MOVIES ABOUT FAMILY VALUES
Posted by Hello

SATIRE OR EXPLOITATION
Posted by Hello

Anyway I was out shopping for videos on Saturday & I bought the film Serial Mom . After watching it again I just wanted to share a few thoughts about it & some other similar films.

So Did you ever see John Waters' film Serial Mom in which Kathleen Turner plays the perfect mom like Beaver Clever's Mom except when someone upsets her she takes to making obscene phone calls & then begins killing people who hurt members of her family or who do not recycle or refuse to rewind their videos before returning them to the video store where her son works or guys who do not treat her boy crazy daughter in the way that she believes they should or the teacher who believes Kathleen Turner's son is in need of therapy & accuses of her poor parenting skills. Anyway you get the picture as the police close in on her she becomes a celebrity who has a growing fan base . The young people think of her as being cool & when she enters a punk rock grunge type club & sets a guy on fire on the stage the all girl punk band take part in burning the guy to death. It is a wickedly & delicious bit of black comedy which has similar targets for send-up like Natural Born Killers but this film is not as over the top or as brutal & vicious.

Serial Mom is like the film series The Stepfather which is also about a parent & family man who seeks perfection from others & his family & when reality settles in he feels forced to kill his new family because they are not perfect like the families on TV like Beaver's family or the family in Father Knows Best or My Three Sons or The Brady Bunch. And before he kills his new family he begins to create a new family in a nearby city to set himself up again by first mudering the father in the family he has targeted to be his family & then woos & seduces the mother of that family til he finally marries her & becomes the children's stepfather only to repeat the whole cycle again. It is also funny at times but is a much darker film than Serial Mom.

Another bizzarre little film similar to these is Parents in which a young boy discovers his parents are cannibals & what adds to the menacing mood of this film is that it takes place in the late 50's or early sixties when we assume a lot of suburbanites really did try to live their lives according to some unrealistic ideal of family life as portrayed on TV & in magazines. Anyway these are all interesting & bizzarre takes on love , romance & the quest for the ideal relationship & the ideal family situation.

Another strange take on family life & reality versus the fantasy world of the perfect TV family is the more light-hearted films The Brady Bunch & The Brady Bunch: A Very Brady Sequel. In these movies the Bradys are still as unrealistic as ever but are placed in the real world where people are not as innocent & caring as are the Bradys. In the Sequel a guy who claims to be Mrs Bradys deceased or missing former husband just shows up one day though he doesn't look anything like her dead husband Mrs Brady believes him. One of the great scenes in the movie is when the guy is fed his own magic-mushrooms & is stoned & tripping while having dinner with the Bradys.

For more on these films & especially other Cult Films see:
http://www.cultmovies.info/
www.deadrabbit.org
www.mathewlilland.com
www.theZreview.co.uk

Clip from SERIAL MOM : wearing white after labor day


Clip from SERIAL MOM
Obscene phone call