A large part of my experience in public transness has been a general assumption that my medical history is for everyone. Questions about my body- what I’ve already done to it, what I intend to do with it in the future- are automatically assumed to be fair game to ask. Whether I know them or not, most people assume that my body is a public facility. Open to all who want to observe, comment, critique. Even though it shouldn’t, it does effect how I think about my own choices in regard to my body; past, present, and future. If other people don’t approve, am I really allowed to make changes to myself?

The Re-Animator trilogy is already one steeped in transgender coding, as it pertains to body horror and regaining control of the human form. In the first Re-Animator film, Herbert West (portrayed beautifully by Jeffrey Combs) is introduced as a character who takes pleasure in being a social anomaly. His desire to find a ‘cure’ for death results in rapidly escalating shenanigans, which he and his new roommate and associate Dan (Bruce Abbott) must try to keep under control. This carries over into the sequel, Bride of Re-Animator, wherein Herbert attempts to create a new life entirely out of deceased body parts.

The character of The Bride (Kathleen Kinmont) is a beautifully tragic one; created with the sole intention of being a physical/sexual commodity for Dan and lacking any real autonomy of her own. Every part of her comes from a different person, compiled with the intention of being a “perfect” woman; “perfect” insofar as these parts of her have been carefully selected for her by others. They are not parts that she has any particular attachment to, nor does she have a So when Dan and Herbert both turn on her for being nothing but parts, she is understandably heartbroken and confused by this abandonment.

It’s hard to verbalize, but seeing her so quickly go from beloved to disposable strikes a chord in me. Her body is the subject of the entire film; we see it grow, piece by piece, just as we see the lengths that Dan and Herbert go to finish her. Dan sacrifices everything for this. And yet, within minutes of her birth, Dan rejects her outright. He doesn’t want her body now that it is no longer an abstract concept in his mind, now that he can no longer project his former girlfriend onto her. Herbert doesn’t want her because she does not acknowledge him as her creator. Both of their rejections stem from the belief that she does not serve them in the way she was created to; they dictated every inch of her body, and they are frustrated when this does not earn them docility and compliance.

The Bride’s first- and only- real autonomous act is to rip her heart out from her chest. An act of bodily reclamation that kills her as much as it frees her. A fuck you of agony and white hot rage. It makes me think about every time I didn’t stand up for myself in the face of public scrutiny of my transness, just because it wouldn’t have been polite. The coworker, old enough to be my mother, gleefully asking me about the details of my body. The girlfriend who told me not to change my deadname. The family who implored me not to make any rash decisions in regards to surgeries. And I recognize in myself the same rage as is in The Bride: why can’t all of you just leave me alone and let me choose my body?

Prior to discarding her, Herbert claims that he has “taken refuse of [God’s] failures and triumphed”, toting The Bride as the ultimate success over God and, therefore, over the limitations of a binary gender system. In a culture that assumes only natal man and natal woman, The Bride exists as an entirely unique, singular entity. Isolated entirely from her relationship to Dan and Herbert, The Bride is a creation of parts and brought to life; she has more emotion and more free will than any other creation of Herbert’s. Out of all of them, she is the most human.

That makes her death all the more tragic; she feels, and hurts, and literally rips herself to pieces because of it. As a trans person actively grappling with what ‘parts’ to keep, add, or discard, it’s not an ending that feels particularly reassuring, but it feels representative of the kind of reality I’m used to living. There is no ability to find yourself for yourself; that comes second or third to the feelings and expectations of the people around you. Taking charge of yourself is often viewed as selfishness more than it is as a necessity for survival. And when you’re forced to keep so many people in mind, it can be hard to differentiate between what you want, and what you think you have to want.

Bride of Re-Animator is already renowned for its queer coding, but almost entirely on the basis of The Bride, I consider it one of the great transgender films to have come out of the golden age of horror as well. A film so concerned with bodies and parts and what makes us individuals, while also managing to represent the no-win reality that society creates for people who attempt to exist outside of the rigid binary system. There is no safety from it, except for what we create ourselves, for ourselves. Because for as much as we may be influenced by those around us, we are the ones who get the final say. We do not always choose our parts, but we do get to choose what we do with them. And as The Bride rips her own heart from her chest, I am reminded that we will always have that power.