May 13^th, 2003

"MOMMY DEAREST"

Recently passed Mother's Day was a celebration of the person who gave you birth. The person who supported you in life. The person who cleaned your dirty underwear...

Today's grab bag flips to the other spectrum of motherhood - the evil side. We offer up three movies that involve mothers, but not the kind of mother's you'd really like to call your own.

Psycho [1960] tells the story of Norman Bates (Anthony Perkins in his career defining role) a timid momma's boy who runs a deserted hotel and pays great heed to his mother's demands. However soon people are turning up dead with Norman having to clean-up after it. Is it his mother's doing?

One of the many memorable films from director Alfred Hitchcock, Psycho, caused a stir during it's release thanks mostly to its effective musical score and the much talked about "shower" scene. Plus throw in gobs of decent suspense, a few neat twists and Perkins great lead performance and you have a horror classic.

Rabid Grannies [1988] comes all the way to us from Belgium where two kindly old grannies are given an evil gift by their Satanic nephew which proceeds to turn them into mucus dripping demons with sharp claws who proceed to slaughter their entire family during the night of their birthday parties.

Imported by those sultans of sleaze at Troma this is a gore-a-thon B-movie that's entertaining and wacky with lots of great demon attacks (I love the birthday cake moment and the scene involving a Jeep), plenty of amusingly dubbed dialogue and a really dopey premise. In other words it's lots of fun.

Grandma's Secret Recipe [2002] comes from Jeff Hayes the soul behind the original Sleepaway Camp tribute webpage. He's cast almost his entire family in this horror short that has a grandmother going nutty after taking verbal abuse from her granddaughter and having to deal with her dumbass son. Soon, Grandma is killing of her family and making a tasty "stew" - while burying bodies in the garden and getting crazier by the minute.

Independently made short gets it's place here because of its good sense of humour and a lead performance by Barbara O'Connor that just rocks. Throw in a tongue-in-cheek tone, lots of memorable quotes ("She was bad meat") and bizarre moments (like the "scarecrow" one) and it'll leave you waiting for the sequel, Grandma's Sloppy Seconds.