***image1*** See, you've got it good.
MOMMIE DEAREST
"No...wire...hangers!" OK, so it's hard to be
too
scared of Faye Dunaway in the 1981 cult/camp classic, but this adaptation of Christina Crawford's mud-slinging bio of her mom is a candidate for the
Mystery Science T
heater
3000
treatment, so gather friends (but not family) and scream such memorable lines as "Tina, bring me the axe!"
Psychotic Mom Moment:
Dunaway scrubs her face with a scouring pad, then alternately dunks it in boiling water and iced vodka, emerging refreshed and ready for a new day of abusing her nearest and dearest.
CARRIE
Though the focus of Brian De Palma's 1976 movie is its telekinetic title character (played by Spacy Sissek, as some like to call her), Piper Laurie is magnetically, maleficently malignant as Carrie's sex-phobic, religious-freak mom. Don't miss the startling next-to-last scene; De Palma actually filmed it backward, then ran it forward in slo-mo, lending a shaky weirdness to the
mise en scène
that's more bloodcurdling than backward masking.
Psychotic Mom Moment:
Laurie savagely chopping at carrots with a butcher knife, literalizing her fear and hatred of her daughter's burgeoning sexuality-with crucifixory consequences.
WHAT EVER HAPPENED TO BABY JANE?
Re-released May 30, the two-disk special edition stars Bette Davis and (the real) Joan Crawford as a pair of villainously insane old-Hollywood sisters. While not technically a mom,
Baby Jane
's eponymous evil anima Davis is the ultimate stage-mother gone bad, crazily jealous of her more famous younger sister Blanche (Crawford), who was forced into retirement after being crippled in a rather suspicious car accident.
Psychotic Mom Moment:
While the sisters torture one another in their Miss Havisham-style decaying mansion, the actresses were brawling in real life; during one scene, sweet "Baby Jane" kicked her sister in the head so violently that Crawford needed stitches.
