The Top 14 Hunks of "The Bride", including Christian Bale, Peter Sarsgaard, a gay guy, and a lot of queerbaiting

This weekend we saw The Bride! (2026).  I assumed that it would be a sequel to Frankenstein (2025), but it is not.  The frenetic, lunatic ghost of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, channeling Bellatrix LeStrange from Harry Potter, complains that she died before she had a chance to write anything meaningful (lady, you died at age 53, having published dozens of novels, short stories, essays, travel journals...)  So she possesses a 1930s floozy named Ida, who starts a lengthy diatribe and falls down a flight of stairs.  Frank the Monster (Christian Bale, left) convinces a mad scientist to revive her, and they go on a rampage, channeling the Joker and Harley Quinn, Bonnie and Clyde, and the Me, Too Movement.   

There are a few nods to 1930s gay culture: Ida kisses a lady in the first scene, and takes Frank to a nightclub frequented by a few same-sex couples.  But it is ruined by a monumental queerbaiting. 

 Detective Jake Willis (Peter Saarsgaard) and his partner Myrna, who has to pretend to be his secretary because female detectives aren't allowed, investigate the murder of a railroad cop in rural Indiana.  After Jake gets intel from the small-town sheriff, Partner Myrna points out that she does all the detective work; all he has to do is seduce small town sheriffs to get intel.  

In the 1930s, all sheriffs were male.  She very clearly and unambiguously states that he has sex with men. 

But at the end of the movie he admits that he keeps letting Ida get away because he is in love with her; they used to be romantic partners, before her accident.

WTF?  A real life person could be bisexual, of course, but in movies, a hetero-romance obliterates gay references.    Myrna's statement was an outright lie, a nasty joke played on the audience. 

This is not a review of the g*ddam monstrosity (it would get an F----).  I was so angry that I looked through the entire cast list, hoping to find a gay person to profile.  I finally found one, after researching a gaggle of straight hunks:

1. Christian Bale as Frank the Monster

2. Peter Sarsgaard as the queerbaiting Detective.

3. Jake Gyllenhaal as Ronnie Reed, a Fred Astaire-like dancer.  Frank idolizes him, so they travel to all of the sites where his movies were filmed.

4. Zlatko Buric as mob boss Lupino.  The Mafia is involved, too.

5. Will Dagger, left, as a guy at a movie theater who is trying to get with his girlfriend in spite of her protests.  Frank and Ida intervene.

6. Louis Cancelmi as Officer Goodman, one of the cops that the couple kills.

7. Neil Vincent Smith as a patron in a restaurant that the two disrupt.  Sorry, I couldn't find a photo where he isn't hugging a lady.

8. Antony Abbato, left, as another restaurant patron.

The gay guy after the break

Harry Potter's privates: Daniel Radcliffe's top 12 nude, beefcake, and gay-subtext performances.

 

You know that the last of the Harry Potter movies was released nearly 15 years ago.

You haven't returned to them because the world is so complex and self-referential, and because there are a lot of problems that you didn't notice as a kid.  Antisemitic stereotype Goblins?  Slaves who enjoy their slavery?  A headmaster who is gay, but we can never mention it on screen?  

But you still think of Daniel Radcliffe as David Copperfield...um, I mean that wide-eyed boy who emerged from Under the Staircase in 2001 and enrolled at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.

 

As of this writing, Daniel Radcliffe is 36 years old, with 49 acting credits.  Most move him far away from Hogwarts, to worlds where gay people -- and male nudity -- exist.  Here are his top 10 nude, beefcake, and gay-subtext performances:

1. Merrily We Roll Along (2025), which is not about the theme song to the Looney Tunes.  It's about two heterosexual chums in love with the same girl. I haven't seen it.

2. Now You See Me, Now You Don't (2025) brings the Horsemen out of retirement for a diamond heist (are we expected to know who the Horsemen are?). Daniel plays the villain.  I haven't seen it, but think the guy with him is hired muscle, not his boyfriend.

3. The Lost City (2022) sounds like a remake of Romancing the Stone, with romance novelist Loretta kidnapped in the jungle.  It's up to her cover model/Love Interest (Channing Tatum) to rescue her.  We see his butt, but only so Loretta can pick leeches off it.  Daniel plays the (presumably straight) villain.

4. Weird: The Al Yankovic Story (2022) is a  biopic of the parody song performer.  Entirely heteronormative -- dude even dates Madonna, which didn't happen in real life.  I liked the seduction scene:

Al: "Welcome to my house.  Would you like a tour?"

Madonna: "There's only one room in this house that I'm interested in."

Al: "Oh, there's a bathroom down the hall."

5. The Jungle (2017): in 1981, the Israeli backpacker Yossi Ghinsberg and his buddies set out to search for a lost city in the Bolivian jungle.  But the jungle has other ideas.

I haven't seen it, but keyword searches don't reveal any gay subtexts.

6. Guns Akimbo (2019) was too heteronormative: a mild-mannered video game geek unwittingly signs up for a game where you fight to the death in real time. His opponent/Love Interest is a lady.  Come on, dude, you've only played one "openly gay" character.  Get with the allyship.

But we see Daniel's prosthetic cock missing the toilet.

More after the break