Punk Sucks! Disco’s Stupid! Your worst Mama’s Boy nightmares: Holden McGuire and Billy Ray McQuade in the original MOTHER’S DAY.
films as FRIDAY THE 13TH. Kaufman’s shocker was excori- ated for allegedly displaying some of the most blatantly mi- sogynist material yet seen on screen; but an equally vocal con- tingent of fans insisted that this time the critical establishment had completely missed the film’s satiric point. As the associate pro- ducers of MOTHER’S DAY were Charles’ brother Lloyd Kaufman and his partner Michael Herz, the film was eventually absorbed into the official Troma Entertainment lineup, and it’s in typically “Troma-tized” fashion that it makes its fully-annotated HD debut courtesy of Anchor Bay, which has simultaneously re- leased Darren Lynn Bousman’s nominal (and long-shelved) con- temporary remake, making a look at both versions worthwhile. MOTHER’S DAY indeed seems an anomaly in the career of co- writer (with Warren D. Leight) and director Charles Kaufman (not to be confused with Charlie Kaufman of ADAPTATION), who special- ized in such innocuous comedies
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as SQUEEZE PLAY and WHEN NATURE CALLS before turning his attention to a long stint in children’s television animation. However, he had cut his teeth in the adult film arena with 1977’s THE SECRET DREAMS OF MONA Q and also supplied extra-raunchy dubbed material for Troma’s In- donesian pickup FEROCIOUS FEMALE FREEDOM FIGHTERS. (Kaufman eventually left show business in favor of a highly suc- cessful bread-baking establish- ment, which serves as the setting of his video introduction.) But not even these latter revelations pre- pare the viewer for MOTHER’S DAY, which unquestionably for- goes titillation (there is the obligatory skinny-dipping scene, but it’s brief and distant) in favor of extreme brutality—but which never lets go of the black, twisted humor it finds in its setting. The film opens with the intro- duction of the elderly, eponymous Mother (veteran television actress Beatrice Pons, billed as “Rose Ross”) as she enjoys an aggres- sively superficial “self help”
seminar: we will soon figure out that Mother has discovered the “infomercial” in its infancy. Mother seems happy enough to give a ride to two young fellow attendees who are obviously poised to victimize her, but she has a nasty surprise in store for her pickups at the hands of her slovenly, cretinous sons Ike (Frederick Coffin as “Holden McGuire”) and Addley (Michael McCleery as “Billy Ray McQuade”). With the family from Hell estab- lished, we then turn our attention to our three protagonists, de- voted school friends who share a bond as the “Rat Pack” (Nancy Hendrickson as Abbey, Deborah Luce as Jackie and Tiana Pierce as Trina) and who look forward to escaping city life for an annual camping trip with a “surprise” des- tination. We know where this is in- evitably headed, but MOTHER’S DAY affords the heroines far more care and attention in the early stages than most of its compa- rable companion features. All three are shown to be victims of one sort or another in their
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