Editorials
Here Comes ‘The Bride’: Jennifer Beals Takes Control in ’80s Gothic Romance Frankenstein Retelling
Few characters in the history of horror have captured our attention like the Bride of Frankenstein.
Elsa Lanchester originated this electrifying role in James Whale’s 1935 classic sequel to Frankenstein, and we’ve been collectively obsessed ever since. With just a few minutes of actual screen time, the Bride quickly makes her presence known by rejecting the Monster to whom she’s been promised. For 90 years, we’ve explored this striking archetype through just about every conceivable lens. As we approach Maggie Gyllenhaal’s The Bride, which promises to be an overtly feminist take on the classic character, let’s renew our vows to this beguiling woman in a cinematic trip down the aisle, er .. memory lane.
Reimagining Mary Shelley’s foundational text, Franc Roddam’s The Bride (1985) is quintessentially 80s in tone. Released fifty years after Bride of Frankenstein, the film picks up where Whale left off with another dark and stormy night as Dr. Charles Frankenstein (Sting) prepares another dangerous experiment. He’s wired an intricate globe to harness the lightning and channel it into a woman’s corpse. But something goes wrong with the straps and pulleys holding her aloft and the constructed body is wracked with electrical currents from a multitude of lightning strikes. Convinced his creation has been destroyed, Charles prepares to declare a total loss when he hears muffled coughing from within the shroud. Clearing away the bandages, a roomful of men stare down at the face of a beautiful woman.
While this setup mirrors Whale’s iconic scene, the experiment’s results are wildly different. Jennifer Beals stars as the creature Charles calls Eva, named for the proverbial first woman, auspiciously created from the rib of a man. Just two years after her breakout performance in Flashdance, Beals had become a household name. The entire world was familiar with the gorgeous young woman’s slim silhouette, and Roddam’s staging highlights her attractive physique. Rather than a heavy sheet or billowy medical gown, Eva’s body is wrapped in semi-transparent bandages that more closely resemble a dancer’s catsuit.
Splayed on a thin harness, she’s suspended just below a massive globe wired to ripple with electric blue light, not unlike imagery from the iconic dance film. Near the peak of his own popularity, Sting’s performance as a dashing but cruel scientist adds a distinctly modern flair to this gothic story. While it may be set in a 19th-century castle, Roddam’s version of the Frankenstein story would fit right in on MTV, which itself had premiered just four years earlier.
The creature that emerges from this gauzy shroud is also remarkably modern, at least by 80s standards. Removing a white medical cap releases Beals’ trademark cascade of curly brown hair teased into an untamed halo to replicate Lanchester’s gravity-defying ‘do. But Roddam’s modern take on the Universal monster omits the white streaks seeming to emerge from her temples. Eva’s face is pale and makeup-free, seeming to imply an unbridled innocence. But the most striking difference, particularly compared to Clancy Brown’s Monster, is a lack of scars indicating a corpse’s construction. Though we will learn that her body has been pieced together from appendages salvaged from the dead, no evidence of this assembly remains on Eva’s smooth skin.
Like Botticelli’s The Birth of Venus, she has emerged from Dr. Frankenstein’s table a voluptuous woman fully formed. Ironically, Kelly LeBrock had just made waves as a similar creation in the John Hughes comedy, Weird Science, which premiered two weeks before The Bride. The cinematic scientists of 1985 were not concerned with creating life itself, but in reconstructing a vision of female perfection.
Roddam continues this focus on Eva’s form in her first conversation with her creator. As Charles sits by the fire, she wanders, naked, into the room. Her head and torso are hidden in shadow while a beam of light falls on her pubic area. This framing is likely meant to disguise Beals’ body double, but it also presents Eva as a dehumanized sexual being. While musing about his experiment, Charles will profess a desire to create “the new woman … independent, free, as bold and as proud as a man.” But his actions tell another story. Over the course of their relationship, we will learn that Charles is only offering the illusion of power. What he actually wants is the “pliant” body on display in this scene, a blank female canvas to be molded into his perfect mate.
Though Charles has no discernible reaction to Eva’s nudity, his housekeeper is horrified. Mrs. Baumann (Geraldine Page) rushes into the room, desperate to cover the young woman’s body. This traditional mother figure has been tasked with taming Charles’ creation, who has no concept of societal norms. Her brazen nakedness is an affront to the gender-based expectations Mrs. Baumann has internalized. But Eva is not intentionally rocking the boat. In a precursor to Yorgos Lanthimos’s 2023 Oscar darling Poor Things, she is a woman bestowed with a man’s liberation. She has not been raised under a lifetime of misogyny, nor has she been bred to attract a powerful husband who will give her the protection of his status and wealth. Eva sees no need to cover her body because she has not been told that it is dangerous.
