So Shaw had finally made it into the hallowed halls of the elusive VOLCAAAANO MAAAANOR, where she met Tanith, the mistress of the magmatic estate.
Apparently this lady wants Shaw to murder some fellow Tarnished, which, according to this dude, is considered blasphemous. I kind of have to agree with him. Also, what the hell is up with Rya? She is still hunched over and acting quite weird.
In any case, Shaw totally wrecked their banquet hall. Lest you think this happened fighting the invader that spawns in this room, allow me to clarify; Shaw defeated him without so much as denting a single piece of furniture. No indeed, all that wreckage came afterwards, just for funsies.
One thing Shaw did notice about VOLCAAAANO MAAAANOR is that it bears a striking resemblance to Dr. Frankenstein’s mansion, in the film The Bride, starring Sting and Jennifer Beals from 1985.
In this classic film, we spend most of the film, not with Sting or the bride, but rather with the monster and a little person named Renaldo. Just like in Mary Shelley‘s timeless horror/science-fiction novel, the monster is rejected by the bride, so he flees the scene, saves Renaldo from being bullied by a group of school children, and then joins him on a road trip to go join a circus in Budapest.
While on the road, Renaldo convinces the monster to undress so he can fix up his clothes. The reason given, so they can make a good impression on the circus folk. Sure buddy. While the monster is shirtless, he also tells him about his dream of going to Venice, which is symbolized by a gold Venice necklace he wears around his neck.
Eventually, they do reach Budapest, but not before getting drunk at a roadside inn, enjoying a puppet show, and dropping not one, but two caramel apples after being shoved by random people in the city. Once they’ve joined the circus, their act consists of Renaldo pretending to fall from a trapeze (don’t worry, he’s wearing a safety harness) and the monster dressed up as an old woman, pretending to be scared that her baby is about to fall.
Occasionally, the movie cuts to what Sting and the bride are up to. Here we see them auditioning Cary Elwes for his role in the Princess Bride.
Since the trapeze act has been such a resounding success, Renaldo makes the mistake of asking for more money from the unnecessarily shirtless ringmaster. He already receives what looks like a stack of coins, but then he asks for just one more, and while the ringmaster reluctantly gives it up, he hatches a plot with his underlining to dispatch their star attraction.
His harness having been cut, Renaldo plunges to his death on the big top floor, but he doesn’t die immediately. He lives long enough so that the monster (now named Victor) can bring him outside, and with his dying breath he gives him his prized Venice necklace.
Instead of going to Venice, Victor decides to go find the woman he loves, or at least the woman he met briefly for about 30 seconds in the opening scene. Logically, he decides to spend all the gold Renaldo had been saving up for his Venice trip on a cheap necklace for the bride. Thankfully, the merchant takes pity on the poor moron, and gives him most of his money back.
We should pause for a minute here, to point out that the bride and Victor seem to have a psychic link. In an early scene, when she is spinning around in a field for fun, Victor simultaneously gets dizzy. This link is not shown again for most of the movie. Anyway, back in Geneva (?), Frankenstein is throwing a lavish party, during which he unveils a snow globe with a miniature version of the party inside it. When he spins the snow globe, all the guests in the ballroom are covered in a blanket of gold glitter that falls from the ceiling. How long did it take him to set this up? Where did he get all that glitter? How did he make sure the glitter fell everywhere at the same time? Did he do a dry run beforehand? So many questions…
This would be a good time to point out that while the bride was originally made for Victor (the monster, not the doctor) when Victor (the doctor, not the monster) saw her, he thought she was too beautiful for Victor (the monster, not the doctor). The subsequent brouhaha was the inciting event of the movie. So while the monster was off on his buddy comedy road trip, Sting was doing his best Henry Higgins impersonation with the bride. He wanted to make her into a woman who would be equal or better than a man. This is something he says out loud. He also seems to genuinely care about the bride (he names her Eva at some point). He considers her to be a child and his ward, so of course, in the last third of the movie he becomes violently jealous, threatening to break the arm of his housekeeper when she won’t tell him where Eva went.
She was with the Dread Pirate Roberts of course, who also does a complete 180 and turns into a huge asshole as soon as Sting discovers their relationship. Apparently, he never really liked her.
We’re skipping over a lot of plot here, so just go with it, but when Sting tries to assault Eva, her psychic link with Victor (the monster) re-activates, and he breaks out of his shackles, knocks down the door to his cell, and runs all the way across town to make it back to the room just in time to prevent the unthinkable.
A fight ensues, then a chase, culminating at the top of a tower, from which Sting takes an accidental swan dive. Despite falling at the same time as his torch (or burning log), his weapon seems to be falling at a much faster rate, which is just not possible. I looked it up to be sure, and while the burning log would fall slightly faster, the height of the fall would need to be much greater before the separation difference would be noticeable.
So now that are couple are reunited, which is less weird then it sounds because the monster’s scars and make-up become less and less noticeable as the movie progresses. Maybe he was healing? Anyway, just before the credits roll, we get a shot of the erstwhile Renaldo, superimposed over footage of the Venice lagoon, where he says: “Follow your heart and you’ll be fine. Follow your dream, it’s the key to everything.” Why? I don’t know.
At least we know Victor and the bride made it to Venice.
And I imagine these were re-shoots because test audiences were confused about whether they made it to Venice or not since Jennifer Beals is now rocking a distinctly 80’s hairdo.
So, The Bride (1985). 10/10. I did not even describe half of the insane stuff that happens in this movie. Oh, and Shaw also went to see The Bride! (2026). A solid film, but not as crazy or as weird. The trailer makes it seem like a riff on Bonny and Clyde, but it’s much more interesting that that. 8/10. Which is your favorite bride movie?
BONUS FACT: In the universe of both movies, Mary Shelley exists. Which just raises so many more questions.
