Review by
Eric Hillis
Directed by: Travis Stevens
Starring: Barbara Crampton, Larry Fessenden, Bonnie Aarons, Sarah Lind, Mark
Kelly
A horror riff on the 1947 classic The Bishop's Wife, director Travis Stevens' Jakob's Wife casts
genre icon Barbara Crampton in the role of the disillusioned
spouse of a preacher. As with the '47 film, the intervention of a
supernatural being causes the preacher to reevaluate how he's been
treating his wife, who finds herself seduced by this other-worldy
interloper. The twist here is that it's not an angel who has come
between the preacher and his missus, but a vampire!
Once known as "Adventurous Anne", Anne Fedder (Crampton) has spent the
past three decades playing the role of loyal preacher's wife to her
inattentive husband, Pastor Jakob (Larry Fessenden). When an old
high school flame, Tom (Robert Rusler), comes to town for a
business meeting, Anne is reminded of the youthful dreams she gave up
for the numbing comfort provided by her husband and the church. Giving
in to her desires, Anne snogs Tom while exploring the old mill he's
looking to redevelop. But their romantic reunion is disrupted when a
Nosferatu lookalike swoops out of the shadows, biting Anne while a swarm
of rats devours Tom.
Anne returns home to Jakob, but she's noticeably changed. Now a vampire
herself, she's donning low cut Ingrid Pitt style gowns, drinking blood
from the local bemused butcher's counter and eventually killing
neighbours to keep her thirst quenched. When Jakob learns of his wife's
transformation, he too is given a new lease of life, as this is just the
sort of thing his role as spiritual soldier has been preparing him
for.
Jakob's Wife has such a 1980s setup that it's surprising
this storyline was never tackled during that horror-comedy heavy decade.
Yet while this exact premise may be a first, it doesn't stop
Jakob's Wife from feeling derivative and dated. The gags
here are so old you'll be wiping dust off your screen by the film's
climax, and the film can't find anything fresh to do with either the
vampire mythos or its pseudo-feminist theme. It's just nowhere near as
funny as it needs to be, and its tone is often confusing. I guess we're
supposed to root for Crampton's vamp because she's finally exercising
free will, but a lot of innocent people die here. Jakob is posited as a
villain of sorts, but we're never given any real evidence that he's been
holding his wife back – we're just asked to take the film's word for it
(show us, don’t tell us!).
The only novel aspect of Jakob's Wife is in giving us a
pair of lead characters well over the age of the average American movie
protagonists. Unlike mainstream American cinema, the horror genre
refuses to discard its stars just because they've reached a certain age.
Now in her sixties (though she looks 20 years younger), Crampton is
enjoying a second wind as a horror star, and Stevens films her as though
she's some hot new starlet. You might argue that
Jakob's Wife is objectifying Crampton, but isn't it
refreshing that a woman in her sixties is portrayed as a sexual
being?
