Part Richard Linklater love story, part Cronenbergian horror film, Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead’s Spring — in theaters this weekend — follows the bizarre development of a fling between an American backpacker and mysterious woman in Italy who hides a dark, primordial secret. It’s an unusual romantic tale that follows in the footsteps of some of horror cinema’s strangest couples. Here are ten of the weirdest.
The Fly
Brundlefly is bae in David Cronenberg’s extra grody body-horror adaptation of George Langelaan’s 1957 short story. Jeff Goldblum’s eccentric scientist Seth Brundle and Geena Davis’ plucky journalist Veronica Quaife get it on. Accidental teleportation with a common housefly ensues, and Veronica’s beau turns into a melty-faced freak oozing in his own digestive enzymes. Cronenberg love is real love.
Bride of Chucky
The couple that slays together, stays together. Chucky is a child’s toy possessed by the spirit of the serial killer Charles Lee Ray. Tiffany is Ray’s former girlfriend and accomplice. When the two are reunited years later, Tiffany becomes his eternal soulmate when Ray/Chucky murders her and uses a voodoo spell (the same one that turned him into a toy) to turn her into a living doll — and his bride. They go on a killing spree and kvetch about dumb things like normal couples do.
Dracula
“Love never dies,” is the tagline for Francis Ford Coppola adaptation of Bram Stoker’s Dracula — and neither does the centuries-old vampire (Gary Oldman), which means that Winona Ryder’s Mina Harker is in love with a corpse. When the Count is in beast mode, the ladies of London aren’t safe from his sexual appetite — including Mina’s pervy cousin Lucy (Sadie Frost). But Drac only has eyes for Mina — until she stakes him in the heart to stop him from killing. We guess Keanu Reeves’ doofy Jonathan Harker, Mina’s fiancée, is worth it.
Psycho
It’s Freud 101, but we all know that Anthony Perkins’ troubled Norman Bates in Hitchcock’s Psycho had a thing for his mother — even after she dies.
The Silence of the Lambs
Call it mutual fascination, but there’s plenty of sexual tension between Anthony Hopkins’ cannibalistic serial killer Hannibal Lecter and Jodie Foster’s FBI agent Clarice Starling. Their games of quid pro quo are foreplay. Thankfully Lecter likes Starling enough that he doesn’t eat her, but their relationship gets dangerously close in the sequel Hannibal.
Swamp Thing
A research scientist and a government agent find love in 1982’s Swamp Thing — but only after the bio-engineering wiz is turned into a slimy, mutated plant creature.
An American Werewolf in London
A London nurse falls for an American backpacker, but she doesn’t know he sees dead people and is slowly becoming a wolf. David Naughton’s character David is wounded by something beastly during an evening out. His friend Jack (Griffin Dunne) is killed, and Jack’s mutilated corpse haunts David to explain that they’re both cursed thanks to the werewolf that attacked them. Since three is a crowd (or is it four, counting Jack and David’s inner werewolf?), this love story can only end in tragedy.
Sleepwalkers
I love you, but I’ve chosen a life as a shapeshifting vampire and werecat who feeds on virgin women and hangs out with his mother too much.
Candyman
A grad student becomes obsessed with an urban legend about a man with a hook for a hand. One can hardly call Bernard Rose’s Candyman a romantic tale, but there is a tragic love story at its center that has a bizarre conclusion one can only imagine in a horror movie.
The Stepford Wives
“Actually, there’s nothing creepy about a cult of men who want to turn their wives into submissive robots with no will or personality of their own.” —some commenter, somewhere