Mother's
   Day​ 

Slasher Trash with Panache?

Review:  JA Kerswell

Equal parts the Grindhouse intensity of I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE (1978), the nails-on-a-chalkboard audience endurance test of THE TEXAS CHAIN SAW MASSACRE (1974), and the Punk Rock anarchy of John Waters’ DESPERATE LIVING (1977), Charles Kaufman’s violent satire struggles to balance humour and shock value, but certainly isn’t without its merits.

Largely slasher-adjacent, MOTHER’S DAY was actually a contemporary of Sean S. Cunningham’s FRIDAY THE 13TH (1980) (both were filming on locations around New Jersey in the Fall of 1979). The Mother of the film’s title was played by Beatrice Pons (under the pseudonym Rose Ross), a comedic actress best known for her appearances on The Phil Silvers Show in the late 1950s. Here she portrays a caricature of a perfect mother, living in a near derelict house in the woods with her two demented sons, Ike (Frederick Coffin) and Addley (Michael McCleery)—both also appearing under pseudonyms. Mother keeps her sons glued to her side by telling them she is in danger from her even more demented sister, who she says lurks in the woods. She also controls them with the promise of luring women to their house for them to rape and murder. In an opening scene, the old lady—seemingly helpless in her neck brace—gives a couple of nefarious hippies a lift back from an improvement seminar in the city. Only for the man to be decapitated with a machete (in a goofy effect), with the woman raped, brutalised, and murdered by her rabid sons during an ambush. 

Unwittingly wandering into danger are three female friends, who reunite and holiday each year to celebrate their old college clique, The Rat Pack. Trina (Tiana Pierce) is rich and successful and living the Jetset life in Los Angeles, where she hosts parties with a half-naked elderly butler, disco bunnies on roller skates, and a mountain of cocaine. This is in contrast to Jackie (Deborah Luce) living in New York City, who has a freeloading boyfriend who inexplicably besots her, and the hen-pecked Abby (Nancy Hendrickson), who lives with her cantankerous and constantly complaining elderly mother. This year, Jackie has planned a girls' trip into the countryside, where they stop at a country store that has a couple playing duelling banjos outside despite being just hours outside of New Jersey and a toothless manager who spits “You’ll get what you deserve, you lesbins!” (sic). 

The women set up camp next to what looks like the spitting of Crystal Lake (I wonder if they could have seen Pam Voorhees if they had binoculars?), and they have fun in the woods until the two backwoods loons capture them in their sleeping bags and drag them back to Mother …

 Perhaps the main issue with MOTHER’S DAY is its tone. The intent is clearly black comedy, with an anarchic nihilism that very much fits its post-punk timeline. However, whilst attempting to satirise films such as I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE, it largely plays the rape scenes straight, albeit still in garish and cartoonish fashion. Although only the biggest freak would ever consider anything in the film titillating in any way, I’m fairly certain modern audiences would find much of it difficult to stomach (a sentiment shared by most critics at the time of its release and the British censors, who point-blank refused to give it a certificate). Kaufman’s script largely pokes fun at then modern tropes, from the constantly on (but out of tune) TV blaring adverts, the smothering mother (who, in turn, gets smothered to death by inflatable breasts), to the pop culture, disposable detritus littering the backwoods house and the (undoubtedly unlicensed) Big Bird from Sesame Street alarm clock that Ike uses to wake up. 

The psychotic backwoods family is never portrayed as anything but over-the-top cartoons come to life. Likewise, the three female friends are largely treated comically during their road trip (with Trina going on to wear a chiffon nightie to camp in the woods) and in flashbacks to their sorority pranks from their college days. However, Kaufman wisely portrays their reaction to the situation they find themselves in with genuine emotions, ranging from terror to catatonia in one case, and ultimately, violent revenge. This, of course, gives the film a schizophrenic feel—although it also provides it with an anarchic unpredictability that makes it fairly unique. The largely expected revenge side of the equation somewhat meshes the two approaches, where the family is vanquished with an array of modern utensils, from an electric carving knife to a television set smashed over a head to suffocation with the previously mentioned inflatable breasts (which were provided by Sterling of New York, according to the credits). However, in a rare moment of good taste, Kaufman removed a shot where Michael McCleery accidentally threw up on his screen mother for real after a night of heavy drinking. I can’t help but feel that John Waters would have left that in. 

MOTHER’S DAY was shot in late 1979 and finished an eight-week shoot in November of that year. Locations in New Jersey included the towns of Newton and Blairstown (where early scenes in FRIDAY THE 13TH were also filmed around the same time and, indeed, the cast socialised on occasion with the cast of Cunningham’s film). Writer/director Charles Kaufman is the brother of Troma Entertainment co-founder Lloyd Kaufman (who was an associate producer of the film). It was released on September 19, 1980 (a few months after FRIDAY THE 13TH hit it big at the box office), and was in a regional rollout for a number of years, where it potentially found its rightful place on the midnight movie circuit.  

Perhaps unsurprisingly, MOTHER’S DAY didn’t endear itself to critics. Andrew Jefchak in The Grand Rapids Press said, “Viewing Mother's Day is something like watching the drama that develops when a large rock is overthrown in mid-July.” Ernest LeoGrande in the New York Daily News in a zero-star review bemonaed: “The day homicidal rape becomes funny, 'Mother's Day' may be considered a comedy. For the meantime, director Charles Kaufman has perverted his obvious sense of the ridiculous to pander to the audience for pornographic violence in a movie about a crazy woman and her two moronic sons who abduct three young women. Gross is the word.” However, there were some reviewers who saw a glimmer of something else in the film. Perry Stewart in the Fort Worth Star Telegram said: “To be certain, Mother’s Day is not the first gory cinematic mess, and it won’t be the last. It is different, though, in a couple of ways: It is sicker, kinkier than most. And, to make matters worse in a way, it is better made. Kaufman’s opening scene of a Beverly Hills poolside party incorporates some nifty camera work, and a later flashback sequence of downright cleverness.” Richard Freedman in The Star Ledger said that the film had a “… slightly higher level of sophistication … there’s also a Mad Magazine sort of gusto poking fun at such venerable American institutions as the country rube and the over-indulgent mother.” 

Audience members were also mixed with their opinions according to a straw poll by the Muncie Evening Press: Tammy Taulbee said “‘He Knows You’re Alone’ was a much better all round.” Allen said, “‘Halloween’ was better.” Unsigned griped: “This movie is the worst movie I have ever seen, and it should be removed from the screen.” However, audience member John Crawford beamed, “Worth the money. Funny. Come see it.” But Holly Gilkison said, “This was the stupidest, queerest, most money-wasting show we have ever seen.”  In something perhaps aptly illustrated the year of 1980 to a tee, these audience reviews appeared next to an article detailing how The Muppet’s Miss Piggy had become an international sex symbol! 

Ultimately, although unfairly dismissed by some as a FRIDAY THE 13TH clone, like many other slashers made before it and after John Carpenter’s HALLOWEEN (1978), the formula had not been set. So, MOTHER’S DAY confounds expectations perhaps, but, although still often a challenging watch, there is nothing else quite like it.     

BODY COUNT 6: 
Female 4 / Male 3

1. Male is decapitated with a machete
2. Female is strangled to death with a rope
3. Female dies of her injuries
4. Male is stabbed in the neck with a nail, hit in the balls with a claw hammer and suffocated with rags
5. Male has drain cleaner poured down his throat, electrocuted inside a TV set and is stabbed repeatedly with an electric knife
   
6. Female is suffocated with inflatable breasts

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