  |
This article's content is marked as Mature The page contains mature content that may include coarse language, sexual references, strong drug use, extremely traumatic themes, and/or graphic violent images which may be disturbing to some. Mature pages are recommended for those who are 18 years of age and older. If you are 18 years or older or are comfortable with graphic material, you are free to view this page. Otherwise, you should close this page and view another page. |
| “ | No one will ever love you like your mother! | „ |
| ~ Vera Cosgrove, in her monster form as she is about to imprison Lionel inside her body. |
Vera Elizabeth Cosgrove is the main antagonist of the 1992 splatter comedy film Braindead.
She is the domineering mother of Lionel Cosgrove, and only becomes more of an oppressive presence in his life when she becomes a zombie.
She was portrayed by the late Elizabeth Moody.
Biography[]
Vera Elizabeth Cosgrove was born in 1897 in New Zealand. In her adult years, she married and had a child, Lionel Cosgrove, and came to possess a considerable fortune and a large hilltop manor in Newtown. However, she became aware that her husband was having an affair with another woman, and in a jealous rage, Vera murdered her husband and his mistress in the mansion's bathtub while Lionel, a toddler at the time, watched. She hid the body of the woman in a crate in the attic and fabricated a story about her husband drowning trying to save Lionel after he fell off a pier. Lionel repressed the memory into adulthood and believed his mother's lie.
By 1957, Vera has the now adult Lionel wrapped around her little finger - a trait she mercilessly exploits via manipulation and bullying. She has Lionel run errands and do menial chores for her. This is seen when, after Vera is elected treasurer of the Wellington Ladies Welfare League (WLWL), she immediately has Lionel get to work cleaning up their already spotless manor.
When Lionel starts to fall in love with the local shop girl Paquita Maria Sanchez, the control freak within Vera goes into overdrive and she begins to stalk her own son on his date with Paquita to the Wellington Zoo. However, while spying on her son, Vera edged too close to an enclosure containing the vicious Sumatran Rat-Monkey, and the creature bit her on the arm. Infuriated, Vera proceeds to crush the creature's skull under her heel before she is escorted out of the zoo by a distraught Lionel, leaving Paquita behind.
Back at home, Vera berates Lionel for associating with "that oily shop girl" and pretends to cry to get him to never associate with her again. However, the nightmare was just beginning, as overnight, the Sumatran Rat-Monkey's bite began to slowly mutate Vera into a zombie.
By the next morning, Vera's body has begun to decay, but despite the obvious dangers, Vera demands that Lionel help her get ready for a luncheon with the president of the WLWL. Vera can barely form coherent sentences and even unwittingly eats her own ear after it falls into her custard. She displays more and more feral behavior until it culminates in her eating Paquita's German shepherd Fernando and tackling Lionel down the stairs. Paquita goes and gets Nurse McTavish just in time for Vera to seemingly die. However, she quickly reanimates as a fully fledged zombie and attacks Nurse McTavish, ripping her head most of the way off and turning her into a zombie as well. Lionel barely manages to wrestle both zombies into the basement and fakes a story to Paquita, who was off getting an overnight bag for the hospital, about McTavish driving Vera to the hospital herself.
After sedating the two zombies and locking them in the basement, Lionel goes to see Paquita and her grandmother, a fortune-teller that senses the danger surrounding Lionel. She gives him an ornate pendant that "contains the power of the white light" and should protect him. Vera escapes the house in pursuit of Lionel, and is run over by a tram outside of the shop.
Everyone in town believes Vera to be dead at that point, Father McGruder providing a funeral service and burying her. When Lionel returns to the cemetery to administer more tranquilizers to Vera, he is attacked by thugs, who mistake him for a necrophiliac. The gang leader, Void, urinates on Vera's grave, prompting her to burst her way out of the ground and attack, leading to a bloodbath that leaves both Void and Father McGruder as zombies for Lionel to tranquilize and hide in his basement.
Time passes and things go from bad to worse when Lionel's greedy Uncle Les arrives to try and get Vera's property (since she was presumed deceased). In the process, Uncle Les discovers the "corpses" in his basement and proceeds to blackmail Lionel into giving up his inheritance in exchange for Les' promise to keep quiet.
Uncle Les and his friends then proceed to have a housewarming party, Les keeping Lionel on the property until the house papers come through. Paquita comes to check on Lionel, and discovers the zombies. She convinces him to kill the zombies via injecting them with what is believed to be poison, Lionel giving his mother one last tearful goodbye kiss as he puts her down for get. Yet, the "poison" is revealed to be animal stimulants instead, which rouses all the zombies into a murderous rampage.
Lionel, Paquita, and Uncle Les proceed to fight dozens of zombies, although Vera remains mysteriously absent. In the fight, Lionel discovers the skeleton of his father's mistress while hiding in the attic, and finds out that Vera lied to him for years to keep him under her control. Les eventually finds himself in the basement and a horrendously mutated Vera rips his head off of his shoulders.
Vera explodes out of the floor, now a gargantuan beast, and proceeds to pursue Lionel and Paquita onto the rooftop and gets into a confrontation with her son, who finally stands up to her. Vera proceeds to grab her son and imprison him inside her womb, but Lionel cuts his way free using the pendant given to him by Paquita's grandmother. She tumbles into the burning house and dies in the ensuing gas explosion.
With the deaths of Vera and the zombies, peace is finally restored and Lionel and Paquita walk away, hand in hand, from the burning remains of the former Cosgrove residence, presumably to a happier life.
List of Victims[]
- Her husband
- Her husband's mistress
- The Sumatran Rat-Monkey
- Paquita's pet dog
- Nurse McTavish
- Void
- Scroat
- Uncle Les Kalkon
[]
 Villains
| ||
|
Zombies | Vera Cosgrove | Nurse McTavish | Sumatran Rat-Monkey | Uncle Les | Father MaGruder | Selwyn | Void (Gang of Greasers) | ||