Bride of Monster Mania (2000)
** 1/2 (out of 4)
Cassandra Peters (aka Elvira) hosts this documentary that takes a look at women's roles in the horror genre from the silent era to recent films. The film breaks everything up into different "types" and we start off with the witch/vampire sub-genre where we see clips from movies such as HAXAN, I MARRIED A WITCH, BLACK Sunday, Dracula, Dracula'S DAUGHTER, MARK OF THE VAMPIRE, BLOOD AND ROSES, BRIDES OF Dracula, THE VAMPIRE LOVERS, LUST FOR A VAMPIRE, TWINS OF EVIL and COUNTESS Dracula. The "creating women" section features clips from METROPOLIS and BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN and then we jump a couple decades until the likes of THE SHE CREATURE, SHE DEMONS, FRANKENSTEIN'S DAUGHTER, THE BRAIN THAT WOULDN'T DIE, FRANKENSTEIN CREATED WOMEN, DR. JEKYLL AND SISTER HYDE and SPECIES were released. These here are followed by possession films like WHITE ZOMBIE, THE EXORCIST and BEYOND THE DOOR and finally we get female aliens with CAT WOMEN OF THE MOON, QUEEN OF BLOOD and of course ALIEN and its sequels. If you know very little about the genre then you're still likely to know everything they're "teaching" you here. There's really nothing too special about this thing and it's mainly going to appeal to those who simply have 51-minutes to kill. We get interviews with a couple doctors who try to explain various "thoughts" of people who make or watch this type of thing but the docs come off rather silly and stupid, as do many "mental" people who try to explain the genre. Don Glut and Bill Warren are good in their brief talks but they're not featured enough. The same is true with Ingrid Pitt who gets a couple lines. So, the filmmakers idea of a good documentary is to have doctors yet overlook and not give as much time to someone like Pitt?
