Serial Mom (1994) is an American satirical comedy written and directed by John Waters, starring Kathleen Turner as the titular character, Sam Waterston as her husband, and Ricki Lake and Matthew Lillard as her daughter and son. Despite statements to the contrary in the movie, the story is completely fictional. Patty Hearst, Suzanne Somers, Joan Rivers, Traci Lords, Kathy Bates and Brigid Berlin make cameo appearances in the film.
Movies by Waters' creative influences, including Russ Meyer, Otto Preminger, William Castle and Herschell Gordon Lewis, are seen playing on television sets throughout the film.
The film was screened out of competition at the 1994 Cannes Film Festival.[1]
Synopsis
Behind her gentle facade, Baltimore housewife Beverly Sutphin (Kathleen Turner) is really a sociopathic serial killer, cheerfully exterminating those whom she deems a threat to her traditional family values. However, after the police finally expose her heinous crimes, she finds herself thrust into the spotlight and becomes an unwitting celebrity.
Plot
Beverly Sutphin (Turner) appears to be a typical suburban housewife living with her dentist husband Eugene (Waterston) and their children Misty (Lake) and Chip (Lillard). In fact, she is really a violent sociopath whose polite manners and socially correct habits – she recycles and never wears white shoes after Labor Day – conceal her criminal behavior.
Beverly's overblown reactions to everyday events lead her to committing murder. When Mr. Stubbins (John Badila), Chip's high school math teacher, criticizes her son's morbid fascination with violent horror films, she runs over him with her car, killing him. When she sees her neighbor, Rosemary Ackerman (Mary Jo Catlett), spilling litter everywhere while putting out her garbage, she flies into a murderous rage over her failure to recycle, although her rage is tempered by the arrival of the garbage men. When Misty is stood up by a date, Carl Pageant (Lonnie Horsey), and seeing him with another girl, Beverly impales him with a fireplace poker in the men's restroom.
Amongst the first to suspect Beverly's criminal tendencies is her neighbor, Dottie Hinkle (Mink Stole), who had been receiving anonymous vulgar and threatening letters and phone calls. After hearing Beverly's vocal inflexions at a social gathering, she realizes the identity of the perpetrator. After being interviewed by the police at his surgery, Eugene finds disturbing items hidden under their mattress, including an autographed beefcake photo of Richard Speck (addressed to her from Speck in prison), an audiotape of Ted Bundy (voice of John Waters), and a scrapbook filled with newspaper clippings of Jonestown and Charles Manson. After realising her mother's role in Carl's death, Misty visits the video store where her brother works and announces to Chip and his friends, "Our mother is Charles Manson."
When the Sutphins go to church that Sunday (followed by a fleet of police cars), they hear a news report on the car radio naming Beverly as the suspect in two more murders – Betty (Kathy Fannon) and Ralph Sterner (Doug Roberts) – who she killed for calling Dr. Sutphin into the office on a Saturday morning and for eating chicken (Beverly is an avid bird-watcher). When they arrive at church, they are met with scorn and suspicion by the other congregates. The church's message board announces that the day's sermon is "Capital Punishment & You." During his sermon, the priest tries to justify the death penalty by rhetorically suggesting that Jesus Christ could have spoken out against capital punishment while he was being crucified by the Romans.
Police detectives confirm that Beverly's fingerprints match those at the Sterner crime scene and attempt to arrest her, but Chip and Birdie help her escape. They hide her at Chip's video rental store, where she overhears a customer named Mrs. Jensen bickering with Chip over paying a fee for failing to rewind a videotape. After renting the film version of Annie, Mrs. Jensen calls Chip a "son of a psycho." After she leaves, Chip and Birdie discover Beverly missing and realize she's en route to Mrs. Jensen's house.
Beverly enters Mrs. Jensen's house while she's watching the opening credits of Annie and singing along to "Tomorrow," then bludgeons her to death with a leg of lamb in a style reminiscent of the Roald Dahl story Lamb to the Slaughter. She then notices one of Chip's friends, Scotty (Justin Whalin), spying from a window and begins chasing him. She tries to stab him with a knife through the car's convertible roof while yelling at him, "Buckle your seat belt!" Scotty drives off, but Beverly carjacks a passing van and follows him to Hammerjack's, where the all-girl band Camel Lips (L7) is playing. Scotty tries to escape by running on stage, but Beverly causes a light fixture to fall on him and sets him on fire using a cigarette lighter and an aerosol can. Her family arrives to see Scotty die and the police arrest Beverly.
Beverly's trial becomes a national sensation. She is dubbed "Serial Mom" by the media, and a TV movie about the case starring Suzanne Somers is planned. Chip hires an agent to manage the family's media appearances, while Misty and her new boyfriend, a reporter for The Baltimore Sun, sell merchandise about their mother's trial outside the courthouse.
During opening arguments, Beverly notices that a member of the jury (Patricia Hearst) is wearing white shoes after Labor Day, a fashion faux pas. When she tries to bring this to the attention of her attorney, he dismisses her and claims that Beverly is not guilty by reason of insanity. This causes Beverly to ask that her lawyer be fired and that she be permitted to represent herself. The judge reluctantly agrees and the trial begins.
