The Bride! is now out on HBO Max for us home viewers. I loved it! I know a lot of fancy critics found fault with it, but I loved it. It’s gross and dark and full of feminine rage. It’s built around a clever plot with campy fun all the way. There are spoilers ahead.

The Bride! begins with the ghost of Mary Shelley (the woman who wrote Frankenstein) possessing the body of 1930s Ida. Jessie Buckley plays Mary Shelley, Ida, and The Bride. Ida goes a little crazy in a busy restaurant, and accuses a mobster named Lupino (Zlatko Burić) of killing women and cutting out their tongues for his trophy case.

Maggie Gyllenhaal wrote and directed The Bride! Every time anyone said the name Lupino I thought of Ida Lupino, one of the first women directors in Hollywood, and silently thanked Maggie Gyllenhaal for the homage.

Ida gets killed for her outburst. Into the ground she goes.

Meanwhile a stitched together Frankenstein AKA Frank (Christian Bale) has been living over 100 years. Alone. He wants a woman. He’s been reading about a mad scientist named Dr. Euphronious (Annette Bening) who can reanimate mice. He pays her a visit and asks her to reanimate him a bride because he wants intercourse.

They head for the grave yard and dig up Ida. Dr. Euphronious’s laboratory was a real treat to see and a feat of steam punk imagination. They reanimate Ida in that lab. She doesn’t remember who she is and accepts it when Frank and the doc tell her that she is Frank’s bride. She looks pretty gruesome, with chemical stains on her skin and some repaired parts.

The first time Frank and The Bride! go out they end up accidentally killing people. For the rest of the movie, the cops are after them. Penélope Cruz and Peter Sarsgaard play the cops. Penélope Cruz as the detective was an awesome version of a modern woman.

Frank and the bride are easy to follow because 1) they look like monsters, and 2) Frank loves movies starring Ronnie Reed (Jake Gyllenhaal).

Ronnie Reed is a Gene Kelly knockoff. He makes musicals in which he sings and dances. Frank imagines himself singing and dancing with him on stage. He lives for these happy moments in his imagination.

Frank and the bride wander the country looking for Ronnie Reed movies. They fall in love, have lots of intercourse, and often run into trouble with the locals. They accidentally have to kill more people, mostly creeps and rapists. It was a Bonnie and Clyde scenario for quite a while, although instead of robbing banks they scooped up coins from fountains.

Then the bride started remembering things. Mary Shelley urged her on at times – she was still possessed. She remembered Lupino, who liked to kill women and cut out their tongues. She started naming names.

Let’s talk about believing women. When the bride started naming names, the women in the country made her an icon. They believed her. They copied her style, tattooed themselves to match her scarring, celebrated her. The men involved wanted to kill her. There were no offers of hush money with NDAs to sign. They simply meant to kill her.

I’ll stop here with the spoilers and leave the delicious and electrifying conclusion secret. Once again, it reminded me of Bonnie and Clyde.

The grotesque lovers in this movie were the best and kindest people in the film. Jessie Buckley was amazing, as always, and Christian Bale was a sweeter sweetheart than Gene Kelly himself could have been. I loved the way the women in the country identified with the bride and her rage. They had all had it with men and they were ready to revolt. This was a women’s movie. Which is probably why a lot of critics complained about it. Speaking as a woman, I loved it.

Have you seen it? What did you think?