Movie
The Perfect Bride (1991)
This is a routine “psycho woman” thriller in many ways, but some inventive kill sequences, a high body count and fast pacing – plus an enjoyable British bad girl turn from Sammi Davis – earn this film and its villainess a top 40 spot. Which is probably why the movie still airs on Lifetime despite it being over thirty years old now. Whenever you need a reliable made for TV effort, the 1990s is surely the decade to choose.
The title character is a woman with very high standards when it comes to future husbands. Any sign of infidelity or even a hint of imperfection, and you can expect a lethal injection. That also goes for anyone who dares to get in her way, and there are plenty of minor characters who end up having “unfortunate” heart attacks. One wonders whether police in this town actually know about forensics and autopsies, but since the plot requires only the heroine Laura (Kelly Preston) see the truth about Stephanie, the deaths are written off as natural causes.
Laura has a stubborn family, which is a problem when her brother’s bride-to-be is a homicidal lunatic who spouts “bad girl” lines (in a posh English accent, no less) whenever she eliminates an obstacle. Besides the besotten groom Ted (Linden Ashby), Stephanie also charms Laura’s unsupportive mother, her senile grandfather, and Ted’s police officer friend into believing she has strictly harmless intentions. So it’s down to Laura to be the snoopy investigator and save Ted from the psycho’s needle.
Villainess
Stephanie (Sammi Davis)
Like all good TV movie villainesses, Stephanie claims her first victim early on. This is a groom on the night before his wedding, looking forward to some pre-marital sex only to discover the hard way his bride isn’t too pleased with him visiting his ex-girlfriend. After literally making her point with a syringe, Stephanie pauses to smile at her own reflection in the bathroom mirror. It’s pretty clear this woman is a psycho from the outset, but this moment should erase any lingering doubts.
With the opening kill out of the way, it’s time for Stephanie to enter Ted and Laura’s life. Initial impressions are good, but Laura becomes suspicious when Stephanie reacts coldly to a woman receptionist (one of Ted’s former girlfriends) and snaps at a dress fitter for some trivial mistake. Purchasing a cheap table cloth and claiming it’s a precious family heirloom is a ruse Laura soon sees through, and now she’s really worried about her brother. Of course nobody listens to Laura (that would be too easy) and Stephanie always has an excuse ready for any odd behaviour.
To keep things moving there are a couple of victims for Stephanie to bump off. First up is a caterer who recognises her from a previous wedding. That’s simply too much of a threat, so the killer bride comes calling with her hypodermic needle. Surprisingly the woman puts up a real fight, considering she’s a minor character and they’re usually killed with little fanfare. After a lengthy struggle in the kitchen, Stephanie flees when things don’t go her way, but then the caterer does the stupid thing and checks out the basement. That proves to be a fatal error in judgment, although – in a cruel twist of fate – Laura’s mother decides not to employ her services anyway.
Laura enlists the help of a priest to give Ted and Stephanie marriage counselling, so no surprise he ends up next on the kill list. The murderess has flashbacks to her childhood when her mother committed suicide and warned her about men. Quite an impression to leave on a distraught young girl, which explains the grown up Stephanie’s obsession with finding Mister Perfect. After one especially insane rant, the priest decides to postpone the big day – and that’s the villainess’ cue to induce a heart attack. The family think nothing of the sudden death, and the wedding is back on.
An increasingly desperate Laura digs deeper into Stephanie’s past and tracks down a woman who knew her previous victim before his untimely passing. Unfortunately Stephanie listens in on Laura’s phone conversation and so puts on a clever disguise – and American accent – to lure the witness into a trap. Here we get a funny moment with Stephanie driving and almost having an accident, which causes her to yell “Bloody hell!” (in upper crust English) and give herself away. The witness escapes, only to be knocked down by an oncoming car.
Stephanie learns the woman survived from a news report, so she visits the hospital disguised as a nurse to finish the job. It’s never a good thing to be unconscious or badly injured in one of these films, is it? Once the killer has asphyxiated her victim, she returns home. Laura’s grandfather sees Stephanie in a nurse’s uniform, but he’s a doddering old guy nobody believes. After gloating over Laura’s now-dead lead, Stephanie turns her attention back to Ted.
With such ludicrously high standards, the groom was always going to disappoint the bride, and the snapping point comes when Stephanie sees Ted with the receptionist (remember her?) at a bachelor party. So she dons her wedding gown and readies her needle. Laura comes racing to the rescue and saves a disbelieving Ted, but he quickly changes his tune once Stephanie stabs him with a kitchen knife. There’s a short, semi-decent stalk/chase scene which includes a brief catfight and ends with Laura hiding in the attic. Fortunately she arms herself with a baseball bat, and sends the psycho on a fatal tumble downstairs.
Video Review
Honourable Mention (Unranked)
The Perfect Marriage (2006) – Marianne Danforth (Jamie Luner)
The Perfect prefix usually indicates a TV movie aimed at Lifetime audiences, and this is indeed another one of those films. Marianne (formerly Annie Grayson) is a scheming woman quite prepared to murder husbands for their money. She killed her previous spouse with a lethal injection, a crime she planned with her lover Brent (James Wilder). After he used most of the quarter of a million dollar payout to settle debts, Marianne decided to dump him.
A few years later, Marianne is now happily married to the son of a wealthy businessman. That’s when Brent re-enters Marianne’s life, and pretty soon the two of them have eyes on the family fortune. The villainess delays killing the father until he seals a big company deal, then it’s time for an induced heart attack. A nosy assistant gets too close to the truth and carelessly gets seen by Marianne, so Brent murders her. A female associate of the husband named Tia then picks up the trail and essentially becomes the protagonist of the movie for the final act.
Marianne decides Brent is expendable, so he gets the injection treatment. Perhaps he shouldn’t have provided potassium chloride to a scorned woman. In the finale, Marianne tries to silence Tia which leads to a longer than usual chase scene with the villainess hunting her prey in a parking garage. Eventually – after a scuffle and stalking scene – Marianne gets run over by some random person in a vehicle. A disappointing end to a decent thriller.
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