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Getting
sentimental and sloppy over our moms once a year is fine for well-adjusted
kids and Mr. Hallmark, who took creative advantage of Mother’s Day
to celebrate sweet, loyal, dedicated moms. But we chose instead
to honor filmdom’s 10 most demonic, diabolical, villainous mothers
– the ones we love to hate.
We’re talking about the kind who screw with our heads, twist our
self-esteem into an unrecognizable knot, and read us fairy tales
about babies in cradles falling out of a tree to smash on the pavement
below; Humpty Dumpty’s fractured skull; blind mice who can’t escape
having their tails amputated; and manic monkeys catching weasels
and popping their bloody guts all over the lot. It should come as
no surprise that we begin with Bette Davis.
Get ready to work through some issues:
10. Charlotte’s Mother in Now Voyager (1942)
Bette Davis’s memorable role of Charlotte in the melodrama, Now
Voyager, the story of a homely, repressed, overweight daughter’s
transition into an attractive woman, is largely remembered for Paul
Henreid sticking his and her cigs in his kisser and lighting them
simultaneously, but the real story was Charlotte’s mom. Gladys Cooper
played the selfish, aristocratic Boston dowager who, in order to
keep Bette at home and enslaved to her every narcissistic whim,
uses verbal and emotional abuse to convince Charlotte that she was
so ugly and undesirable, she could never get anyone to marry her.
This is not a Go-to-your-room mom, she’s a Go-to-your-room-and-stay-there-forever
mom. That’s the kind of psychological control that makes a demon
mother. Ultimately, Charlotte falls in love, causing mom to get
so furious that she has a heart attack and croaks, leaving Charlotte
distraught and feeling guilty. No happy ending here.
9. Stifler’s Mom in American Pie (1999)
Part MILF, part cougar, Jeanine Stifler (Jennifer Coolidge) is a
decidedly unfit mom. She lies in wait for her son’s party guests,
plies them with hard liquor and f***s ’em. The first film in the
American Pie series draws a blatant line from Mrs. Stifler to Mrs.
Robinson of The Graduate fame. (When Mrs. Stifler is seducing Finch,
the song “Mrs. Robinson” comes on and she says, “Mr. Finch….are
you trying to seduce me?”) But, while Mrs. Robinson is at least
capable of showing some class, Jeanine just reeks of desperation.
8. Ripley in Alien Resurrection (1997)
Oh, how the mighty have fallen. In 1986’s Aliens, Sigourney Weaver’s
Ripley is a tender but fiercely devoted surrogate mom for the orphaned
girl Newt. In screenwriter Joss Whedon’s hands, Ripley is more morally
ambiguous. First, she helps conceive the ugliest baby ever during
an intergender/interspecies orgy. The resulting progeny is a pale,
fleshy, juicy, alien/human hybrid who follows Ripley around like
a homicidal puppy. Ripley ends up dispatching the hybrid by creating
a hole in a spacecraft hull. The beast suffers an agonizing death
as it’s sucked inside-out through the pinhole leak into the vacuum
of space. Sure, Ripley’s just saving humanity. But what a thing
to do to your own kid.
7. Ma Jarrett in White Heat (1949)
James Cagney is Cody Jarrett, a deranged, ruthless badboy with a
mother complex. His relationship with her has twisted his life into
that of a psychotic madman. He was a real mama’s boy who sat on
her lap as a grown man (Cagney’s idea) for solace. Scorsese called
the scene “extraordinary.” When Cody gets one of his frequent agonizing
headaches, mom massages his head, gives him a drink and, as he downs
it, she says, “Top of the world.” She says it again, visiting him
in prison: “You’ll be out soon, back on top of the world.” The iconic
line was roared skyward by Cody to his murdered mother, as he blew
himself up on a gigantic gas storage tank: “Made it Ma, Top of the
world!!!” (Often misquoted as “Top of the world, Ma.”) In an over-the-top
performance by character actress Margaret Wycherly, Ma Jarrett goes
down in film infamy as one of the best worst mothers. Cody may be
at the “ top of the world,” but his mother is strictly from hell.
6. Ma Barker in Bloody Mama (1970)
Shelley Winters as machine gun-slingin’ Kate “Ma” Barker in Roger
Corman’s Bloody Mama. Her sons are loaded with perversions, like
sadistic Herman who sleeps with Ma, homosexual son Fred’s former
cell mate and lover also sleeps with her, son Lloyd is a whacko
drug addict who’d snort the chenille right off Ma’s bedspread if
she’d let him. Fourth son Arthur is a loser who can’t find anyone
to sleep with except himself. Addict Lloyd Barker was played by
a young Robert DeNiro. In her autobio, Winters says: “Bobby stayed
in character 24 hours a day, losing 40 pounds and getting scabs
all over his body. Toward the end of the film when he OD’s [sic]
and the Barker family must bury him hurriedly, Bobby insisted on
getting into the grave so the camera could record the dirt covering
his face. In the scene I was hysterical with grief, and I didn’t
realize until he was almost completely covere d that it was Bobby
and not a dummy … [I] pulled him out, saying, ‘For Christ’s sake,
Bobby! Even Marlon has never pulled such a dangerous stupid trick
in a movie. This is not real life, it’s only a film.’ [He replied]
‘But Shelley, for actors, aren’t the movies our only real life?’”
