Les Chouchous de maman

A trio of girlfriends go into the woods for a camping getaway and end up kidnapped and terrorized by a deranged woman and her two vicious sons.

More Last House on the Left than Friday the 13th, Mother's Day is a sick and twisted film that still has a decent sense of humor most of the time. The three leads are likable enough to root for them to break out of the hell they're going through and the three villains are admirably evil and disgusting enough to give you the creeps and pray that the three leads will give them a taste of their own medicine.

This film is certainly not for everybody, but it is actually so refreshing to see a movie that is done in this way. It is exploitation at it's finest. It is comedy at it's most tragic! A simple plot mixed with darn good acting, and impressive makeup effects...you really can't go wrong.

In my opinion, while still in the same vein as Last House on the Left and I Spit on your Grave, it is not as good. Spit being the best of the 3, but each of them has something to offer.

If you're not sure you can watch it, let me give you this scene as an example...one deranged man rapes a woman while his brother takes Kodak Polaroids, and their mother instructs them and leads them on...sound bad, yeah, but take it for what it is. Silly, odd disturbing nonsense. But it was more a "mood" movie, based around the characters and settings vs. the horror of rape and disturbing shots. This kind of horror sound like your thing? Then you're in luck, it's worth it.

This movie is slow at parts, but when you hit 'Exercise time boyyyys!' you'll be glad you got it.

This is one of the funniest sequences i've ever seen. It shows the two brothers doing these completely ridiculous training drills, climaxing when Mother says to Ike - 'Get the big one!' and Ike then grabs a huge watermelon, hoists it over his head and in a fit of rage, smashes it. This is all to the tune of a B-movie horror rendition of the Rocky theme song.

I give it a 7 out of 10 A classic for B grade horror lovers

One of hundreds of grade-b exploitation shockers cranked out during this period; falls under the sub-category of rape and revenge films after Last House on the Left. This one has better acting and character development, but it's the addition of the crazy Mom character to the typical depraved psycho routine that makes this movie creepy and disturbing. The two brothers are scary slapstick rapists; "Can she spend the night with us tonight, Mom?" Next morning Mom asks "Where's your friend?" The boys tell her "She don't feel so good..." and they all laugh like it's Leave it to Beaver! ("they raped her to death..." my date said when we watched it in the theater back in the 80's.) This movie is also pretty funny, which really helps give you the chills. Probably only of interest to fans of this particular sub-genre. About the Troma release; I understand this movie was edited when it was first released, this version contains all the scenes. The pan and scan job is not very good, I'm surprised they did not release the film in a letter-box edition. Nothing in the movie however is as offensive as the opening promotional spots for Troma. I wanted to give them credit for attitude but I felt sorry for every one involved.

MORD39 RATING: *** out of ****

Let's get something straight: This movie is offensive. It features an old mom urging her two misfit sons to brutally rape, torture, abuse, and murder young women for her entertainment. BUT IT'S BRILLIANT, AND WELL DONE FOR ITS TYPE.

With a shlocky piece of exploitation like this, we rarely if ever get a story and character development in the mix. The story of a group of young women planning a weekend getaway for their reunion celebration first provides us with background history detailing their personalities and personal problems. We get to know these girls...and once they get "caught" by the family of crazies, we share their dilemma.

I might also say that the surprise beginning really grabbed me (I first saw the movie in a theatre in 1980 and had no clue what was going to happen), and the ending is also pretty good.

As gruesome as these killers are in the film, you almost feel for them too. You sense that the imbecile sons are victims of their overbearring mother, and have had no proper upbringing to keep them from being such animals. Even mother is pathetic in a pitiful way.

MOTHER'S DAY will probably never be respected, and it is not for everybody. But I respect it and feel it stands out far in front of zillions of other exploitation/slasher knock-off's.