Review: Mother’s Day Massacre (2007) is a Pissing Sausage Fest
Happy Mother’s Day, everyone! Sorry I’m late to the game, but I had five mother-things to call today and you know how much they like to talk.
But thank you to all the womb providers out there that gave humanity a gooey sac to bump around in until we triumphantly punch, kicked and bit our way out. Like in Twilight – that’s how it ends, right? No spoilers, people.
So, when my internet pooped out on me, I went to my lovely collection of my dvds (I’m a dvd prepper for these situations; you can’t trust Uncle Sam to give you high speed internet at all times) and lo and behold, found a Mother’s Day movie in my “cheap schlock” pile.
Hence, I present: Mother’s Day Massacre.
The Plot:
Your guess is as good as mine.
Jim is on the cusp of manhood, but is constantly emotionally abused by his over-bearing, hyper-macho Texan stereotype of a father. Never knowing his real mother, he does some research and finds clues to where she may be at.
Together with his friends, they find a ghost town and decide to get up to teenage shenanigans, only to find they aren’t alone. Thus begins the rampage and unraveling of so many secrets that were better off buried…
Thoughts:
Yes, I know. Yep. Uh-huh. Looks bad. Real bad.
And I’m not saying that it isn’t…but…I’m saying that they knew the tone walking into it and kept it consistent. They knew it was a short (almost 80 minutes), low-budget redneck-y slaughter-fest and kept it on the same level throughout (although Jim was blankly devoid of any Texan culture or flavor), down to the rockabilly jams and gopher-killing guns.
So, what I’m saying is, don’t judge it too quickly or harshly.
The Good:
The casting was actually really well done. The “kids” had genuine chemistry together that made it feel like they actually liked each other instead of being actors saying lines. Most of the actors have had a lot of acting under their belts and it shows. They knew to chew that scenery because that’s the type of movie this is. This is aragoto style of horror – loud, exaggerated, and rough around the edges. It’s in your face and they (especially Mel Gorham, Joe Coots and Greg Travis) executed this to a ‘T’. There was a good amount of energy to the whole movie and I think a lot of that came from the actors themselves.
Also, that flippin’ kid – Trevor Heins. That kid playing the typically old grizzled gas station attendant who spouts exposition was a cute and funny twist to the trope. As cheesy as it was, I enjoyed it incredibly.
There was also a great scene that came after the initial incident that is rarely seen in movies – the aftermath of surviving something horrific. We see how the remaining characters interact with each other after watching their friends die and how that changes them. Say what you will about the crassness of some of the scenes, but I thought this was a seldom explored little gem of a moment in storytelling and acting. Often at the end of every movie I watch, I rate how flipped they are for the rest of their lives if they survive, and this one actually answers that. It was a clever moment of writing and expression.
Good practical effects. They were scarce and probably cheap, but it was refreshing to see them…The CGI at the end…not so much.
And it had an ending I didn’t expect. It wasn’t a great ending, but it was a weird and wild one. Definitely a different turn (but was set up in a previous scene).
The Bad:
It would have been nice to see Jim as also a Texan, but a nice one? I mean, he lives with his dad in Texas, too, right? He can still be a quiet, calm, and sensitive heterosexual Texan male – I mean, there’s always Austin. But that bugged me a bit…Maybe that was something I didn’t hear or get.
The story was a bit jumbled as stated in the plot category. I think with some more story-boarding, it could have been smoother, but they may have been working with limited time or shoots that prevented more time being put into it. I know, it’s schlock, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be better schlock.
The biggest issue I guess I have is that the story had nothing to do with motherhood, really. It was all about dude-junk power, machismo, and pissing contests. Literally. There was peeing on people and things to establish a form of dominance more than once.
The main villains were males, including the killers (I consider them sub-villains), that sexually abused women. The whole movie is extremely dude-junk-centered. In fact, there is a scene in which one of the killers enters the home of his (male) victims with a raging and enormous…and the other….well, here’s a representation:
And that’s fine, but I think it would have been better as Father’s Day Massacre, especially as Jim’s father plays a huge role in this life and the consequences of this movie. So, if you’re looking for a womanhood-type thing, I would pass this up and watch Aliens, Silent Hill, or, if you want schlock, Jaws 3.
The ending with the police is super-fast, confusing, and weird. I didn’t hate it, but I thought that it could have been edited better (and please get better line reads from that cop, even if it takes all night of slapping him in the face with fish oil).
CGI gun shots…bad.
Brain Roll Juice:
For some reason, our killers are “hillbillies”. I forgot the actual wording of grizzled exposition kid, but that’s the gist. And we all know shorthand for hillbillies in horror movies…
Developmentally and intellectually disabled people.
