The Perfect Bride (1991) Reviews

• Slightly Entertaining Crap

  bejinkybabe2006-03-08

  Just to warn all who happen to come across this movie, it's quite anti-climactic. You keep thinking, what kind of moronic fools do these people have to be to ignore all of the signs and warnings that the bride-to-be is a complete psycho. Then, after a predictable "climax", there is no revenge for the girl who was right all along, and whom nobody believed. Sure, she finally shows everyone that she was right, but you don't get to see any of the after effects. There is no, "sorry, we were so friggin' stupid and didn't believe our own daughter over some outsider we didn't even know," from the family that begins to think that the good girl is having delusions. Anyway, the whole point is that the movie is predictable, and that it's wholly unrealistic. No one is THAT stupid not to believe their own daughter, sister, or friend.

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• Average psycho thriller.

  poolandrews2006-01-30

  The Perfect Bride starts on the night before the day Robert Price (Mark Drexler) is due to get married, however his bride-to-be has different ideas as she pumps him full of potassium causing a fatal heart attack... Ted Whitman (Linden Ashby) is engaged to Stephanie (Sammi Davis) & the time has come to introduce her to his family. Seemingly things go well & everyone adores Stephanie, that is except Ted's sister Laura (Kelly Preston) who becomes suspicious of her, her past & her real motives for marrying Ted. To start the ball rolling Laura discovers that Stephanie has lied about her past, then the wedding caterer Hazel Moore (Patricia Wilson) swears she's seen Stephanie before while catering a wedding that ending in unfortunate circumstances. Laura becomes absolutely convinced that Ted is in danger when people associated with the wedding begin to die, as Laura digs into Stephanie's past the sinister truth starts to reveal itself but is it already too late... Directed by Terrence O'Hara The Perfect Bride is far from the perfect thriller, although if your undemanding then it will pass 90 odd minutes. The script by Claire Montgomery & Monte Montgomery lets the audience know it's intentions straight away & as a consequence it's fairly predictable, we the viewer know that Stephanie is psycho but it takes the remainder of the film for most of the character's to figure it out so in a sense we are just waiting for them to catch up. The film doesn't have much credibility as a serious thriller either, I'm not sure Stephanie could go around murdering all these people in exactly the same way (both in the time it's set & the past as she's done this sort of thing before) without a single raised eyebrow, surely someone would have had some suspicions? Her quest for a perfect wedding make little sense when her motives are finally revealed & she never really intends to hurt anyone they just sort of get in her way & jeopardise the perfect wedding she longs for, I could have done with her being a bit more evil as merely shouting at someone isn't exactly a big deal these days. The character's are OK but no-one except Stephanie & Laura are given much screen time. The film is has a slow pace but just about enough happened to prevent me from falling asleep, just. Director O'Hara brings nothing to the film & The Perfect Bride wouldn't look out of place as a cheap made-for-TV time filler on a Saturday afternoon, which is what it probably is. Forget about any gore, Stephanie disposes of her victims with a injection of potassium so there isn't a drop of blood involved. There is one single shot of someone with slit wrists, that's it for blood. Technically The Perfect Bride is competent but has that made-for-TV bland, flat & utterly forgettable feel about it. The acting is pretty poor by the bit-part actors although Preston does alright as the heroine & Davis makes for a reasonably effective villain switching between perfect in-law to devious killer with ease. The Perfect Bride is an average thriller, there's not much excitement, there's no mystery & it's far fetched to say the least. Little to recommend.

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• Wicked widow weaves web, woos, weds & wastes

  helpless_dancer2001-09-16

  Had this film been a submarine it would have sunk in shallow water from all the holes. This woman was so psychotic she couldn't have hidden her condition from a half witted, blind, ten year old. She had more problems than a certain gentleman driving a white Bronco down an L.A. freeway. All her victims sported a pair of dead giveaways that any first year morgue attendant could spot from across the street. Hello? Do the authorities know how to spell autopsy? Aside from these glaring holes the size of King Kong's hemorrhoids it wasn't a total wash-out. Decent enough performances but the pratfalls were strictly amateurville. After the first 5 minutes I saw exactly how the thing would end....and it did. This picture reminded me a lot of 2 other movies in this genre which were much better: "Black Widow" and "The Hand That Rocks the Cradle".

