“Mother’s Day” is a classic piece of early 80’s cinema that demandingly pelts the viewer with violence, gore, black humor and wit. This is more than a low budget splatter-fest and if you keep your eyes and ears peeled you’ll catch all kinds of sub-texts and social commentaries that this type of picture is usually devoid of. Not surprisingly, “Mother’s Day” remains as caustic and telling 25 years after its release as it was in 1980.
The storyline is simple, three former college co-eds escape the city for a weekend of relaxation in the woods. Of course relaxation is the last thing that these city twits are gonna get because brothers Ike and Adly are hell bent on having their way with them, and rest is certainly not on the menu.
The girls are dragged unmercifully to the inbreds’ shack and are formally introduced to Mother. Mother approves of their latest earmarks, “Boys, you’ve made your mother very proud.” From here on out the girls are tortured and raped, humiliated and debased in a variety of savage ways.
All the while Ike and Adly spout sound bytes from movies, music and television. They almost have their own language that only they can understand-like they’re speaking in code. To the girls’ dismay part of their torture includes pantomiming scenes from the clan’s favorite movies. This type of behavior somehow validates these rednecks and they come away thinking that they are normal; or better yet, “citified.”
This brood of backwards hill-jacks are a poisoned by-product of heartless, soulless Pop culture. They’ve O.D.’d on saccharine soaked cinema and gimmicky bullshit rock. Ike and Adly are intellectually incapable of recognizing fiction from nonfiction. They are violent and impulsive because that is exactly what they see and hear day in and day out on the tube. It’s interesting to note that “Mother’s Day” appears to be reacting to the very type of film that it is-though I don’t think that was the director’s intent.
Eventually one of the girls dies and it’s up to the other two to avenge her death and boy do they! Axes to the groin, multiple stabbings and a gullet full of Drano do the boys in, but Mother gets extra special treatment as she is suffocated by a transparent inflatable pillow shaped like a pair of C cup breasts. Fantastic!
Unfortunately, “Mother’s Day” has yet to find its real footing in horror movie history, but in time it most surely will. What it lacks in plot and character development, is more than made up for with charm, cleverness and extensive bloodletting. “Mother’s Day” could be considered the first Troma film, though in 1980 Troma was only a glimmer in the eye of Lloyd Kaufman. It would be 6 more years before Tromaville begat its gut buster of a splatter pic-“The Toxic Avenger”.
This DVD version contains gobs of extras including; Audio commentary by the director, an interview with the director, trailers and sneak peeks.
