One’s relationship with one’s mother can be…complicated. You know: murder, blackmail, domination, and kidnapping. And here are five examples of the best – that is to say, worst – moms in horror:
Mama: Andres Muschetti and his sister Barbara created a hugely impressive short about two young children menaced by their ghostly mother; it caught the attention of Guillermo del Toro, who helped them develop a full-length feature that Andre directed. The first two-thirds of the movie are intense and effective; the last third falls into fairly standard (but lovely) del Toroesque mush, but wow, does that Mom lover he kids. To death.
Carrie. Stephen King’s book, Brian DePalma’s movie, and the recent remake from Kimberly Pierce all have one thing in common: Carrie’s mother is the real villain of the piece. It’s her denial, her fear, her delusion that twiss Carrie and ultimately drivers her mad. One of the great mean mothers of film and lit, and we – like almost everyone else – prefer the 1976 version, directed by Brian DePalma, starring the incredible Sissy Spacek and of course Piper Laurie in the role for which she’ll be remembered forever.
Mother’s Day. We never would have suspected the beautiful, sophisticated and stunningly attractive Rebecca DeMornay to be one of the worst Moms ever. Yet in this underappreciated gem, she plays the matriarch of a murderous family that returns to its long-ago-sold ancestral home and does her lethal best to rid the property of its current, innocent owners. She’s tough, she’s deadly, but good God she loves her boys. It also features Shawn Ashmore, of The Following and various elected X-Men movies.
Mother’s Boys. Jamie Lee Curtis, who’s already entred the pop-cult iconography as the first, best babysitter in jeopardy, reappeared as one of the greatest domineering mothers on record as well, returning to town after a mysterious absence to stalk her ex-husband’s wife, even to the point of driving he own children murder. You’ll find a number of other veteran character actors who wen ton to bigger and better, from John C. McGinley of Scrubs to Paul Guilfoyle, late of CSI. But Jamie Lee’s the one you’ll remember.
Throw Mama from the Train. Still one of the ten best movie titles in all of human history, actress Anne Ramsey plays the epitome of the Awful Mom – so bad, in fact, that you almost agree with Danny DeVito and Billy Crystal when they do the Strangers on a Train bit (get it?) and decide to kill the other man’s wife or mother. Ramsey is wonderfully hateful and unrepentant, and a pain in the ass in life and death in this dark, dark comedy directed by DeVito himself. It even earned Ramsey (who died in the late eighties from throat cancer) a nomination for Best Support Actress.
Psycho. The first, the best Evil Mother. Is of course Norma Bates, mother of Norman himself. She doesn’t actually appear in Hitchcock’s Psycho, made from Robert Bloch’s stunning horror novel way back in 1960, but she is the reason everything happens the way it does – the spiritual center of the film, as it wee, but a very very dark center indeed. (And we shall not speak of the 1998 remake with Vince Vaughn, directed by Gus Van Sant. No one ever does. Ever.)
Special Bonus Nightmare Mother: Bates Motel. The creators of Bates Motel could have made a simple, shallow prequel to Psycho and made the younger Norma herself the hateful, demented character in life that we ‘met’ in death. Instead, they brought in Vera Farmiga and built a complex, unpredictable, unstable but often sympathetic character who is certainly high-strung and obsessed with her son, but is also just flippin’ unlucky, and made Freddie Highmore’s teenage Norman less a victim of his mother’s madness and more a psycho in his own right. This remarkably atmospheric and clever series just finished its first season; it’s well worth watching,
