Time Killers

Darren Lynn Bousman's remake of Mother's Day has more in common with Death Weekend, Funny Games, and House on the Edge of the Park than Charles Kaufman's original. It uses the twisted mother/sons relationship of its source and marries it to a home invasion thriller.

As a home invasion thriller, it's graphic and perverted. It kills off central characters and boasts excellent performances from all participants. Rebecca de Mornay, as 'Mother', is chilling in her respective role and much less hysterical than I expected, but no less deviant.

The early 80's Mother's Day is referenced, but the references ('Queenie', for example) are not explained or expanded upon.

As a stand-alone horror flick/thriller, this is a very solid effort that is far more effective than any Saw film. It takes itself seriously and makes no Hollywood compromises. Recommended.

Elokuu (meaning 'August'; 2011) is a mostly successful pictorial essay on a young man's coming of age during a Finnish Summer. The conservative, upper middle class lad engages in some unconventional behavior by ferrying a selfish, mostly irritating bitch half way across the country to her sister's wedding. After she's used him for that, the smitten lad, who only wants to get his end into her, sticks to her like glue until his mission is successful. When it looks like his Summer experience will alter him permanently, the writers recoil and take a conventional route back to where he started. Probably a realistic conclusion, but not terribly interesting as cinema.

The work of cinematographer Joonas Pulkkanen is luminous here. His use of overexposure with diffusion and gentle hand-held compositions lend the film an ethereal, very special mood that adds immeasurably to the subject matter. Performances are strong, there is a stylish erotic element (the panty shot on the bus is exquisite), and the locations are rich and impactful.

Screwed ('96) is a penetrating but sad documentary on Screw magazine publisher Al Goldstein. Made before the magazine shuttered and Goldstein lost his fortune, it paints a colorful picture of a man who spent most of his life fighting for his right to be "obscene.  Known for venting regularly on the underhanded shenanigans of his ex-wives on his Midnight Blue cable TV show, and for suing and being sued constantly, he's never less than entertaining and never more than a likable piece of shit kind of guy. He seems to have no friends but plenty of acquaintances and work colleagues, and he possesses a disarming quality that, once again, makes for entertaining subject matter.

The man is refreshingly honest (at least on camera!) He describes how he fired his own father from the magazine, and doesn't refrain from concluding that his mother was "just another dumb cunt" for two-timing his father and expecting her boyfriend to leave her his fortune (he didn't).

There are some fascinating tidbits here about the magazine. The Mayor's Office of New York City allowed it to prosper without censure because it gave the city's hookers a venue to advertise their wares. It faced non-stop obscenity charges outside New York City, however, but Goldstein, bless the fat fuck!,  never struck plea deals or made compromises that would see the charges go away. He fought his detractors bravely with his middle finger firmly at the twelve o' clock position.

One of the producers of Screwed was Todd Phillips, the director of the amazing Hated -- GG Allin and the Murder Junkies, as well as Due Date and The Hangover movies.  I'm not sure why exactly he got involved with this, but I noticed that Goldstein's second and favorite wife is named Mary Phillips. Perhaps this was Phillips' access to Golstein? Mary is his mother? The film was directed by Alexander Crawford, who was Hated's cinematographer. I guess I'm just trying to put two and two together here.

Screwed is a rough-and-ready little doco that effectively captures an era long gone and a man for a specific season that finally saw a permanent Winter. Sad.

A Mother of a Day

I'm out of the loop when people describe Charles Kaufman's Mother's Day ('80) as "great cheese". It's a patronizing, back-handed compliment that demonstrates a lack of appreciation for the film's brilliance.

I think it's one of the greatest horror films ever made, and a truly worthy successor to The Texas Chainsaw Massacre that isn't satisfied duplicating its inspiration's assets. Instead, it adds a consumerist subtext while adhering to and bending genre conventions at unexpected moments.

Written by Charles Kaufman (Lloyd's much more talented brother) and Warren Leight, who went on to write and produce Law and Order - Criminal Intent, it is an extremely well made, tightly scripted film that moves like a rocket, presents a trio of female characters who feel very real, nails its black humor every time, and lathes on the violence and gore.

Its contemporaries can't hold a candle to it.

Yet it was sold and reviewed like it was throw-away batshit.

Its writing is its strength. The first fifteen minutes, in which the three heroines are introduced, is a textbook example of economic scripting.



With deft, broad, intelligent strokes, Kaufman and Leight introduce us to three friends whose lives could not be more dissimilar.

Each year, however, their differences equalize when they come together for a weekend getaway that is like a female version of the Deliverance set-up.

The horror begins when the women are attacked in their sleeping bags...

... by two playful, semi-retarded, permanent adolescents (played with frightening realism by Frederick Coffin and Michael McCleery).


The boys, who are dominated by a neurotic, psychotic, paranoid Mother (Rose Ross), drag the girls to their house in the woods. Encouraged by Mother...

... they torture and sexually assault the girls until they get bored. They work that off by punching each other out in the yard and stabbing human effigies. One of the girls takes this opportunity to escape and seek help.

Cheesy?

Are you fucking kidding! Mother's Day is kind of like the party prankster who goes too far.

Instead of blowing up a condom and stretching it over his head, he throws gasoline over the shy girl and sets her on fire.

The difference is, this prankster manages to put the fire out just in time. This balance of the real with the outrageous is what makes Mother's Day such a fine piece of exploitation.

The clutter of of the set design is inspired by Texas Chainsaw, but the substance is pure pop culture.

The two sons have been raised as unthinking, lustful thugs in a house that resembles a garish museum of late 20thy century consumerism. They are woken each morning by a Big Bird clock, brush their teeth with Cheez Whiz, and argue over the merits of disco and punk.

The writers, in a rare feat, get to have it their cake and eat it, too. They deliver very dark, disturbing "comedy", while lathering on the Grand Guignol.




Technically, especially for a low budget film, Mother's Day is a revelation. Joseph Mangine, who shot Squirm ('76), the X-rated Captain Lust ('77), Alone in the Dark ('82), and Charles Band's brilliant X-rated Cinderella ('77), does a knock-up job with the film's lighting and swift camera work.

The scenes of the house in the woods bloom with a searing brightness that one-ups James Lemmo's impressive nighttime photography of Joe Giannone's Madman ('82). The interiors are extra-bright like toy commercials, and the hand-held camera work is perfectly measured and never vomit-inducing. The original music, mostly synth, by Phil Gallo and Clem Vicari Jr., perfectly compliments the film's many tonal shifts.

The only questionable step is the final shot of the earless "Queenie" springing out from behind a bush to claim the lives of the survivors.

It's not terrible, but it feels like an afterthought in a film that felt so intelligently structured.

The infamous "Shirley Temple" sequence, in which the two brain-damaged sons play a disturbing rape game with one of the girls, is very strong stuff.

Kaufman plays it smartly because he knows exactly when to push a scene and when to pull it back. His direction is consistently inventive and clear-headed throughout.

Mother's Day is great horror in my book. The only "cheese" I saw was the Cheez Whiz that was being used as toothpaste by the film's village idiots.

This is also one of the very few horror films in which the female characters are sensitively portrayed and feel authentic in context.

The death of one of the women has a seriously tragic edge.

If any film needs a serious re-consideration, this is it.