THE BRIDE All the excitement you'd expect from Sting I don't think I would ever have bothered renting this ill-received 1985 take on Bride Of Frankenstein if it didn't have Clancy Brown in the role as Frankenstein's original creature. The Bride opens with Charles (!) Frankenstein (Sting) creating, with the help of Igor and his still-living (!) friend Clerval (Anthony Higgins), a bride for his creature, who stands by excitedly. His second creation is a lot more gracefully put together than the first; she's played by Jennifer Beals, and there's not a stitch to be seen. But the creature gets a little too impatient to receive his bride, and somehow destroys the entire lab in his efforts to get to her. So the creature runs off and befriends a midget (David Rappaport) with dreams of circus stardom. Meanwhile, Frankenstein tries teaching his new creation, who he names Eva, the ways of polite society, until of course he falls in love with her and completely forgets that there's still his original creation out there. The scenes between Sting and Beals are, how shall I put this delicately...the most boring shit I've ever seen in my entire life. Sting is even more thuddingly dull on screen than he is on record, and that's saying a lot. Beals demonstrates all the personality of a plate of Kraft Dinner. Watching their scenes together is like watching cardboard cutouts get pushed around with sticks while voiceovers are provided by Ben Stein and the kid from Small Wonder. The scenes with Brown and Rappaport, however, are mostly quite good. I couldn't help but smile every time Rappaport spoke; I must've seen Time Bandits two dozen times as a young 'un, and just hearing this guy talk made me feel like a kid again. Even without that, Rappaport's role is engaging and likeable, and I couldn't have hoped for anyone better for Brown to spend most of his screen time with. Brown himself, alas, is a letdown. That he's unrecognizable (despite there being relatively little makeup) isn't the problem; the problem is that playing the creature (later named Victor) as something of a big sentiment-begging galoot with a fairly serious mental handicap is not an acting decision I would have supported. He gets better as the movie goes on, taking something of a big step forward when he no longer has Rappaport to steal all of his scenes away, but it's a long, ass-numbing sit, and in the meantime, we have to deal with a love triangle provoked by the arrival of one of the most annoying actors of our time, Cary Elwes. Victor develops a psychic link (gah!) with Eve, and even the writing (copy, whatever) on the back of the box is among the worst I've ever read. I mean, is this movie trying to kill me? Every time you think it can't get any worse, it does. I'm sure this all looked very nice on paper, but bad acting and glacial direction and editing turn it into utter crap by film's end. Worst Frankenstein movie ever. Written by Lloyd Fonvielle, directed by Franc Roddam. BACK TO THE B's BACK TO THE MAIN PAGE