Beverly proves to be quite formidable defending herself at trial. When Dottie Hinkle testifies that Beverly is her prank phone caller, Beverly's courtroom antics cause Dottie to explode in a cursing fit and the judge holds her in contempt of court. When Mrs. Ackerman takes the stand, Beverly destroys her credibility by revealing that it was her magazine which was the source for the nuisance letters to Dottie Hinkle, her fire poker used to kill Carl Pagent as he'd bought a chipped Fabergé Egg and her scissors found at the murder scene of the Sterners. Finally in a tense moment, Beverly forces Mrs Ackerman to admit that she doesn't recycle which provokes disgust from the jury. During the testimony of Marvin Pickles (Tom Caggiano) who saw her in a restroom stall with the poker just before Carl's murder, Beverly fans her legs, sexually arousing the man and at the very last shot she spreads her legs wide apart causing him to commit perjury. Loretta Hodges, the stoner who saw Beverly murder Mr. Stubbins is discredited by her intoxicated demeanor, only recalling a blue car rather than a blue station wagon. Beverly questions a police detective about the merits of judging her a criminal from her reading materials by snooping through her garbage, bolstering her argument by displaying a pornographic magazine called Chicks with Dicks, which she claims was found in the detective's trash by her garbage man friends (Bus Howard and Alan J. Wendl). Finally during the second detective's testimony, the entire courtroom is starstruck and completely distracted from crucial evidence by the sudden appearance of Suzanne Somers, who would be portraying Beverly in a TV movie.
When the verdict is read and Beverly is found not guilty on all charges, she laughs relievedly and announces "Kids, I'm coming home!" to her family, who are clearly stunned by her acquittal. During the post-trial interviews, Beverly follows the juror wearing white shoes to a payphone. After lecturing the juror on the folly of wearing white after Labor Day, Beverly kills the juror by striking her in the head with the receiver and reunites with her family outside the courthouse. When the jury foreman discovers the juror's dead body. Meanwhile, Suzanne Somers wants to take a picture with Beverly, who becomes enraged by being forced against her will to the photograph, proclaims this is my bad side, Suzanne stares horrified at Beverly who responds with a triumphant pose. Suzanne realiizes that Beverly is indeed "Serial Mom."
Cast
- Kathleen Turner as Beverly Sutphin, the seemingly regular titular character who will go to extremes to defend herself and her family.
- Sam Waterston as Eugene Sutphin, Beverly's good-natured dentist husband.
- Ricki Lake as Misty Sutphin, Beverly and Eugene's petite college student daughter.
- Matthew Lillard as Chip Sutphin, Beverly and Eugene's horror-obsessed son who works in the local video store.
- Scott Wesley Morgan as Detective Pike, the handsome young detective.
- Walt MacPherson as Detective Gracey, the more competent detective, later exposed as a pervert who enjoys reading the magazine Chicks with Dicks.
- Justin Whalin as Scotty Barnhill (Victim #6), Chip's porn-loving friend; lit on fire with an aerosol can and a lighter.
- Patricia Dunnock as Birdie, Chip's equally-horror-obsessed co-worker/could-be-girlfriend.
- Lonnie Horsey as Carl Pageant (Victim #2), Misty's crush, he stood her up for another girl; stabbed from behind with a fire poker.
- Mink Stole as Dottie Hinkle, the erratic neighbor who receives many obscene phone calls and letters from Beverly.
- Mary Jo Catlett as Rosemary Ackerman, the Sutphins' happy-go-lucky next door neighbor.
- John Badila as Paul Stubbins (Victim #1), Chip's math teacher who criticizes Beverly's parenting; run down by Beverly.
- Kathy Fannon as Betty Sterner (Victim #3), an obnoxious fellow PTA member who calls Eugene in on a Saturday morning; stabbed with a pair of scissors.
- Doug Roberts as Ralph Sterner (Victim #4), Betty's pig of a husband, who called Eugene in on a Saturday morning, only to be eating chicken that night; Beverly pushed an air conditioner on him.
- Traci Lords as Carl's Date, the girl Carl stood Misty up for.
- Tom Caggiano as Marvin A. Pickles, a perverted man who looks in on women in the bathroom. He saw Beverly holding the weapon that murdered Carl through a peephole.
- Jeff Mandon as Howell Hawkins, a reporter for The Baltimore Sun and Misty's later boyfriend.
- Patsy Grady Adams as Emma Lou Jensen (Victim #5), one of the video store customers who doesn't rewind and calls Chip a "son of a psycho"; beaten with a leg of lamb.
- Kim Swann as Lu-Ann Hodges, the stoner high school girl who witnessed Beverly run down Mr. Stubbins.
- Suzanne Somers (cameo), cameoed as herself to play Beverly in a TV movie.
- Bus Howard as Gus, one of the garbagemen.
- Alan J. Wendl as Sloppy, one of the garbagemen.
- Patricia Hearst as Juror #8 (Victim #7), one of the jurors who, following the trial, is beaten to death by Beverly with a payphone for wearing white shoes after Labor Day.
- Mary Vivian Pearce as Book Buyer
- Joan Rivers as Herself
- Susan Lowe as Court Groupie
- Brigid Berlin as Mean Lady
- L7 as Camel Lips, the band playing at Hammerjack's.
- Bess Armstrong (uncredited) as Dental Secretary
- Kathy Bates (uncredited) as woman outside courthouse
- John Waters (uncredited) as Voice of Ted Bundy
Reaction
The film received a mixed response from critics, and currently holds a 64% rating on Rotten Tomatoes[2]. Roger Ebert awarded it an average two stars (out of a possible four) and said in his print review[3]: "Watch "Serial Mom" closely and you'll realize that something is miscalculated at a fundamental level. Turner's character is helpless and unwitting in a way that makes us feel almost sorry for her - and that undermines the humor. She isn't funny crazy, she's sick crazy."
However, other critics lauded Waters' style and savage satire of America's obsession with true crime, such as when Beverly Sutphins daughter, Misty, is seen selling T-shirts outside the courthouse where her mother's fate will be decided. The film had a poor box office showing, as the $13 million dollar movie earned less than $8 million in domestic box office sales.[4]
DVD Release
Universal Studios Home Entertainment and Focus Features released a collector's edition DVD of the film on May 6, 2008, replacing the original HBO Home Video DVD release, which is out of print.
References
External links
