Casey Chong with a selection of crazy movie mothers…
Beyond the traditional portrayal of motherhood that leans towards a caring and nurturing type, cinema also delves into the dark side across different genres, transitioning from horror to psychological thriller, drama, and even pitch-black comedy. These particular maternal figures can be either manipulative or controlling over their children, or their sinister sides are driven by grief, trauma, or jealousy. Below is our curated list of ten best crazy and unhinged movie mothers…
Faye Dunaway as Joan Crawford in Mommie Dearest (1981)
How the tables turned for Faye Dunaway, a defining New Hollywood icon who shot to stardom with acclaimed classics like Bonnie and Clyde, Chinatown, and Network. Then came Mommie Dearest, playing the real-life Joan Crawford with such an over-the-top theatrical style in a mid-Atlantic cadence. The result? A Razzie “win” for Worst Actress, where she tied with Bo Derek for Tarzan, the Ape Man, in the same category. Adapted from her adopted daughter Christina Crawford’s 1978 memoir of the same name, the movie details their estranged relationship, including verbal and physical abuse.
Dunaway goes all out, notably in the infamous “wire hanger” scene, screaming “No… wire… hangers!” after she finds out Christina (Mara Hobel) hangs her expensive dress using the forbidden material she despises the most. What makes Dunaway’s acting jarringly frightening isn’t just her wide-eyed outburst, but also her uncanny Kabuki-like white face slathered with a cold-cream facial-treatment mask. Mommie Dearest may have gained notoriety at the time of its release, but has since become a cult classic.
Piper Laurie as Margaret White in Carrie (1976)
Poor Carrie White (Sissy Spacek), a high school student often subjected to bullying, including being humiliated by her mean classmates over her first period, in Brian De Palma’s seminal 1976 supernatural horror classic. Back home, she has to put up with her religiously fanatical mother, Margaret, who only views Carrie’s period as an act of sin, even forcing her to beg for forgiveness by shoving her into a “prayer closet”.
Piper Laurie delivers a deeply unsettling performance that perfectly mirrors her character’s warped and psychologically disturbed mindset. It gets worse when Margaret discovers Carrie possesses telekinetic powers as the movie progresses. Instead of finding a solution to save her daughter, she doesn’t hesitate to stab her in the back during the bleak finale. The Academy is typically biased against the horror genre. But Carrie is a rare case, earning Sissy Spacek and Piper Laurie Oscar nominations for Best Actress and Best Supporting Actress, respectively.
Beatrice Pons as Mother in Mother’s Day (1980)
Beatrice Pons is primarily known for her earlier sitcom roles in The Phil Silvers Show and Car 54, Where Are You?, making the actress’s supporting turn in Mother’s Day a shocking career detour. Credited under the pseudonym “Rose Ross” to safeguard her own mainstream legacy, she takes the wholesome role of a mother to a twisted level. Her bizarre parenting style includes encouraging her two dim-witted adult sons, Ike (Gary Pollard) and Addley (Michael McCleery), to commit unspeakable acts like a routine chore, including kidnapping and assaulting three unfortunate college girls (Nancy Hendrickson, Deborah Luce, and Tiana Pierce).
Writer-director Charles Kaufman doesn’t shy away from its degrading, B-movie exploitation slasher elements blending with over-the-top, pitch-black comedy, resulting in a video nasty ban in the UK for decades until 2015.
Kathleen Turner as Beverly Sutphin in Serial Mom (1994)
Kathleen Turner’s seemingly picture-perfect suburban American mom in Serial Mom is equivalent to a rotten apple – shiny and vibrant on the outside, but decayed on the inside. In John Waters’s dark crime comedy, Beverly Sutphin lives a happy life with her husband and their teenage children in a nice home. But deep down, she is full of resentments, even if it’s simply a trivial matter.
Her overprotective maternal instinct and hilariously toxic personality resulted in a series of harassments and even murders, covering everything from pranking her obnoxious neighbor (Mink Stole) with an obscene phone call to casually running over a math teacher and bludgeoning an old woman (Patsy Grady Adams) with a frozen leg of lamb. The latter’s sin? She refuses to rewind her rented tapes despite being fined by Beverly’s son Chip (Matthew Lillard), who works at a video rental store. And yes, she did all this without remorse, even treating it as morally justified rather than a disturbing act of crime. Turner brings a notable deadpan energy to her role, but sadly it wasn’t enough to offset an underwhelming box-office performance.
Virginia Gregg, Paul Jasmin, and Jeanette Nolan as Norma Bates in Psycho (1960)
What sets this unhinged mother role apart from the list here is the macabre twist surrounding Norma Bates in the 1960 black-and-white classic, Psycho. Alfred Hitchcock’s sly direction, adapted from Robert Bloch’s 1959 novel of the same name, embraces the power of less-is-more filmmaking, as we never see what she looks like, only hear her voice screaming at her adult son, Norman (Anthony Perkins), who manages the Bates Motel. Her voice alone sounds tyrannical, suggesting how domineering Norman’s mother is.
