The 80’s are remembered as “The Golden Age of Slasher Films”. John Carpenter’s Halloween ushered in an arms race to turn every unclaimed holiday into a bloodbath. Accordingly, Mother’s Day (1980) was an inevitability. Charles Kaufman, brother of Lloyd Kaufman of Troma Entertainment fame, directed and produced the film. As one would expect, the film contains all of the exploitative trappings that one would expect from that lineage.
Poorly received upon release, but later garnering a cult film following. Mother’s Day is a film that sits uncomfortably between satire and sadism. It’s too vile to really be fun, and too silly to be taken seriously. Furthermore, it takes concrete steps to break the slasher formula and instead serves up a greasy rape revenge flick.
Still, the film provides a relic of a past age where films like Mother’s Day were hidden on the back wall of mom and pop video stores across America.
Where to Watch
A Troma Family Affair
Though not officially a Troma production, Mother’s Day feels unmistakably cut from the same cloth. Charles Kaufman shares his brother Lloyd’s affection for tastelessness. The film has the low-budget aesthetics of a grindhouse feature and the self-awareness of a tongue-in-cheek parody. It takes cues from The Last House on the Left (1972) and dispense with the redemptive family dynamics that makes Craven’s film worth watching. It never reaches the triumph that elevates I Spit on Your Grave (1978) to feminist relevance.
Kaufman’s vision is anchored by the bizarre matriarch at its center. She’s an aging, neck-braced mother who leans on her hillbilly sons to carry out kidnappings, torture, and worse; seemingly for nothing more than her amusement. It parallels themes put forth by The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974), but this twisted family portrait never elevates itself above absurdity. It never reaches the pinnacle of brutality that Texas Chainsaw Massacre does, but Mother’s Day nevertheless feels more mean-spirited and depraved.
Sleazy Satire
On the surface, the film delivers the exploitation goods: nudity, blood, and outrageous violence. Beneath the sleaze, lies an undercurrent of vicious satire. Its victims aren’t teenagers looking for sex, but self-actualized career women running their own shows before heading into the woods. Their independence and optimism are crushed by a backwoods family obsessed with 1950s Americana.
That tension between feminist rhetoric and patriarchal violence gives Mother’s Day a faint color of social commentary, but it’s execution is so ham-fisted that the nuance is likely lost to only the most socially conscience horror fans. The film wavers for mere seconds in the realm of thoughtful commentary before tipping the scale to tasteless. It’s never entirely clear whether Kaufman is lampooning misogynistic horror or participating in it. The film’s most brutal sequences cross lines that even hardened genre fans might find uncomfortable.
It’s true. Sexual violence is horrifying. It deserves a place in the pantheon of horror. It would also be okay if there were less of it.
Crappy Mother’s Day!
More than forty years later, Mother’s Day remains an artifact of the Kaufman philosophy: confront, offend, and entertain. Its 2010 remake reimagined the material through a slicker, more psychological lens, but Charles Kaufman’s original remains the definitive version despite the fact that it’s sloppy and abrasive. It goes down the gullet like a heaping helping of Drano.
Mother’s Day endures because it captures the heart of exploitation filmmaking. It succeeds despite being forgettable. It’s more of a morbid curiosity piece for fans of the grindhouse. It serves as a decent brain drainer, but it lacks staying power.
Mother's Day (1980) - Crappy Mother's Day! - Malevolentdark
Director: Charles Kaufman
Date Created: 1970-01-01 00:33
2