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• bad bad bad over the hill horror

  guilfisher-12007-02-09

  One of the top worst ever on TV. Story, cast, directing, writing all bad bad bad. Of course it's good to see Kelly Preston, who is the only saving grace in this. With what she's given to do she does. In the writing department, after her struggle with the villain and her brother slashed, does she call the police? Was there 911 then? No, she walks through the house as a target to the heavy who's waiting for her. Unbelievable she didn't call for help for her brother lying on the floor having been stabbed in the abdomen. Another bad choice is having the witch come into a public hospital and block the tubes up so the patient will die. Don't hospitals have monitors keeping track of these machines to know when there's danger? The witch stood there for what seemed eternity while the patient died. Nonsense. Another bad choice is when the Caterer having been attacked by our lovely witch and escaped brandishing a knife goes searching for her even to going out of the house, after she sees her leave. Ever hear of locking the doors and calling police? Nonsense. Linden Ashby plays the unsuspecting bridegroom and Sammi Davis the witch. And what a surprise to see John Agar, Shirley Temple's ex playing Gramps. He was so bad, he was funny. It's also a case where the bridegroom is prettier than the bride. Sammi Davis just isn't it in the looks department and also not good in the acting department. I think the family deserved her. They were so stupid not to see her for what she was. She was that obvious. And with people dropping dead all over the place. And one of the family friends, a cop. A waste of celluloid, believe me.

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• Comic Book Drama

  rmax3048232003-10-15

  SPOILERS. Men and women are different. Yes, I'm afraid it's true. Women like to talk about things, especially relationships. There are intrigues, exiles, confidantes, the sharing of secrets with best friends. Men like to do things. They compete for power, they define themselves by their actions, they are uncomfortable with self revelation or attempts at insight. That's why it's so neat when a man and a woman go out on a dinner date. They can both do what they enjoy doing. The woman can talk and the man can eat. This is a woman's story -- all about secrets, victimization, and so forth. Sammi Davis, a name to conjure with, is a murderous blonde who offs her husbands on their wedding nights. Everyplace she goes, she seems to leave a string of corpses behind but nobody notices except Kelly Preston, whose brother Davis is about to marry. Kelly snoops and digs up evidence of Davis's past but of course no one believes her, especially not her family, so she begins sounding like someone who is a few clowns short of a circus. In the end everyone comes to their senses and realizes how right she was all along, of course, because this is a woman's fantasy. I don't think we ever find out what the prospective bride groom does for a living. (Working is behaving, not talking.) The ending turns into a routine slasher thing with Davis pursuing Preston through the house with a butcher knife. Preston hides in the attic. The potential victim must always hide from the murderer either in a dark attic or a dark cellar. That's from Section 12B-1 of the screenwriter's code. The acting. Absolutely awful. Not one believable word is uttered on screen. It's barely a notch above what we find in skin flicks, or what I prefer to call "cinema erotique." (Sorry, I can't find the accents for those "e"s.) Sammi Davis is execrable, but then they all are, from the talent all the way on down to the lowest atmosphere person. John Agar, as the semi-senile "Gramps," is SO bad he's actually funny. Kelly Preston is good-looking in an ordinary way. Sammi Davis, however, has a memorable face, a strangely vulpine set of features, big jaw, broad nose, crossed eyes. It's really too bad she can't act because her looks have character that her voice lacks. I guess I won't go on about this. I sat through it fascinated because I needed to know if it was as shallow as it all seemed to be. It was like rubbernecking at a highway accident full of twisted metal and body parts. Sammi Davis is even given a ten-cent motive for all those killings. (We see several flashbacks leading up to this revelation.) Her mother, deserted by her father, slits her own wrists and dies on the bathroom floor, but not before telling Sammi -- "Don't ever let any man do to you what your father did to me." If you think you might enjoy seeing a well-done version of this story, one that's better in every respect, and not just because of higher production values, see "Black Widow." It's a movie in which we never do find out why Theresa Russell kills all her mates, because such an explanation is impossible. Outside of comic books, anyway.

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