Hitchcock makes us believe she’s a living person in a house on a hill overlooking the motel, using clever cinematic tricks like a silhouette in the window. But it isn’t until the climactic third act that Marion’s sister, Lila (Vera Miles), discovers the shocking truth about Norman’s mother in the house’s fruit cellar, a perfect example of “nothing is what it seems” in the horror genre. Extra credit also goes to Hitchcock for brilliantly enlisting three different actors, Virginia Gregg, Paul Jasmin, and Jeanette Nolan, whose blended voices create a distinctly eerie vocal quality.
Wendy Robie as Mrs. Robeson/Mommy in The People Under the Stairs (1991)
Character actress Wendy Robie went a 180-degree turn from playing the eccentric but sympathetic, eye-patch-wearing Nadine Hurley in Twin Peaks to a coldly disturbing suburban mom in The People Under the Stairs, marking a radical change of pace from Wes Craven venturing into a darkly satirical horror-thriller, who was synonymous with A Nightmare on Elm Street at the time.
Robie’s so-called “Mommy” character isn’t what you think, especially in her incestuous relationship with Everett McGill’s “Daddy”, functioning in the guise of a twisted married couple. They trapped children and young men inside their house’s cellar, even torturing them. Their perverse take on the husband-and-wife dynamic is the flip side of what we saw in McGill’s Big Ed and Robie’s Nadine, whose broken marriage stems from psychological guilt and denial in Twin Peaks.
Betsy Palmer as Mrs. Voorhees in Friday the 13th (1980)
Before Jason Voorhees takes over the killing spree in the subsequent Friday the 13th sequels, it all begins with Pamela Voorhees, a.k.a. Mrs. Voorhees, the overprotective mother blaming the neglectful camp counsellors for the death of her deformed son, Jason, who drowned in Camp Crystal Lake in the first movie. She is left completely devastated and has since been consumed by grief and vengeance, killing whoever is responsible for her son’s death.
Betsy Palmer’s unhinged performance is particularly notable for her eerie, schizophrenic-like personality, which at one point alternates between mimicking Jason’s childlike, high-pitched voice and a fierce, raspy-sounding maternal rage, seamlessly captured in an uninterrupted single shot as the camera holds still in a close-up during the movie’s climactic third act.
Toni Collette as Annie Graham in Hereditary (2018)
It’s a slow descent into madness for miniature artist Annie Graham in Hereditary, brilliantly played by Toni Collette in one of her best performances to date, following the death of her mother, which marks the beginning of the end. She and her family – husband Steve (Gabriel Byrne), son Peter (Alex Wolff), and daughter Charlie (Milly Shapiro) – attempt to move on with their lives, only for another tragedy to happen, resulting in a shocking freak accident.
Already deeply wrecked by unbridled grief and trauma, it’s just a matter of time before Annie’s suppressed emotion begins to erupt, bringing us to one of the movie’s most memorable moments: A dinner scene where she has had enough of her irresponsible son, Peter, and lashes out in front of him. Hereditary famously put Ari Aster, who made his feature-length directorial debut, on the map as one of the most promising filmmakers in exploring the elevated horror subgenre.
Elizabeth Moody as Vega Cosgrove in Braindead a.k.a. Dead Alive (1992)
Elizabeth Moody’s portrayal of a domineering mother in Braindead is one for the ages. The kind of matriarch who rules her meek adult son Lionel (Timothy Balme) with an iron fist, even dictating his love life. For the latter, she despises Lionel’s girlfriend, Paquita (Diana Peñalver), because she sees her as a threat and also looks down on her. Even after she ends up getting bitten by a mutated Sumatran rat-monkey while stalking her son and Paquita at a local zoo, her tyranny remains as obnoxious as ever. She begins to guilt-trip her son into taking care of her as her physical condition deteriorates following the infection.
At one point, Peter Jackson directed perhaps the grossest dining scene in movie history – a luncheon that’s best described as stomach-churning yet grotesque, from Lionel’s mom’s pus from her open wounds squirting into one of her guests’ custards to casually swallowing her own fall-off ear. The movie culminates in a relentlessly gory climax, with Lionel’s mom gradually turning into an ugly-looking, 20-foot-tall monster that her son has no choice but to end her life once and for all.
Mo’Nique as Mary Lee Johnston in Precious (2009)
How vile a toxic mom can be? Then, look no further than Mo’Nique’s no-holds-barred performance as Mary Lee Johnston in Lee Daniels’ uncompromisingly stark domestic drama Precious, a performance unlike anything she’s ever done, including shedding her usual comedic persona for a raw, vanity-free portrayal of a mean-spirited, unemployed mother.
There’s no sugarcoating or sense of sympathetic understanding surrounding her frequent verbal and physical abuse of her teenage daughter, Precious (Gabourey Sidibe, in her remarkable acting debut). Maternal love is non-existent, replaced only by a deep sense of hatred and resentment that Mary Lee blames Precious for everything. Mo’Nique went on to win several accolades for Best Supporting Actress, taking home not only the Oscar but also the BAFTA, Golden Globe, and SAG awards.
Who are you favourite crazy movie mothers? Let us know on our social channels @FlickeringMyth…
Casey Chong