As Eva gains independence, she becomes a direct threat to Charles’ authority. Save for a few painful scenes in which she learns to speak — and one wild moment in which she screams at a cat — Beals becomes a feminist champion. Nodding to her Flashdance character, an ultra-feminized dancer who feels at home in a masculine world, Beals is at her best when she’s arguing with Charles and insisting on her own autonomy. She challenges him in a philosophical debate and sneaks away for a dalliance with a handsome suitor, ignoring Regency-era fears that losing her virginity will disqualify her for any lucrative marriage. But rather than praise Eva’s independence, Charles feels emasculated. We realize that he only wants an enlightened companion to serve as a mirror to his own brilliant mind.
Finding Eva in the arms of another man, he decides to finally lock down his bride. After sharing the details of his experiments, he explains that she was created to be given away to the monster now known as Viktor (Brown). But beholding her ethereal beauty, Charles decided to claim her for himself. Threatening to “uncreate” her, he orders Eva to “obey” his plans to forcibly consummate this one-sided relationship. But Viktor reappears in the nick of time, drawn by their psychic connection. Creator and creation fight to the death until Viktor throws Charles off a high balcony.
It’s tempting to view this intrusion as a valiant prince saving a damsel in distress, but Roddam’s conclusion is anything but. After experiencing both cruelty and kindness in the larger world, Viktor has learned that love must be earned and companionship means nothing without consent. Assuming Eva will reject him again, the hulking man prepares to leave, but is surprised when she calls him back to her. Finally understanding their unique connection, Eva excitedly asks to hear his story. Roddam ends the film on this emotional connection, speaking volumes with what he does not show. A gondola hints at a romantic trip to Venice, which would fulfill Viktor’s most treasured dream. But the monstrous couple does not appear in this fantasy, implying that their future together has not yet been decided.
The film may end with Eva choosing Viktor, but we don’t yet know what their relationship will become, and she is under no obligation to fulfill the man’s dreams simply because he saved her from Dr. Frankenstein. No longer defined by her male creator, Eva is free to choose her own destiny.
Here Comes the Bride; Maggie Gyllenhaal’s spin on the Bride of Frankenstein arrives in March. We’re celebrating with a look back at the various iterations of the classic horror icon.
College kids, strippers and vampires—those were Donald P. Borchers’ only requirements when he approached Richard Wenk about writing and directing a movie for New World Pictures. As requested, Wenk cooked up Vamp (1986), a tailor-made blend of the decade’s teen movie craze as well as its horror boom.
Grim and earnest stories were still very much a part of the ’80s horror landscape, yet Vamp is something of a comedy. One difference between it and, say, Saturday the 14th, though, is the former avoids using schtick. Wenk’s movie proves that horror comedies also don’t have to subtract thrills from their recipes. Of course, it takes a minute before reaching that point; college antics and culture shocks preface this one macabre misadventure.
Vamp‘s initial setup is apt for a typical college-set, sex-driven comedy; to bribe their way into a fraternity house, two pledges (Chris Makepeace, Robert Rusler) go looking for some adult entertainment. Without wasting time on any further exposition, the characters embark on an all-in-one-night trip that quickly detours into terror.
To procure their elusive MacGuffin—a stripper willing to gyrate for some frat boys—Keith (Makepeace) and AJ (Rusler), plus a third wheel named Duncan (Gedee Watanabe), trade the safety of their remote college campus for the seediness of some unnamed city. The setting is recognizably L.A. by day, but as soon as night falls, downtown, along with the characters, slips into a kind of surreal universe. Director of photography Elliot Davis gave this early entry on his prolific résumé an unusual yet distinctive look; that Mario Bava-esque, magenta-green lighting is omnipresent, so much so that it’s almost its own character.
Chris Makepeace and Robert Rusler in Vamp
The faint comparisons to Martin Scorsese’s After Hours are merited, although not just because of Vamp’s distinguishing nighttime aesthetic. Save for the primary characters, the supporting roles in Wenk’s movie are also quite colorful and transactional in their behavior. The difference here, though, is the additional urge to ruin Keith and his friends at every turn. Some of that harm is humorous and tolerable enough, whereas the moment Vamp dishes out its first fatality, it’s abundantly clear how this movie qualifies as horror.
Vamp falls into that category of horror movie that reveals its genre with a scream rather than a series of whispers. The opening scene can function as a hint of what lies ahead—things are not at all what they appear to be—but otherwise, Wenk is more than happy to hold off on the horror. When that time does come, though, it catches the viewer off guard. In addition to the pure shock value is that sudden decision to upend the movie’s foremost feature. Or so it would seem.
If afraid of major spoilage, those new to Vamp would be wise to stop reading here. There’s just no skirting around the fact that the central fellowship in this buddy movie hits a serious snag when AJ is killed. That development causes the story to become more of a “long, bad night” journey for Keith and his romantic interest. So while Wenk scores points for subverting expectations, there is also a touch of sadness in his decision. Because if Vamp does anything well, it’s making the characters likable.
