- 5 weeks ago
Explore the shadowy halls of passion and despair as we delve into the most decadent and dark love stories that have captivated audiences for centuries. From haunted mansions and cursed castles to tragic figures and supernatural forces, these tales intertwine intense romance with the macabre, leaving an indelible mark on our hearts and minds. Prepare for a journey into the sublime and the sinister, where love blossoms amidst the gloomiest settings. Which haunting romance truly ensnared your soul with its captivating darkness?
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00:00Jane Eyre with nothing to say.
00:03Everything seems all real.
00:05I am real enough.
00:07Welcome to Ms. Mojo, and today we're counting down our picks for the most decadent and dark love stories in the history of fiction.
00:24Number 10. Edward Scissorhands.
00:26Only Tim Burton can make us cry over a man with blades for hands and an avant-garde hairstyle.
00:34This Johnny Depp-fronted film follows a lonely, half-finished humanoid who lives in a brooding mansion atop a hill.
00:40What happened to you?
00:42I'm not finished.
00:43Oh! Put those down. Don't come any closer. Just, please.
00:50When he's taken in by a human family and showered with kindness, he falls in love with Kim.
00:56The teenage daughter of the house.
00:58Their romance is doomed from the start.
01:00Edward is misunderstood, abandoned when he can't be controlled, and cursed to never belong.
01:06Stay back.
01:06Okay, touch again and I'll kill you.
01:07No, it's no big deal.
01:08It's just...
01:09Call the doctor. He's skewered, Kim.
01:10No way.
01:11Stay away from her, okay? I mean it.
01:13Though he yearns for connection, by the end of the film, he exiles himself to his decaying fortress, keeping his love alive from a distance.
01:26Number 9. Corpse Bride
01:28Who's surprised to see another Tim Burton classic starring Johnny Depp on this list?
01:33We're guessing no one.
01:34After all, what could be more gothic than a hapless man who unwittingly finds himself married to a cadaver?
01:41Oh, in the woods, you said your vows so perfectly.
01:46I did?
01:48I did.
01:49Wake up! Wake up!
01:51The blue bride, Emily, whisks her warm-blooded groom, Victor, away to the surprisingly vibrant land of the dead.
01:57Here comes the bride, here comes the bride, here comes the bride.
02:05Their tryst is a farce, but she clings to him with the hope of healing her past heartbreak.
02:11She's a woman scorned who longs for eternal love, but by valuing his life, no matter how grey, more than her spirited afterlife,
02:18Emily finds something far more meaningful.
02:21Liberation.
02:27Number 8. Crimson Peak
02:32I cannot leave you, Edith.
02:35In fact, I find myself thinking of you even at the most.
02:40In opportune moments of the day.
02:42Guillermo del Toro's brand of gothic romance prods into the darkest recesses of the human psyche
02:48and leaves your heartstrings not just torn, but tangled.
02:51Crimson Peak follows American Dollar Princess and fledgling author Edith Cushing,
02:56who marries a mysterious Englishman named Sir Thomas Sharp.
03:00The seemingly lovestruck pair move into his mansion in Cumberland,
03:04which turns out to be not just decrepit, but also haunted.
03:09With the windows all shuttered out of the house.
03:11Out of the house.
03:14Breathes.
03:16It's ghastly, I know.
03:17However, the ghosts aren't even the real horror.
03:20Edith's biggest enemy is her unhinged sister-in-law,
03:24who keeps poisoning her and stealing her husband away at night.
03:27It is soon revealed that a murderous conspiracy is at play.
03:31But Thomas' growing fondness for his newlywed wife complicates things.
03:35Obsession, betrayal, and bleeding hearts make this film a spooky delight.
03:40Your monsters bother you.
03:45Honey, that's the last thing Mother said, too.
03:51Number 7.
03:52The Haunting of Bly Manor
03:54Mike Flanagan's adaptation of Henry James' The Turn of the Screw,
03:58with influences from the romance of certain old clothes and the jolly corner,
04:04is brimming with emotion.
