Motherâs Day
The backwoods / rural set horror movie was obviously perfected in 1974 with The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. The rape / revenge horror movie (as distasteful as it is) achieved major notice with 1972âs Last House On The Left and peaked with 1978âs I Spit On Your Grave. And as of the late 70s, nobody at the time had even considered the notion of adding comedy (or satire) into a horror film itself, especially anything related to those two subgenres (how could rape possibly be funny?). But in 1980, director Charles Kaufman (brother of Troma founder Lloyd Kaufman) decided to have the audacity to go for broke and not only merge those two types of horror movies, but also decided to add some goofy comedy and surreal satire into the mix and see just how it turned out. Itâs not like he was interested in future career prospects in the film industry like his more prominent sibling. Kaufman was in the film business as a fun lark and later left it in order to open a successful bakery. But the movie he came up with is one that divided both fans and critics in the years to come. Many consider it an unsung cult horror classic. Others considered it a waste of celluloid, with even no less an authority than Roger Ebert giving it one of his infamously rare âzero starsâ reviews where he viciously attacked the film on all fronts. And yet for all the obvious nasty elements that are certainly there on display, the film itself succeeds at disarming the viewer with its pitch black sense of morbid humor and memorable attempts at irony of the culture of the time when it was made. The production shoot was certainly a memorable one in many ways: It was filmed across the lake in the same area where the original Friday The 13th was being filmed at the same time. The primary location of an old house in the woods where the villains lived had actually been abandoned 15 years earlier when its owner had been murdered and (even creepier) it turned out that after filming began, an actual dead body was discovered as still being in the house itself! Another interesting factoid was that the three primary villain actors (all respectable character performers) all had their names taken off the movie for unknown reasons and replaced with aliases, whereas the three actresses who played the protagonists (all one shot wonders) were billed under their real names. The film begins with the final class of a so called self help course (another popular trend of the time) where a ragged yet sexy hippie girl and her shady looking boyfriend convince an old woman there to give them a ride afterwards (as it is implied that they might be planning to rob or accost her while doing so). When the car breaks down on a patch of dirt road, the duo appear to lose their nerve to take down the old lady when suddenly they are victims of a well coordinated ambush, as it turns out, by the old ladyâs two sons, who behead the boyfriend and subject the girl to a brutal assault that ends in her death as well. After this pre credits sequence introducing us to these animalistic predators, we are then subjected to the first 30 minutes of the film introducing us to and establishing the three lead females, whom it turns out are old college friends with a Three Musketeers like mentality of always sticking together as life goes on hooking up again for a camping trip into those same woods as we even get a flashback during this time of one of their wacky college adventures. The other irony here is that these three female characters are distinctly unlikable, with the cutest one being a put upon New York City girl who has gotten walked all over by people in her life (including her current boyfriend) while the blonde member lives a glamorous coke fueled lifestyle in L.A. with seemingly never ending pool parties (cue the future Boogie Nights homage complete with Rollergirl clone) and the mousy, glasses wearing one lives in Chicago while always finding ways to ignore and sneak away from her invalid mother whom she lives with (and which ironically gives her the most in common with the two demented brothers). In addition, these spoiled bitches seem to enjoy making a nuisance of themselves everywhere they go, including trashing an unsuspecting storeownerâs place of business and shamelessly littering the woods with their empty beer cans. Until finally of course, they are set upon by the two crazed brothers and brought back to the house, where they now become victims and this insane âfamilyâ thankfully takes over the movie in order to make it more colorful and interesting. We have Ike (âHolden McGuireâ aka Frederick Coffin, a guy who had a long career most notably as Steven Seagalâs best friend in Hard To Kill and the amicable cop in Wayneâs World) who is such a slow witted dunderhead that calling him retarded would be an understatement, Addley (âBilly Ray McQuadeâ aka Michael McCleery, best known as the cop who gets shot up on a bust in L.A. Confidential) who is a spazzy, fast talking little shit (with a ridiculous looking mask) and maybe a little too much caffeine in him, and Mother (âRose Rossâ aka Beatrice Pons, who was a respected and well known character actress on television) who seems to have a demented notion of aspiring her sons to be âThe BestââŚif only by âThe Bestâ you mean the best rapists, murderers, and all around social deviates imaginable. And even if it means that one of the female trio now becomes subject to various mind games, rapes, and beatings, at least the movie picks up considerably from just the monotony of these girls bonding to go completely over the top in depicting these maniacsâ lifestyle and home life living out in the woods yet still considering themselves to be âsophisticatedâ simply because they always have a TV going somewhere in the house and have various pieces of swag and pop culture paraphernalia adorned everywhere (including a Big Bird alarm clock and a Batman action figure with the mask removed which is all stretched out and deformed looking). And indeed, thereâs something almost charming about these twisted, deranged hillbillies maintaining such a media obsession along with the desire to stay connected to whatâs hip, happening, and popular in the outside world (along with the idea that that very thing might be what INSPIRES them to be deviates) even as they are so stupid that they donât even notice when the girls successfully escape nor do they care about going after them until whenever they get around to it, which brings about the stunning realization that this family (as scummy as they are) are actually more likable than the boring, shallow ânormalâ girls whom they first victimize before the tables are turned and the girls come back looking for revenge, helped along no doubt by the fact that Coffin and McCleery are clearly the better actors, making Ike and Addley into full bloodedly moronic yet hilariously memorable characters, complete with plenty of physical humor and the most idiotic bickering interactions imaginable, two morons who are always arguing yet are both forever clueless, with Pons as The Mother adding her own demented touches complete with an especially garish wardrobe. The production design for the house (complete with several other brand name labels and characters) is equally good in its own way, portraying an original vision of brain dead evil that makes this family fun to watch with its very pointed statement about the dangers of media dependency even as the girls keep things serious by deciding that it would be honoring their little sacred bond to strike back at these bastards and finish them off their way. Even while in the early scenes director Kaufman throws in bizarre little bits of side business out of left field, we learn the hard truth that if we submit ourselves to the media and pop culture giants of the world without questioning what they tell us to think, than sooner or later, one way or the other, we will find ourselves being morphed into some kind of fried, twisted evil, corrupted eternally by not thinking for ourselves and allowing our particular tastes and preferences to be dictated by othersâŚ
9/10