works insanely well on paper and Buckley’s performance is fearless, the film annoyingly never actually makes good on its promise to deliver a rip roaring burst of furious women’s lib. “Here comes the motherfucking Bride!” announces a rambling Shelley (also Buckley) in the film’s opening, but it never feels like she actually arrives and anyone hoping for her – and the film – to start smashing down walls, shooting up the place and start sticking it to the literal man may be disappointed when the best the Bride can do is rant her frustrations to the empty air and break out a couple of dance routines. We could have had an anarchic blast in the style of a feminist Natural Born Killers where the murderous couple are actually justified in their actions after being marginalised for so long, but instead a perky subplot featuring Peter Sarsgaard’s smug detective and Penelope Cruz’s upcoming sleuth does a far better job of getting it’s point across than all the misdirected noise.
Gyllenhaal’s vision and hopes can’t be denied, but in an attempt to bring undead anarchy to the screen, The Bride! focuses too much on the problems women face without ever fully cutting loose and giving us the violent, seething wish fulfilment we were promised. As a result, The Bride! may look magnificent and feature some legitimately iconic visuals, but anyone expecting to watch the title character fully express herself may feel like they’ve been stitched up…
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We Have Issues 
3 stars too many.
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