Sunday Cinema
Here is the next section of the Subliminal Cinema chapter called "Weird Sex: Making the Beast With Two Backs With the Beast With Two Backs." It's by Scott C.
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As we’ve seen from recent, Jane Goodall-like observations of wingnut mating practices, the hottest trends—fathers selecting their daughter’s suitors, married women submitting to their husband’s Head (presumably this applies only to Mrs. Bob Rafelson, who is subjected to constant screenings of her husband’s film about the Monkees)—it seems that Christian fundamentalists are wholly in tune with Bush’s "ownership society." Your wife and daughters are a commodity, like pork bellies or Social Security contributions, and should be invested as you see fit.
But what if your tail refuses to submit to your head? What if, instead of patiently tatting in the parlor while you interview potential boyfriends, your daughters—oh, I don’t know—tart around Austin with a fake ID and get hammered on margaritas and sake bombs? Free will—like certain vulnerabilities in Windows XP—is a clear design flaw in God’s otherwise perfect plan that can be exploited by sexual hackers and negatively impact your portfolio.
And what about those Suitable Boys? How can today’s biblically-inclined young swain be sure that when he accepts a date from his girlfriend’s father that he’ll eventually get all the head he’s entitled to? The answer is simple: do what Sting does! (Well, don't do everything Sting does. Don't, for instance, wear a tiny leather Speedo and screech like a demented macaw the way he did in Dune). Build your own girlfriend! That way you can rest assured that she has been completely untouched by human hands, if you don’t count the embalmer. Yes, our next lesson comes courtesy of The Bride, which shows us what happens when a rock star loves a cadaver very, very much.
The Bride (1985)
Directed by: Franc Roddam
Written by: Lloyd Fonvielle
Tagline: "A woman born of electricity . . . a man driven by passion!"
This film stars Sting, and is probably the most flagrant example you’ll ever find of Police brutality.
It’s a dark and stormy night. Baron von Frankensting is sitting around his ancestral home, Schloss Kardboard Kutout, playing "Mousetrap!" with Quentin Crisp and a crash test dummy. For some reason, the game causes Frankensting’s Monster to experience nocturnal emissions, so they pack it in and decide to electrocute Jennifer Beals instead. True to the genre, a bolt of lightning succeeds in reanimating her corpse, but it frizzes out her hair something awful. Jennifer loses a game of "Mystery Date," and the Monster arrives at the lab door to pick her up. It seems that Frankensting is a sort of necrophiliac’s Chuck Woolery, but his matchmaking doesn’t go very well. Emasculated, the Monster stumbles blindly into the forest, where he attends a John Bly workshop and attempts to get in touch with his inner corpse.
The Baron, we now learn, is a radical feminist who hopes to use Jennifer to create "the New Woman." Equal and assertive. Fearless as a man. Able to bring home the bacon and fry it up in a pan.
Frankensting sits by the fire, contemplating his utopia of sexual equality, when Jennifer toddles in stark naked, squats at his feet, and begins sucking her fingers. The Baron reassesses his priorities.
Meanwhile, in a cave somewhere, the Monster is receiving relationship counseling from a dwarf.
Frankensting gives Jennifer the Eliza Doolittle treatment, and her education progresses swiftly. Soon she has learned to wear a hoop skirt and spin rapidly in a circle until she projectile vomits. Meanwhile, somewhere in Bavaria, the Monster becomes queasy, thus proving that there is either a psychic link between Jennifer and the Monster, or that the curried wurst he had at Oktoberfest isn’t agreeing with him.
Frankensting takes Jennifer on a field trip to a mausoleum. A pleasant time is had by all, picking through the loose femurs and ulnas, but the Baron becomes insanely jealous over Jennifer’s infatuation with a rotting skull, and refuses to show her his bone.
By this point, Jennifer has become sufficiently refined that Frankensting and Colonel Pickering decide to take her to the Embassy Ball, after which she belts out the show-stopping number, "I Could Have Danced All Night (If I Wasn’t a Corpse)."
During the ball, she meets the extremely blonde Cary Elwes, who is dressed in a Prussian Hussar’s uniform and looking slightly more Aryan than Beowulf. Predictably, Frankensting becomes jealous of Cary’s skull, and runs off to hide in his secret fort and smoke crack.
Later, in an astonishing scientific breakthrough, the Baron invents glitter, and throws a party to celebrate. But when he peeks into the master suite and finds Jennifer and Cary making out, he goes ballistic, because his parents are coming home soon and he told everyone to stay out of their bedroom.
Even later, Jennifer goes to Cary’s house, and in a tender, erotic scene, they strip down to see which of them has the frilliest underwear. Through their psychic link, the Monster, who is now rotting in prison, finds his nipples strangely engorged.
Meanwhile, all this talk of engorged nipples proves too much for the Baron, and he suddenly turns into Bob Packwood. The Monster bursts into the room to rescue Jennifer, then turns and runs away as Frankensting chases him with a torch, shouting, "Have a little fire, Scarecrow!" They race all over the castle in a weird, pyromaniacal "Benny Hill" sketch, until Frankensting, after trying several times, finally succeeds in falling off the tower. And while the Baron’s death doesn’t exactly come as a surprise, it does answer a question the audience has been asking with increasing exasperation for the last 90 minutes: Sting, where is thy Death? As the superimposed face of a dwarf looks on and recites weird platitudes like Obi-Wan Kenobi, the two reanimated lovers go to Venice, where their rotting bodies cause a cholera epidemic that winds up killing Gustav von Aschenbach. The End.
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So, if you’re a picky guy or gal who just can’t find anybody good enough for you, why not make your own partner, using ordinary items found around the house? (And this really isn’t necrophilia, since Jennifer Beales is alive, ALIVE—it’s just her performance that reeks of carrion). Now you can have a woman with the legs, hips, butt, and breasts of your choice--although she may also have a bad case of the frizzies and a yen for your jumper cables.
However, some say that rock stars and other celebrities shouldn’t be allowed to create life, since they already have large enough egos, and if they get further encouragement to believe they are gods, we as a nation won’t ever get any work done, what with all the religious holidays. (Although we think that D-Cameron Night, the Sunday when we honor the King of the World and thank Him creating a boat that saved two of every starlet from the big flood, is a nice family celebration.)
Others say that celebrities shouldn’t be allowed to build their own people since they give them such stupid names. I mean, it’s one thing to be born "Rumer" or "Scout" or "Satchmo"—you get time to adjust to it, and can make plans for the vengeance you plan to wreak on your parents for giving you such a dopey moniker. Like, joining a cult and changing your name. (It’s a little known fact that Trent Lott was born "Starshine Mushroom Zappa," but took a new appellation and joined the Republican Party when he turned 18.) But if you’re brought back from the dead by Richard Gere and told that you’re called "Free Tibet Now Frankenstein," you will have no choice but to go on murderous rampages, throw little girls into lakes, and generally act out. So, we feel that perhaps everyone is better off just buying pre-fab sexual partners, because while they might not come in as many options as do-it-yourself models, they do have better warranties and aren’t as likely to cuckold you with a cadaver, or worse, Cary Elwes.
Next week, we move on to a film that explains why "sleeping with the fishes" is such a potent Mafia threat . . .
11:51:20 AM 
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