The Bride! puts an exclamation point on the title, possibly to indicate how much fun the critics have had coming up with fresh ways to pan the film. It has been called "a grunge version of The Munsters" and "an intellectual joyride without the joy," in addition to other snide and snarky remarks. However, it has its fans. TFH Chief Guru, Joe Dante, is one, and he feels The Bride! will probably end up as a cult movie.
The bride in question is that of Frankenstein's monster, who we're calling "Frank" this time around. Christian Bale is Frank, while Jessie Buckley plays a dual role, although one of those roles goes by three different names. She's alive, she's dead, she's reanimated, she's dead again. Talk about mood swings.
In Maggie Gyllenhaal's reimagining of the Frankenstein story, Frank just wants a mate, and he goes to a doctor in 1930s Chicago who reanimates dead people. That's quite a specialty to put on your shingle. What a couple they make. They walk, they talk, they dance, they go to the movies. Ah, yeah, they kill people, too.
South Africa's Radford Dale Winery has a Pinotage called Frankenstein. The name was given due to the bad reputation the Pinotage grape has for being harsh and medicinal. They say if the grape is treated meanly it will show its angry side, much like The Monster. In defense of Pinotage, the winery says the grape, "is not a monster; it is a soul with a heart and one which will repay kindness with abundant generosity of its own." Keep your pitchforks in the barn.
I Married a Monster from Outer Space, from 1958, pretty much spills the tea in the title. A newlywed bride discovers that her husband is actually, well, a monster from outer space. The happy couple is shown toasting their marriage, presumably with a nice sparkling wine. Obviously, some things are beyond a Champagne fix.
In Monster, they borrowed a page or two from Invasion of the Body Snatchers. The bride in question wasn't the only woman in town whose husband suffered an alien takeover. Body snatching was a big thing in the 1950s. It's a shame they missed snatching Joe McCarthy.
If you have been wondering when we would pair a movie with a wine from Beaujolais that is not red, although I don't know why you would wonder that, here it is. Alien, from Domaine Saint-Cyr is 100% Aligoté, which is more than we can say about the husband in Monster. It comes highly recommended, as it should at $50 a bottle.
1951's Bride of the Gorilla works the same turf as The Bride and the Beast, but with a different plow.
Raymond Burr plays a guy who has a curse thrown onto him by, well, it doesn't matter. It's a curse. It turns him into a gorilla-like beast, which the wife does not dig. The husband/beast in this film takes a nightly spin on the karmic wheel. If you've ever seen it happen, you know how it ends.
Gorilla comes from Jason Oliva Wine in South Africa's Stellenbosch region. It is a Bordeaux-style blend which is heavy on the Cabernet Franc. The price is listed at just under $100 a bottle.
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