As great as the actors are, it’s still at the expense of the DD population. It’s a trope, yeah, sure. But it’s one that gets under my skin. This movie is rife with sexual assaults, which is part of the story and movie, but putting someone with DD in the mix when people with DD are seven times higher to be assaulted just…makes it a little less fun.
As Nancy Thaler, a deputy secretary of Pennsylvania’s Department of Human Services, has stated,
“They are people who often cannot speak or their speech is not well-developed. They are generally taught from childhood up to be compliant, to obey, to go along with people. Because of the intellectual disability, people tend not to believe them, to think that they are not credible or that what they saying, they are making up or imagining.”
People with intellectual and developmental disabilities have been one of the most marginalized groups throughout history, experiencing forced sterilizations via legal action; denial of medical treatment; involuntary medical experimentation; mercy killings; physical and sexual abuses; neglect and homicides. In fact, one study showed that when it came to being murdered, the majority died as a result of neglect. This category included death by medical neglect and starvation. Can you imagine being cared about so little that you die from it?
Screw axes and chainsaws; slowly dying after a life of abuse, while not being able to speak or be believed, because society doesn’t care about you – that’s the real horror movie.
…Also, Latinas are not typically crazy, over-sexed, pot-growing, abusive brujas. Just throwing that out there (again, though, fun and campy performance by Mel Gorham).
Bottom-line:
Rockabilly b-slasher with a Texan drawl. Goofy and gory enough for a movie night or two, but nothing to really knock off them socks or rocks.
(2.7 / 5)
We’ve reached the final episode of American Horror Stories, season three. After the ups and downs of the season, I didn’t know what to expect. I felt that we were due a big finish, Killer Queens. But I feared we were in for a big letdown.
As it turns out, The Thing Under The Bed was neither.
The story
We begin our story with a little girl named Mary, who is scared of something under her bed. She sneaks out of her room, only to be caught by her father and sent back to sleep. And of course, there is something horrible waiting for her under her bed.
This scene cuts away to a woman named Jillian. She has strange dreams, including one about Mary. But her husband, Mark, doesn’t want to hear about it. He’s only interested in a little lovemaking because he wants a baby. Jillian doesn’t, which makes total sense because she’s already married to one. But her irritation with her childish husband goes away when he goes away. And by goes away, I mean he’s sloppily devoured by something vicious under their bed.
What worked
In short, this episode just worked. The acting was professional and believable. The cinematography and lighting work were wonderful, adding spooky effects and startling moments without impairing visibility.
Best of all, the story was solid. There were no plotholes to be found. Our main character, Jillian, was relatable and sympathetic.
This was maybe my favorite part of the story. I thought Jillian was a remarkably sympathetic character. She was dealt a hand she never asked for, having her husband slaughtered in their bedroom. I don’t think she missed him, so much as she was afraid of the legal ramifications of being caught with literal blood on her hands.
Then, when it would have been safest for her to just lay low and save up for a good defense attorney, she instead goes into unlikely hero mode. She does her best to save people, putting herself in legal and physical danger. It’s hard not to root for her.
It’s also a little hard not to root for the antagonist, too. I don’t want to ruin the twist for you, so I’m going to tread lightly here. But it’s great when you have an antagonist who might be off their rocker, but also maybe has a point.
What didn’t work
I can only really think of one complaint with this episode. And that is how frequently one character says the word Chickadee. And if you’ve seen the episode, you know what I am talking about.
I get it, he has a pet name for his daughter. It’s adorable. It’s meant to convey that the two of them have a healthy loving relationship and I get it. We all get it. Blind monks get it. But the fact remains that no parent on Earth calls their kid by their pet name every single time they speak an individual sentence to them. It was just too damn much.
All in all, this was a good episode. It was a classic story, turned on its head, told by professionals from start to finish. And I hope that if there is another season, we see more stories like this one. But after the efforts put into this season at large, I wouldn’t be surprised if this is the last we see of American Horror Stories.
(4 / 5)
If you’ve watched enough short-form horror anthology shows, you’ll notice that some stories are mainstays. Each show seems to put on the same sort of episodes, with the occasional surprising storyline that we’ve never (or at least rarely) seen before.
Leprechaun was an example of a repeated story—the story of a greedy thief whose punishment far outweighs the crime.
The story
We begin our story in 1841, with a drunk man leaving the bar one late night. He’s distracted by something glowing at the end of the well. When he reaches down for the glowing thing, he falls in. Moments later, he screams.
We then cut to the modern day. The well is still there, and now it’s surrounded by a dying town. In this town lives a young man named Colin. He’s married, his wife is pregnant, and he’s out of work. Like many of his friends.