04:05Our protagonist is Danny Clayton, an American governess working for the Wingrave family in
04:11England.
04:12Her precocious charges, Miles and Flora, unnerve her, while paranormal activity shrouds Bly Manor.
04:24However, the heart of the story lies in the sublime romance between Danny and Jamie,
04:29the estate's gardener.
04:31Love blooms amid shadows, spectres, and blood-stained walls,
04:34and is immortalized with a great sacrifice.
04:38This show will leave you feeling both empty and full.
04:41It's like every day I feel myself fading away, but I'm still here.
04:45And I don't understand how that is.
04:49You're still here.
04:49Number 6.
04:50Nosferatu
04:51For he you call your husband shall perish by my hand.
04:58No!
04:58Robert Eggers' rendition of F. W. Murnau's 1922 film of the same name is no love story.
05:06Sure, our heroine Ellen is in a hopeful marriage with Thomas, and her parasitic paramour, Count
05:12Orlok, offers repulsive, fatal seduction.
05:15Your passion is bound to me.
05:20However, Nosferatu is a gothic romance in a more traditional sense of the genre.
05:26It zooms in on the struggle between agency and oppression through the story of a woman
05:31crumbling under the patriarchy.
05:33Ellen is drowning in loneliness when she forms a link with Orlok, only to be swallowed by guilt
05:38and shame.
05:39She is constantly dismissed by those around her, her sexuality is repressed, and social
05:44acceptance comes at the price of self-destruction.
05:48Despite her grim end, Ellen alone makes this a gothic romance.
05:52Her willing sacrifice thus broke the curse and freed them from the plague of Nosferatu.
06:00Number 5.
06:01The Phantom of the Opera
06:02The world was first introduced to this masterpiece by Gaston Leroux in the form of a newspaper
06:08serial.
06:09And in this labyrinth where night is blind
06:16It was later published as a novel, which has been adapted for the stage and screen.
06:23The most prominent among those adaptations is the musical, which has dominated the West
06:28End and Broadway for decades.
06:30It's me they hear
06:33My spirits and my voice
06:38In one combine
06:40The award-winning piece explores the complex, obsessive and ultimately redemptive relationship
06:47between a tortured artist known as the Phantom and Christine, a prodigious singer.
06:54Despite what the 2004 film adaptation starring Gerard Butler will have you believe, the Phantom
06:59has a monstrous appearance.
07:01His dangerous liaison with Christine in his sepulchral lair is transformative, and that's
07:07exactly why they must part ways, shedding their masks.
07:10This tale never gets old.
07:12Behind the monster, this repulsive carcass, who seems a beast, but secretly dreams of beauty, secretly.
07:29Number 4.
07:30Rebecca
07:31Oh, I do love you. I love you most dreadfully. I've been crying all morning because I thought I'd never see you again.
07:36If you like an age-gap romance with a morally grey male lead, check out this novel by Daphne du Maurier.
07:43Our heroine is a young woman who is swept up in a whirlwind romance with the powerful and much older Maxime de Winter,
07:50and moves into his Cornish mansion, Manderley.
07:54However, her idyllic new life is haunted by her husband's late wife, Rebecca.
07:58Hilda?
07:59Yes, madam?
08:01The West Wing.
08:03Nobody ever uses it anymore, do they?
08:05No, madam. Not since the death of Mrs. de Winter.
08:08She's no wailing ghost, but the embodiment of insurmountable perfection,
08:12looming over Manderley and casting an inescapable shadow on our narrator.
08:17She's so desperate to erase Rebecca that she hardly flinches when Maxime is revealed to be her murderer.
08:24Even Alfred Hitchcock must have found this too morbid,
08:27because in his 1940 film adaptation, Maxime doesn't kill.
08:32Either way, Rebecca is timeless.
08:34I shall always love you, but I've known all along that Rebecca would win in the end.
08:41No, no, she hasn't won.
08:43Number 3.
08:44Dracula
08:45It all started with Bram Stoker.
