My Bloody Wedding – review

Director: Morgan Mead

Release date: 2010

Contains spoilers

Where to start with this film? Let’s start where it started, with a rapper. Not part of the film as such but on behalf (if I can put it that way) of the production company. The rap outlined the upcoming plot (and the film was bookended with said rapper). Was it a good rap? No, not really and I inwardly groaned as the chubby, medallion-guy strutted his stuff. Deep down a chill settled as I decided that I was going to hate the film…

It therefore surprised me, as much as anyone, that I didn’t and, in context and with hindsight, the rap actually worked. My Bloody Wedding is a comedy, a weird, surreal comedy and I have to say, again, that each person's reaction to comedy is subjective. In this case I found myself enjoying it in all its surreal glory.

breakfast with a robot

The film begins with breakfast being made. In the kitchen are Mum, Dad, Doug (Patrick Babbitt) and Robot (Nick Timperman). Couple of things we note here, firstly the surrealism – robot is a robot, never explained but always close by. Mom and Dad are the very image of a 50s Americana that I suspect never existed. Doug is the most childlike adult, who happens to be saving himself sexually for his wedding to Callista (Morgan Mead) and almost coming across like an adult version of the character Fred but without the annoyingness. Rather, even his most histrionic moments are actually funny.

mom's photo

Said bride-to-be, Callista, is a tad frustrated by Doug’s puritanical view on sex but the wedding is on the coming Saturday. She has found an old pendant that belonged to her mother, in fact her mother was wearing it when she died (cut to a photo of her being stabbed… or is that staked… and are they fangs?). She intends to wear it at the wedding and has had the stone in the centre cut to make matching earrings for her bridesmaids Monica (Lindsey Zelli) and Tammy (Carley Cornelius)… no I don’t know how that would actually work either, but this is surreal.

Doug is in denial (and in the car)

Said earrings and pendants are first put on during the bachelorette party. Meanwhile the guys, Steve (Kyle S. More) and William (Keith Lipke) are disgusted to hear that Doug is virgo intacta and take him to Callista’s for some rumpy-pumpy. Through the window they see the girls ‘wrestling’ in underwear… Doug runs off. He is later called by Callista wanting some sausage, refuses her request and then goes to her house anyway.

fangs on show

He sees her ex go in and sees her silhouette going down… he assumes sex we know something else as we have seen a fanged Monica go after William. The film then follows Doug trying to remain in denial over her apparent infidelities and failing to realise that she is now a flesh eating Hell-bitch, whilst local weirdo Clyde (David Fultz) tries to warn him of the impending danger.

stakes are a weapon of choice

The climax of the film is the wedding, of course, and as well as the vampire bride and bridesmaids we get a zombie invasion and a rabid crap bat. Are they actually vampires? I know question marks have been raised before and they are possessed by the stone (which may or may not be tied into Native American mysticism). However, what can I say… though they eat flesh it is explicitly stated that they like the taste of blood, they have fangs and Clyde is wielding stakes.

throw in a Luchador

Throw in a Luchador (Tristan Ross) and you have one of the strangest comedies I have seen for a while and yet it all worked for me. The surreal aspect kept everything wonderfully off kilter, the smutty jokes worked because they were smutty rather than simply crude and Clyde took more fake blood in the face than most actors will ever have to take in their entire career. The street of people stopping for a quick dance as Doug works stuff out in his head was just another example of the surreal nature of the film.

blood spattered bride

When I opened up the imdb page I was somewhat mystified by the very low collective score the film has earned but that, I guess, is the trouble with comedy. For me this deserves 6 out of 10 because it genuinely tickled me.

The imdb page is here.