Mother's Day

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.

I introduced this Troma gem to my partner when we first started dating. She is a wonderful mom and an avid horror movie fan. We now watch it every year on Mother's Day. It's just the right mix of funny, gory and '80s cheese.

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.

I like this movie. When I was a teenager and I first saw it I loved it. Of course then I was enthralled with gore fests. This movie is definitely gory but when I was 13 the satirical vibe was somewhat lost on me. You see Mother moves her two "mama's boys" to the woods. Where she can take what is good from the city and leave the rest behind. What is "good" are all the things you see on TV from Fonzie to breakfest cereals. The house they live in is a marvel of production values. Two thirds of the budget alone had to have gone into decorating the house. It certainly didn't go into the Special effects. Such as the shoddy moment of blood spattering before decapitation occurs. As early 80's slice and dice goes this far outshines the typical camper in peril scenerio. We are introduced to the three main (victims) characters and we even get meaningful flashbacks in their lives. This makes it a little harder to take when they are brutalized. All in all Mother's Day ain't Life is Beautiful but why would you be that aisle of the video store unless you wanted to see some inbred choke on Drano.

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.