Something that comes easily to Vamp—and other teen horror movies from this same era—is its ability to invent young characters worth caring about, or at the very least, are interesting and not so immediately off-putting. More impressive is how Wenk did all this without actually fleshing out those characters. Still and all, Keith and his kind are a grade above cookie-cutter, and in some cases, aren’t completely devoid of growth.
Grace Jones in Vamp
Vamp appeals with an assorted cast of characters. No two are the same, nor are they operating on the same wavelength. The cinematically extroverted AJ, whose actor conveyed charm and vulnerability in near equal amounts, comes alive when he’s at his most undead. Makepeace then makes the chronically cautious Keith a sympathetic fellow, even as he’s more and more affected by the night’s bizarre events. Meanwhile, Duncan is indeed the designated loser of the whole bunch, but Watanabe still manages to humanize him. As a bonus, the role didn’t require him to pull a Long Duk Dong.
As for Dedee Pfeiffer, she is plain adorable as the mysterious After Dark server nicknamed “Amaretto”. She spends all night fixing her dress strap while at the same time trying to get Keith to remember how he knows her. As their offbeat romance grows, it becomes another highlight of this movie. Whether or not Pfeiffer’s character is really a vampire also creates some welcome tension in the story.
Like a lot of its contemporaries, Vamp went on to become a bit of a cult classic. That current status is determined by several factors, but without a doubt, the casting of Grace Jones is the most considerable. The image of her writhing on that unique-looking chair, a Keith Haring original, springs to mind whenever this movie is brought up.
Chris Makepeace, Billy Drago and Paunita Nichols in Vamp
Prior to that first display of unequivocal horror, local vampire queen Katrina (Jones) took to the stage and delivered a strip show like no other. One would expect nothing less from that renowned model and performance artist. By now reports of Jones’ tardiness on set are no secret, yet it’s also hard to deny her commitment to the part of Katrina. It was, in fact, Jones who took charge of her character’s appearance—on top of Haring painting her body and that now-iconic chair, she had Andy Warhol handle her costuming. And not too many actors could seize a room’s attention without saying a single line of dialogue.
In 2022, Vamp received a retrospective novelization from Encyclopocalypse. This literary union of preexisting source material—Wenk’s original screenplay—and new ideas from author Christian Francis amounts to a more comprehensive visit to the After Dark Club. The basic story there is no different than what’s shown on screen; however, Francis gets creative with the characters’ origins and designs, and he enhances a number of key scenes.
The novelization expands on the urban and social decay of the main setting, and supplies a background for the After Dark Club. Sandy Baron’s character, Katrina’s emcee and familiar, is given ample motivation for sticking around; up until the fiery end, he is loyal to his friend and former business partner “Squeak”, who looks like he was “fed through a combine harvester, and left as nothing more than a heap of mangled remains”. Then there is Billy Drago’s character Snow, the leader of a street gang called The Dragons. His reason for menacing Keith and AJ is more altruistic than in the movie; he and his peers act tough to scare off any potential food for the vampires.
Lisa Lyon in Vamp
If not for all the backstories, Francis’ Vamp would be a hell of a lot shorter. Instead, this tie-in read dives into how AJ met Keith—the orphaned Anthony Joseph hailed from a broken home back in Brooklyn—and how their friendship flourished over the years. Keith’s archership is no longer just an assumed part of his entire being; it’s a confidence-building extracurricular for a boy who got picked on before coming into the protection of the new kid in town. These supplemental, in-depth looks at the protagonists, plus their close connection, are maybe unnecessary. The movie already did a fair and concise job of addressing their platonic intimacy without the need for flashbacks and insights, specifically in that scene where AJ lays it all out as he sacrifices himself.
Where the novelization gets off course is its approach to the minor characters. Intermittently backstorying the likes of Katrina’s indentured servants, Seko (Leila Hee Olsen) and Vlad (Brad Logan), ends up disturbing the flow of the writing. Was it absolutely essential that readers know Vlad was the Grand Duke of the House of Romanov, or how Snow’s accomplice Maven (Paunita Nichols) became so dentally challenged? No, not really. However, one’s mileage with these random biographies may vary.
The novelization is a more substantial experience, but for a movie like Vamp, less is more. And as plentiful as they are, it never simply coasts on its campy charms, either. The character work sits comfortably in that realm between cursory and meticulous, the script is sharper than first realized, and Greg Cannom’s vampire makeup is straightforward yet effective. Most of all, the movie didn’t squander its out-of-the-box concept. Richard Wenk made his vision of a “comic nightmare in which just about anything that can go wrong does” come true, and it is very enjoyable.
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