08:48His 1897 novel, Dracula, was turned into a play of the same name by Hamilton Dean and John L. Baldurston,
08:55which was adapted into a namesake movie by Todd Browning in 1931.
09:01The source material was also picked up by Francis Ford Coppola for his 1992 film, Bram Stoker's Dracula.
09:07I condemn you to living death, to eternal hunger for living blood.
09:18However, the 1931 version, starring Bela Lugosi, has to be the most iconic.
09:24Lugosi's seminal take on the vampire is equal parts monstrous and magnetizing.
09:29I had a frightful dream a few nights ago, and I don't seem to be able to get it out of my mind.
09:35I hope you haven't taken my stories too seriously.
09:37Mina can't help but be drawn to his world, fascinated by his easy charm and lofty tales of Transylvania.
09:44Love isn't a central theme in Browning's Dracula, but the atmosphere he conjures exudes romance.
09:50Number 2.
09:51Wuthering Heights
09:52Emily Bronte wrote just one novel in her career, and it became such an extraordinary hit that the world still can't get over it.
10:01Wuthering Heights is everything a romance should not be.
10:04That's partly what makes it gothic.
10:06Set against the windswept West Yorkshire moors, the novel paints a bleak portrait of rotten love.
10:13Heathcliff and Catherine burn with passion for each other.
10:16Their mutual obsession is all-consuming, but inconsequential in the face of Victorian propriety.
10:22What are you thinking?
10:24What's it matter to you?
10:26You've no right to be jealous.
10:28When Catherine abandons Heathcliff for a more socially advantageous marriage, it sends him down a spiral of destructive revenge, the effect of which echoes across generations.
10:38Come with me.
10:42I raise the child as my own.
10:46There's nothing to be glorified here.
10:50Only death and decay prevail, but it will still leave you breathless.
10:55Before we unveil our top pick, here are a few honorable mentions.
10:59Sleepy Hollow
10:59Johnny Depp and Christina Ricci are striking in this otherworldly romance.
11:05Is he dead?
11:06That's the problem.
11:08He was dead to begin with.
11:09Penny Dreadful
11:15From Dorian Gray to Dracula, this series has all your gothic faves.
11:20Taxidermy.
11:21What?
11:23Your hobby.
11:24That's where you touched a scorpion.
11:26No.
11:27Though I practiced it as a child.
11:29So did I.
11:30Sweeney Todd, the demon barber of Fleet Street.
11:34Both the 1979 musical and its 2007 film adaptation are breathtaking.
11:40You there, my friend.
11:42I'm your friend.
11:44Come, let me hold you.
11:47Bride of Frankenstein
11:56The monster gets a mate in this sequel to James Whale's Frankenstein.
12:00Friend?
12:06Friend?
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12:23Number 1.
12:24Jane Eyre
12:25Charlotte Bronte's groundbreaking coming-of-age novel is a cornerstone of feminist literature.
12:31Our heroine, Jane, is a young governess at Thornfield Hall who falls for her moody employer, Mr. Rochester.
12:38I don't wish to treat you as inferior.
12:41Yet you command me to speak.
12:44You're very hurt by my tone of command.
12:46There are a few masters who trouble to inquire whether their paid subordinates were hurt by their commands.
12:51Despite their differences, the pair connect on a soul level.
12:54However, before they can walk down the aisle, Jane is unsettled by an eerie presence in the mansion.
12:59Turns out, it's actually Rochester's wife, Bertha, who lives in the attic.
13:05Locked away from the world because of her mental illness.
13:08You have a wife.
13:09I pledge you my honour, my fidelity.
13:13You cannot.
13:13My love until death do us part.
13:16What of truth?
13:18I would have told you the truth.
13:20Fortunately, our girl clocks the glaring red flag and leaves.
13:24After Bertha tragically takes her own life, fate brings Jane back to the ruins of Thornfield Hall,
13:30reuniting her with Rochester.
13:32The novel is a must-read, but for non-readers, its 2011 film adaptation is stunning too.
13:38Which gothic romance do you think is the most underrated?
13:41Tell us in the comments down below.
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