Happy Mothers Day!

Trina: You backwoods, perverted piece of shit!
Ike: Don’t you ever say backwoods again! We’re city-fied, look around.

Last week it was announced that Twisted Pictures and ‘Saw’ film director Darren Lynn Bousman are setting out on a journey to remake the 1980 cult exploitation horror film called ‘Mothers Day’. So I thought what the hell, I’ll watch the movie and talk about it for mothers day.

The director of the movie, Charles Kaufman took the iconic image of a mother, the most nurturing and comforting person in the world, and perverted that into something punishingly evil and sadistic.

You know I thought it would just be fun to do this little review for mothers day, it ended up being quite disturbing.This is a movie I never need to see again. Hell! It’s a movie I never needed to watch in the first place! Why they are remaking this film baffles the hell out of me. After watching the original though I have no desire at all to watch the remake either.

The story of the film begins with the long-time friendship of three mutual women: Abbey (Nancy Hendrickson), Jackie (Deborah Luce) and Trina (Tiana Pierce) who get toether every year to take a camping trip. Of course this year they set up there camping trip in backwoods of Newton New Jersey and they end up living the worst nightmare they can possibly imagine when they are captured by a group of two partially insane punk/”hill billy” hybrids named Ike (Holdem Mc Guire) and Addley (Billy Ray Mc Quade). The hill billies lead a comfortable living along with their mentally abnormal Mother (Rose Ross) in an occult hovel situated amidst the woods. All through the movie, their crazy mother directs her sons into acts of sex, violence and murder, who smacks her lips to find the sins going on and on in her own ways of liking. Eventually one of the women is severely brutalized by Ike and Addley, the remaining two escape before she dies from her sustained injuries. They soon regroup, arm themselves, and set out for bloody revenge against Ike, Addley and Mother.

This is NOT your feel good mothers day movie. This is a movie that you should not watch with your mom on mother’s day. I’m not even sure I should be talking about it on mother’s day, the movie just made me feel all icky. 

I will say this though… the movie is insanely violent. You just don’t see movies like this anymore that go out of there way to make you feel uncomfortable and cringe. I seriously doubt the remake will be as brutal as the original. I will be shocked if they do. There is a scene in the film where one of the brothers gets an axe to the balls, and it’s just kind of hanging there in pieces. Sick!

Obviously if you are in to horror exploitation films then this is definitely the film for you, and you have most likely already seen it. This movie has had it’s share of being banned from certain countries like the UK and in Australia. Fourteen minutes of the film were cut in Germany in order to keep the film from an X-rating. The one I saw is an unrated version that I watched via Netflix’s Watch Instantly. So if you do want to watch, it’s just a click of the mouse away.

If you are not into these kinds of films stay away, you don’t need to see it.

If there is one positive lesson to be learned from this film it is that mothers should not act the way they were portrayed in this movie. They should act the exact opposite and be nice loving people that raise there kids to be good and decent people, not to be bloodthirsty backwoods hill billy hicks who kill people just for the hell of it. 

Here is some interesting trivia surrounding the film:

• The movie was shot for only $115,000
• While this movie was shooting the original ‘Friday the 13th was filming on the other side of the Lake.
• Prior to filming, a dead body was found in the house used in the film.
• The house used in the film was an actual house in the woods of Newton, New Jersey. No one had lived there for 15 years prior to filming. The previous owner of the home was murdered there.
• Charles Kaufman, in the director’s commentary, said that a very ironic thing happened during filming: an actress who played one of the victims and one of the actors who played a son hit it off and starting dating when not filming — even though his character terrorizes and brutalizes her. Concerned that neither would be able to project the sense of terror needed, Kaufman asked them to postpone their relationship until after the film wrapped. They complied.
• In the director’s commentary, Charles Kaufman said that while shooting a scene Billy Ray McQuade (Addley) was so hung-over from drinking the night before that he threw up on Rose Ross (Mother). Naturally, shooting the scene had to be postponed.