Vera Cosgrove is the main antagonist of Peter Jackson's horror-comedy film Braindead. She is the manipulative and overbearing mother of protagonist Lionel Cosgrove whom she constantly exploits and controls through frequent bullying and emotional blackmail. She is portrayed by Elizabeth Moody.
History[]
Years before the events of the film, Vera had murdered her husband after finding him having an affair with another woman, drowning him and his new lover in the bathtub Young Lionel had seen this act but repressed the memory due to shock. Growing up to become timid and awkward, Vera exploited this vulnerability of her son to the utmost, essentially enslaving him. She forced Lionel to do all the housework and never allowed him to spend any time with friends, always watching his every move.
In 1957, Lionel visits the grocery store where he meets Paquita Maria Sanchez, a Spanish Romani girl who is convinced the two are destined to be together. The next day, Lionel and Paquita visit the Wellington Zoo, but Vera follows the pair and spies on them. While watching the couple from a distance, she accidentally tumbles against a cage containing a Sumatran rat-monkey, a vicious creature that bites Vera on the arm. Vera whacks the creature with her handbag, then stomps on its head with her high-heeled shoe, crushing its brain. Lionel and Paquita witness this and Vera demands that Lionel take her home. She is put to bed, but the rat-monkey's bite has infected her with a putrefying virus that slowly spreads through her system.
Vera becomes a murderous zombie
The following day, Vera's condition has worsened as she has begun to physically decay; her bite wound oozes thick blood and pus and her skin has started peeling in places. She also becomes ravenously hungry for meat, as she demonstrates when she and Lionel have lunch with some colleagues. Later, Paquita comes over to see Lionel, accompanied by her dog Fernando. Unable to control her hunger, Vera eats the dog. Shortly afterwards, Vera appears to die, but while Nurse McTavish is reassuring Lionel, she suddenly reanimates as a zombie. She then attacks and kills the nurse who also becomes a zombie. Lionel runs out of the house to find Paquita and Vera follows him, though she gets hit by a tram car and is seemingly killed.
Days later, a funeral is held for Vera and her body is excessively embalmed. However, Vera is still not dead and she rises again, but Lionel manages to incapacitate her after injecting her with tranquilizers. After Vera's burial, Lionel visits the cemetery to dig up his mother and administer more tranquilizers, but is interrupted by a gang of hoodlums who believe he is a necrophiliac. Vera bursts out of her grave while the punk Void is urinating on her headstone and she kills him, turning him into a zombie. When Father McGruder tries to defend Lionel, Vera kills him as well and he also turns. Unsure of what to do, Lionel tranquilises the zombies and takes them back to his house where he ties them up in his cellar.
Later on, Vera's brother and Lionel's uncle Les Kalkon visits Lionel to discuss Vera's will and how Les had been left out of it. While snooping around the house, Les discovers the zombies in the cellar and blackmails Lionel into giving up the house and the inheritance, threatening to report him to the police for murder and necrophilia. Lionel gives in and Les decides to celebrate his new acquisition by throwing a house party.
During the party, Paquita arrives to try and make amends with Lionel. She discovers the zombies in the basement, and Lionel explains to her all that has occurred. She is able to convince Lionel to administer poison to the zombies to finally kill them, but after injecting the zombies with it, he discovers the poison is animal stimulants, which revives them. They narrowly escape the now-enhanced zombies, who burst into the house upstairs and horribly and painfully slaughter the party guests. The guests subsequently reanimate and begin to attack the survivors, including Paquita and Lionel, who are separated in the ensuing mayhem.
Meanwhile, Vera remains in the basement where she has undergone a horrific transmutation, possibly due to a combination of the tranquilizers, embalming fluids and animal stimulants. She mutates into a giant, flabby creature and seems to regain some of her intelligence, though she retains her sinister personality. After killing her brother Les, she goes after Lionel and Paquita.
Destruction[]
After the other zombies have all been destroyed, Vera emerges from the cellar and pursues Lionel and Paquita upstairs, destroying most of the roof. Here, Lionel - who earlier found evidence of what Vera had done to his father - confronts his mother and finally stands up to her. Vera is enraged by her son's defiance and grabs him, feeding him into a large, gaping cavity in her belly. Shortly after Lionel is swallowed up, he uses the pendant given to him by Paquita's grandmother to cut his way out. The magic of the pendant kills Vera from within and her belly tears open, her son washing out on a tide of blood and gore. Vera's body then collapses backward and crashes through the house, demolishing it and causing an explosion that sets it ablaze.