88 FILMS: MOTHER'S DAY/FLESH-EATING MOTHERS: A GRISLY DUO OF 'MURDEROUS MOMMY' HORROR FILM REVIEWS BY SANDRA HARRIS. ©
MOTHER'S DAY. (1980) WRITTEN, CO-PRODUCED AND DIRECTED BY CHARLES KAUFMAN.
STARRING ROSE ROSE, HOLDEN MCGUIRE, BILLY RAY MCQUADE, NANCY HENDRICKSON, DEBORAH LUCE AND TIANA PIERCE.
FLESH-EATING MOTHERS. (1988) CO-WRITTEN AND DIRECTED BY JAMES AVILES MARTIN.
STARRING MORTY KLEIDERMACHER, ROBERT LEE OLIVER, DONATELLA HECHT, NEAL ROSEN AND VALERIE HUBBARD.
The covers of the DVD boxes for these two slasher films are fantastically eye-catching. MOTHER'S DAY features an elderly woman, seated, with a partially skeletonized face and wearing a long, old-fashioned dress. She's opening up a be-ribboned present containing a severed head. It's obviously a gift from her two sons who stand grinning foolishly nearby. One has a sack over his head. The other is holding a bloody axe...
On the cover of the FLESH-EATING MOTHERS DVD box, a sexy blonde mother, wearing an apron and with enormous bouncy boobies, is clearly in the process of cooking a bespectacled kid dressed in his baseball gear. Mommy is licking her lips in a way that suggests she's really gonna enjoy eating that succulent little rugrat, grubby baseball mitt and all...
I wouldn't normally describe DVD boxes in such detail but these two covers give such a clear indication of the treats- and shocks- in store for the viewer when they watch these films. FLESH-EATING MOTHERS does exactly what it says on the tin. It's by turns hilariously funny and darkly creepy as it shares with us the nasty little secrets of a typical American neighbourhood. Well, it's not exactly typical. Judge for yourselves...
A terrible virus is being transmitted to all the wives and mothers of the neighbourhood in question via- ahem- well, infected semen, haha. That's right, it's a sexually-transmitted virus that's being shared around the ladies of the community by the town stud, who doesn't even know he has it. It has the unfortunate effect of making the infected women crave human flesh and, well, not just crave it. I mean, they gotta have it, and no foolin'...
They indulge these new-found cannibalistic leanings by chowing down on their own small children and family pets, much to the horror of the teens of the neighbourhood who are forced to get together to stop their bloodthirsty Mommas from running amok through the town. A horrible infection kicked this whole thing off. Can an antidote be found to counteract it? The race is on to find it, at any rate...
The mothers are quite terrifying as they rampage through the town and school and other local buildings hunting for fresh meat. The special effects are superb and make the womens' faces as freaky as hell itself as they become more and more evil and increasingly in the grip of the virus.
There's chunks of bloody human flesh flying everywhere as the Moms give in cheerfully to perhaps the most primeval urge of them all. Can they be stopped before it's too late? Leave 'em alone, I say. They're having the time of their lives. And a few of those dopey teens would be greatly improved by being marinated in their own juices for a couple of hours at Gas Mark 5...!
As brilliant as FLESH-EATING MOTHERS undoubtedly is, I like MOTHER'S DAY even better. It's the story of three grown women, Abbey, Jackie and Trina, who go camping in the backwoods of 'Murica and find themselves at the mercy of the family from hell, namely two deranged young men and their murderous Momma...
This is a pure and utter video nasty. It's wonderful stuff. It's the favourite horror film of Eli Roth,
who did the HOSTEL movies, although film critic Roger Ebert famously hated it, giving it no stars at all and castigating it roundly for its excessive violence and the rape content. Why do you guys always perk up when you hear there's gonna be rape in a film? Naughty readers.
Still, 'tain't my business what y'all like or don't like, haha. I'm not one to judge. I even dropped out of Judge School because I feel so uncomfortable judging folks. That's good money my poor disappointed Mom and Pops will never see again...!
Anyway, the family of disgustingly-perverted hillbilly inbreds is one of the best you'll see in any film from this period you care to watch. The two sons, Ike and Addley, are boys which any mother would surely kill herself to avoid giving birth to, and every nasty, pervy trick they know, they learned from their diabolical smiling Mother.
She's a game old biddy who gets her jollies from watching her two lads rape, torture and brutalise the defenceless women they abduct on their travels. Everything they do, they do at her insistence. She even trains 'em and physically drills them in the art of violence and abduction, which is quite something to see.
They're both as thick as planks, though, so mistakes are occasionally made and the boys are apt to bring Momma's wrath down on their ugly heads the odd time. I love the lads. They're great comic value and one of them would even be kinda cute if he just went to the dentist occasionally. See if you can guess which one I mean...!
I'll admit that the film gets a bit harrowing at times. The three women have to endure quite a lot at the hands of the boys, who like to take pictures of each other in the act of rape. One of the women in particular has an horrific time at the hands of the evil trio, prompting her two friends to swear revenge on the murderous hillbillies. Watch out, inbreds. It's time to open up a nice big can of whoop-ass...
The settings here are brilliant. You've got the scary woods and the broken-down old shack in which the killers live, which actually needs blow-torching rather than just mere cleaning. Mere cleaning ain't gon' cut it no-how. You can hear that brilliant song I THINK WE'RE ALONE NOW in the film at one point, but sung by Tommy James and the Shondells rather than the lovely Tiffany. There's also Queenie in the mix there somewhere, but that's all that I'm gonna say on that subject.
Great as these Mommy-related slasher video-nasties undoubtedly are, I wouldn't show them to your Mother if I were you, or give them to her as a Mother's Day present. She might just take 'em the wrong way. Better stick with that Daniel O'Donnell compilation album that was your first thought...
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY OF SANDRA HARRIS.
Sandra Harris is a Dublin-based novelist, film blogger and movie reviewer. She has studied Creative Writing and Film-Making. She has published a number of e-books on the following topics: horror film reviews, multi-genre film reviews, womens' fiction, erotic fiction, erotic horror fiction and erotic poetry. Several new books are currently in the pipeline. You can browse or buy any of Sandra's books by following the link below straight to her Amazon Author Page:
http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B015GDE5RO
You can contact Sandra at:
http://sandrafirstruleoffilmclubharris.wordpress.com
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