Desperate for cash, Colin and his friends decide to rob a bank. They put together an Equate version of Ocean’s Eleven, and break in one night. But, of course, they find that the gold is nothing more than bait. And the creature waiting for them is something they never expected.
What worked
The first thing I want to point out is how real this episode felt. At least to anyone currently living in the same small town they grew up in. These characters felt like guys I went to school with. Guys I would see at the bar.
I appreciated the real anger and frustration these characters are feeling. Especially Colin. He’s bitter, and maybe he has a right to be. He did exactly what he was supposed to do to succeed. He went to school and invested in his career, and yet now he’s out of work and struggling to support his family. I probably don’t need to tell you how that feels. Because of this, we can all kind of understand why he was tempted to rob a bank.
I also want to talk about the fact that this was, as I said, an often-explored story. That can be a bad thing, but it can also be a good thing. This story is told over and over because it’s a good story. A relatable story. And there’s nothing wrong with that.
What didn’t work
That being said, this version didn’t try to do much to break out of the mold.
Because we have seen this story so many times, most of us could tell the story themselves. I would have expected something new, or some twist. But, in the end, the story didn’t bring anything new to the discussion.
Maybe because of this, the ending left a lot to be desired. Trapped in the basement of the bank, everyone just sort of stares at everyone else, until the thieves give up. And that’s it. The ending wasn’t scary, shocking, or funny. It was just sad, on multiple levels.
Overall, this was an okay story. It was entertaining, if not surprising. I would compare this episode to homemade macaroni and cheese. Everyone’s got their own version, they’re all pretty good, and none of them are exciting.
There’s just one episode left in this season of American Horror Stories. Let’s hope they’ve saved the best for last.
(3.5 / 5)
It happened. It finally happened. We got another good episode of American Horror Stories.
The story
We begin our story late at night, with a hospital security guard named Malcolm. He is frightened one night when he sees a woman with a distorted face in the hospital parking lot.
We then joined an RN named Claire. She’s doing her best to explain to a struggling mother that the hospital will not be able to treat her son with cancer because she can’t afford the treatment.
Not like she’s happy about it.
Fortunately, Dr. Nostrum, played by the legend Henry Winkler, swoops in at the last moment to tell the mother that her son qualifies for a special place in his cancer treatment clinic.
Claire is lamenting the fact that she became an RN to help people, but it feels like she isn’t doing anything good. Then, she and her friend Lilly stumble upon the same woman who menaced Malcom the night before.
While Claire is trying to figure out what’s wrong with this woman, she brutally slaughters an orderly and vanishes into the hospital. But not before struggling to say two words to Claire. Ward X.
What worked
I want to start by praising the effects of this episode. Because they were fantastic. Aided by the black and white filming, the bloody and distorted faces of Alice and her fellow victims are nightmarish. They look like a horrific version of Lockjaw taken to a terrifying extreme.
I also want to discuss the fantastic work of Henry Winkler. He is an absolute legend and never has a bad project.
Winkler’s character in this episode was exactly what we’d expect from him. He seems genuinely warm and kind, concerned about others’ well-being. Even when he’s planning to kill Claire, he comes off as such a caring guy.
Finally, I want to talk about the historical significance of this story. Because, like I always say, the scariest stories are the ones based on truth. And I’m sorry to say, this story has a basis in truth.
Mankind has a dark and twisted history when it comes to medical advances. Most doctors and scientists are good, moral people who abide by the first line of the Hippocratic oath, to first do no harm. Some, historically, are little more than monsters in white coats. Consider the Tuskegee Experiment, Unit 731, and the horrific acts of Josef Mengele. If you’re going to look up that middle one, be warned that it is NSFL.
While this episode of American Horror Stories was a work of fiction, it wasn’t that far off. I don’t think many of us want to admit how close to real life it was. This is the gift of good horror, to force us to come face to face with the worst aspects of humanity. To acknowledge them, accept them, and change them.
All in all, this was a perfect episode. The acting, the effects and the story were all top-shelf. And it’s certainly a story that will stick with you.
There are just two episodes left in this season of American Horror Stories. Let’s hope that they reach closer to the quality of X, and away from the dull and dismal episodes that began the second half of this season.
(5 / 5)
-
Book Reviews6 days agoReview: Don’t Eat the Pie, Monique Asher’s delicious trope fest.
-
Movies n TV4 days agoAmerican Horror Stories, Leprechaun
-
Original Creations4 days ago
Religious Icons Revisited for the Second Second Coming
-
Movies n TV2 days ago
American Horror Stories, The Thing Under The Bed