5. Faye Dunaway as Joan Crawford in Mommy Dearest (1981)
The story of the relationship between a child trying to survive
and her ruthless, scheming, alcoholic, movie star adoptive mom,
who knew every nasty trick in the book. Written by Joan Crawford’s
daughter, this look at the super star as mom gives the audience
a glimpse behind the scenes. In real life, Crawford was allegedly
an enraged bitch, using physical and psychological weapons on her
kids, using them as P/R props, and smashing their young egos down
into the dust. Faye Dunaway gives a scenery-chewing performance,
which took so much out of her that after the infamous “No more wire
hangers!!” scene, Dunaway “collapsed in a heap on the floor of a
closet on Paramount’s Stage 8.” Crawford herself won an Oscar for
playing a rotten mom in Mildred Pierce. Why not? She had a lot of
personal experience.
4. Mrs. Bates in Psycho (1960)
How do you think Norman Bates got that way? Dear old tyrannical
mommy, that’s how. Even as a skeleton rocking away in that creepy
Goth house still standing on Universal’s backlot, Mrs. Bates had
to fight off her randy son. (How do you think those empty eye sockets
got so worn?) She and Norman were based on real-life Ed Gein and
his mommy. Norman Bates was so dominated by his mother while she
lived, and so riddled with guilt for murdering her, that he tried
to erase his crime by using his taxidermy skills to preserve her
corpse. Ultimately, Norman “becomes” his mother, as his voice says
at the end, “…I’m not even going to swat that fly! I hope they are
watching! They’ll see and they’ll know, and they’ll say, ‘Why, she
wouldn’t even harm a fly!’”
3. Augusta Gein in Ed Gein (2000)
The true story of a religious zealot mother so controlling, ominous,
and fire and brimstone that after she dies, her son becomes a grief
stricken maniac, ultimately digging up women’s corpses, humping
them, dismembering their remains, and making lampshades, speedos,
and a “woman suit” out of their skin. Carrie Snodgress brilliantly
played Augusta W. Gein, who’s incessantly rocking in her chair,
reading scary Bible stories to young Ed, scolding him whenever he
tries to make friends at school, and teaching him that all women
are prostitutes and instruments of the devil … except her. Ed allegedly
murdered his brother so he could have mom all to himself. The real
Ed Gein said he lost his “only friend and one true love.” Not only
were Mom and Norman Bates based on the Geins’ ghoulish relationship,
but so was Leatherface in Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Buffalo Bill
in The Silence of the Lambs, and Dera nged: Confessions of a Necrophile.
We wonder what Ed got Augusta’s corpse for Mother’s Day.
2. Margaret in Carrie (1976)
Piper Laurie delivers one of the most memorable performances in
horror cinema as Margaret, deranged Bible thumper and matriarchal
dictator. Margaret has some warped views on faith and sexuality,
which she forcefully attempts to drill into poor Carrie’s head.
By using prayer as punishment and equating healthy sexuality with
original sin, she just about assures her supernaturally talented
daughter will fail in life. After Carrie demonstrates psychokinetic
abilities, Margaret attempts to murder her. This cinematic bad mom
is literally a backstabbing bitch.
1. Mrs. Iselin in Manchurian Candidate (1962)
No other dark and sinister mother in film history can compare to
Mrs. Iselin, wife of an incompetent U.S. Senator and mother of war
hero, Raymond. In a chilling performance, Angela Lansbury collaborates
with America’s enemies in creating an anonymous political assassin.
She schemes and manipulates in order to ultimately possess unprecedented
power by getting her dithering husband elected President. She learns
for the first time that the assassin they so carefully molded is
none other than her son. Whenever brainwashed Raymond sees the Queen
of Spades, his personality morphs into a killing machine. Mrs. Iselin:
“I know you will never entirely comprehend this, Raymond, but you
must believe I did not know it would be you. I served them. I fought
for them. I’m on the point of winning for them the greatest foothold
they would ever have in this country … I told them to build me an
assassin. I wanted a killer from a world filled with killers and
they chose you because they thought it would bind me closer to them…
when I take power, they will be pulled down and ground into dirt
for … what they did in so contemptuously underestimating me.” [Kisses
Raymond on the forehead, then his cheek, then on his lips] Lansbury
said director John Frankenheimer went “for the jugular,” and called
the role of Mrs. Iselin, “… an incredible, massive part.” Lansbury
turned in a shattering performance as the incestuous, power-crazed
monster mother of all time.
No Happy Mother's Day for these women. Take that, Mr. Hallmark!
Copyright Maggie Van Ostrand
"A Balloon In Cactus"
May 10, 2014 column
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