As Mother's Day came and went this year, it got the Big Picture Big Sound staff thinking about our moms and the (mostly) positive impact they've had on our lives. It also got us thinking about some of the memorable movie mothers who left an indellible impression on us as viewers, and not in a good way.
Here are our top ten movie mothers who deserved a mail bomb in place of a greeting card:
One has to question the motives of a wicked Queen who gets her gossip from a talking mirror and then sends a lackey out to murder her beautiful step-daughter. Disney took an enormous gamble with Snow White and it paid off as one of the most popular films ever made. The citrus industry is still under investigation due to the selection of an "apple" for the murder weapon. Orlando... Florida... Oranges...we can't seem to find any connection.
It is one thing to send your daughter to school dressed like a Polly pocket; but it is quite another to not prepare her for womanhood. Piper Laurie's portrayal of the completely mental "Margaret White" would be enough to send any teenager into a fiery rage that burns down their school during the prom. Granted, dumping a bucket of pig's blood on Carrie's head wasn't very prom-like. Poor John Travolta gets more than he bargained for in this one, and a young Amy Irving shines as an evil doer.
Rosalind Russell may have been one of the most underrated actresses to ever grace the silver screen and she certainly gave her all in this picture as the jealous and unsatisfied "Mama Rose". Natalie Wood may have captured the hearts of male viewers with her performance as "Gypsy Rose Lee", the Queen of the Burlesque stage, but Russell's acting really left the entire cast in the dust. The ultimate example of why living vicariously through one's children is a recipe for disaster.
The late Anne Ramsey stars as the wonderfully hideous "Mrs. Lift", the completely overbearing mother of Danny DeVito that he desperately wants to kill. Ramsey plows through this film with wonderful dialogue, leaving DeVito and Billy Crystal with only crumbs to feed on. DeVito decides to murder Crystal's ex-wife along the way and expects his friend to reciprocate the favor. A box-office flop that deserved better.
She may be able to turn the world on with her smile, but Mary Tyler Moore was colder than the iceberg that tore open the Titanic in this Oscar-winning drama. Following the accidental drowning death of her "favorite" son, Beth Jarrett turns her bitterness and anger against her depressed son (in a marvelous performance by Timothy Hutton) and family life is never quite the same. Tyler Moore is so perfect in each sequence that one wants to reach into the film and slap her in response to her coldness. Sadly, we know many people just like her.
Shelly Winters made a lot of films during her career, but none quite as strange as this one; and that includes the Poseidon Adventure. Based on a true story, Winters' over-the-top portrayal of ‘Ma Barker' is somewhat campy, but nonetheless a lot of fun to watch. How many mothers did you grow up with who were sex-craved gun-totting lunatics who led their four sons on a brutal and violent crime spree? Don't answer that.
Watching a nice guy like Montgomery Clift get mixed up with a crazy dame like Katherine Hepburn is why movies are fun. Hepburn stars as a wealthy widow looking to protect her name and place in high society - which of course, entails having her cousin (Liz Taylor) lobotomized. If you can't trust family to keep your brains intact, whom can you trust?
A psychotic loner living in his mother's motel dresses up in her clothes and decides to take up peeping and murder as a new hobby. The infamous shower murder scene is one of the greatest moments in film history and one of Hitch's finest scenes as a director. Did we mention that Mrs. Bates was a moaning corpse hanging around in a rocking chair? Poor Norman. She's scheduled to be the next judge on American Idol.
Elia Kazan's beautiful adaptation of the classic John Steinbeck novel was a sweeping drama that showcased James Dean at his best. Cal (Dean) struggles to win the love of his overbearing and moralistic father, only to discover that the mother he believed was dead, was working nearby as a madam in a brothel. Van Fleet is a cold and evil shell of a woman whose bad streak seems to have rubbed off on her son. Her performance earned her an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress.
Being a famous movie star with a penchant for hot men and the bottle does not make for solid parenting skills. Crawford's alleged cruel abuse of her children has been a contested topic for years in Hollywood, but on the surface, the lady hit her kids with wire coat hangers and cut off their hair. Nuff said.
