Frau Brückner

"He was diseased but he was my son. And you have... Why didn't I kill you before? I killed that inspector and your professor friend, to protect him, and now... I'm going to kill you, to avenge him! Why don't you call your insects?! Go on! Call! Call!"

- Brückner to Jennifer while trying to kill her.

Frau Brückner is the main antagonist of the 1985 Italian horror film Phenomena. She is the legal guardian of Jennifer Corvino, the daughter of a famous actor and a mother of a deformed serial killer.

She was portrayed by Daria Nicolodi.

Past
Fifteen years ago prior to the events of the film, Frau was raped by the inmates at an unnamed local insane asylum, resulting in getting her pregnant and give birth to a deformed son.

Present
Eight months after a Danish tourist, Vera Brandt was murdered by an unseen killer, being stabbed multiple times with a pair of scissors and decapitated, Jennifer Corvino arrives and attends at an all-girls boarding school, Richard Wagner Academy, being by chaperoned by Frau Brückner. They are first seen in a car going to the boarding school, talking for a while.

Later at night, an unknown figure enters McGregor's house, unrealized that Inga spots the figure and while being locked outside. Before Inga breaks the window to get inside, she tries to warn McGregor, but is murdered by the unknown figure. Inga then goes outside and finds a razor in a garbage can and walks off, seeking vengeance against the one who killed her master. After discovering the professor was killed and nowhere else to go, Jennifer heads to the local bank to call Morris Shapiro for help and asks him to send her money for a plane ticket back home. As Jennifer waits, Frau finds and tells her that Shapiro called her to give her a ticket and some money for the next day and she will stay with her in the meantime.

By the time they arrive at her home, Jennifer asks Frau about why all the mirrors in the house being covered, she tells her that they would upset her son, who is mentally disabled and born with a disease. Frau then forces Jennifer to take an anti-fever pill, as she "believes" she has a fever. Jennifer takes the pills and locks herself in the bathroom, as she takes one of the pills and dries her hands off, she finds the towel is infested with maggots. Realizing that the pills may be poisoned, she vomits it quickly and tries to call for her, but is knocked out by Frau with a piece of lumber and imprisons her somewhere in her house as she distracts the inspector, Rudolf Geiger, who just arrived.

Geiger talked Frau about the abandoned house that belonged to her and kidnaps and tortures him. Later, Jennifer wakes up and hears the inspector screaming, escaping the room and goes down the tunnel, leading to a large basement. Jennifer then falls into a pool filled with decaying corpses infested with maggots. Frau returns to watch and torture Jennifer. Geiger breaks free from the chains and beats Frau enough for Jennifer to escape and so does he.

Swimming to shore, Jennifer makes it out of the lake and sees a car, and Shapiro gets out of it and is happy to see her. Before he could rescue Jennifer, Frau appears and decapitates Shaprio and tries to kill Jennifer once again, this time to avenge her son. But before she could, an enraged Inga appears just in time and brutally kills Frau, leaving Jennifer and Inga the only survivors and safe from the horror.