Brenda Bates

* Unmasked
* Masked

**Brenda Bates** is the main antagonist in Urban Legend.

## Biography

After Brenda graduated from high school, she intended to wed David Evans, her lover. David offered her a necklace instead of being able to purchase her a ring. David, however, was murdered in a vehicle accident that very night as a result of two females playing a prank on him that was based on an urban legend. Brenda's heart and her sense of reason were both broken, and she awaited her moment to exact retribution. She attended the same university as one of the females, Natalie Simon, and quickly became best friends with her.

### Urban Legend

Michelle Mancini, a student at Pendleton University, is beheaded while sitting in the backseat of her car in a downpour. Parker Riley, a student, regales Natalie Simon and Brenda Bates at the campus coffee shop with tales of a massacre in the abandoned Stanley Hall dorm, which journalism student Paul Gardner debunks as an urban legend. The next day, word of Michelle's death spreads, but Dean Adams and campus policeman Reese Wilson appear intent to cover it up. A joker fraternity member named Damon Brooks tries to comfort the visibly upset Natalie after she declines his sexual advances while they are in his parked car at a bluff. An attacker in a hooded parka assaults Damon as he walks outside to use the restroom and hangs him from a tree. Natalie runs away in search of assistance, but when she returns with Reese, Damon's corpse and car have vanished. Natalie is reassured by Parker and his girlfriend Sasha Thomas that Damon played a practical joke on her.

Later, the murderer strangles Tosh Guaneri, Natalie's goth roommate, to death while she sleeps. In the morning, she discovers Tosh's body along with a gory note scribbled on the wall. She breaks the news to Brenda, distraught, that she and Michelle, a friend from high school, had been given probation for causing a tragic collision while driving with their headlights off and following the first vehicle to flash them. William Wexler, a professor of American folklore, was the only survivor of the Stanley Hall massacre, which Paul finds when he looks into local urban legends.

Reese discovers Wexler's office to be chaotic and bloody after Dean Adams is found dead in the university parking garage. While Parker is incapacitated in the bathroom and killed by the murderer pushing pop rocks and bathroom chemicals down his throat, Natalie, Brenda, and Sasha attend a fraternity party to commemorate the massacre's 25th anniversary. Sasha leaves to do her discussion show at the school radio station in the late hours. The fraternity partygoers believe the attacker's attack on her and her assistant during the broadcast is a joke alluding to the slaughter, but Natalie runs to the station out of concern for Sasha, where she sees the killer axe Sasha to death.

On college, Natalie quickly runs into Brenda and Paul. Paul drives them away in his automobile after becoming persuaded that Wexler was involved. While Paul is inside the gas station, Natalie and Brenda discover Wexler's dismembered body in the trunk. Paul chases the two women as they run back toward campus through the woods. When they part ways, Natalie stops the university's janitor as he drives by in his vehicle. He picks her up, but the assailant drives after them in a different automobile after forcing their car off the road. The janitor is killed in the collision, but Natalie escapes unharmed and runs away on foot.

Natalie hears Brenda screaming inside Stanley Hall as she walks by. Natalie enters the building and discovers the bodies of her friends along with Brenda, who appears to be dead and is lying on a bed, but Brenda quickly knocks Natalie out. Brenda identifies herself as the murderer when Natalie wakes up, carrying out vengeance for her fiancé David Evans, who perished in the car accident Natalie and Michelle caused. Brenda tries to take Natalie's kidney out, but Reese comes and stops her by holding Brenda at gunpoint. When Paul comes, Natalie takes possession of the pistol and kills Brenda, who falls out of a window, before leaving with him to fetch aid for Reese. Brenda manages to knife Reese with a switchblade. The two talk about how this will turn out to be an urban legend and that all the facts will be interpreted incorrectly as Natalie and Paul drive away. Brenda suddenly materializes in the back seat and assaults them with an axe as Paul queries, "Well if this is an urban legend, where is the twist?" Brenda is thrown through the glass and onto the river below after Paul flips the automobile on a bridge.

Following Brenda's murdering spree, a number of students from a different institution have described what transpired, claiming that Brenda's body was never found. The majority of them don't think the story is true, but one girl—later identified as Brenda—starts to describe "how the story really goes" and asserts that it was recounted inaccurately.

### Urban Legends: Final Cut

Brenda appears in a cameo in the end credits as a nurse.

## Victims

* Michelle Mancini - Killed with axe
* Damon Brooks - Hanged by neck, body dropped through windshield
* Tosh Guaneri - Eroticasphyxiated to death
* Dean Adams - Impaled upon spike strips by car
* Parker - Forced to ingest pop-rocks and drain-o
* Sasha's Technician - Killed in the blurry background
* Sasha - Hacked with axe 3x
* Professor Wexler - Found dismembered in the trunk of Paul's car

## Trivia

* Actress Rebecca Gayheart also plays Lois in Scream 2 and Gwen Mason in Santa's Slay.
* Brenda's surname is a reference to Norman Bates - the killer main antagonist in 1959 novel *Psycho*, and the movies.