Serial Mom

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Serial Mom
Directed by John Waters
Produced by John Fiedler
Mark Tarlov
Written by John Waters
Starring Kathleen Turner
Sam Waterston
Ricki Lake
Matthew Lillard
Music by Basil Poledouris
Cinematography Robert M. Stevens
Editing by Janice Hampton
Erica Huggins
Distributed by HBO Films
Savoy Pictures
Release date(s) April 13, 1994
Running time 95 min.
Country Flag of the United States United States
Language English
Budget $13 million
Gross revenue $7,881,335
Allmovie profile
IMDb profile

Serial Mom is a 1994 dark comedy film 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 and Brigid Berlin make cameo appearances. Universal Studios Home Entertainment and Focus Features released a collector's edition DVD of the film on May 6, 2008. The original HBO Home Video DVD release is out of print.

Movies by Waters' creative influences, including Russ Meyer, Otto Preminger, William Castle, and Herschell Gordon Lewis, are seen playing on TV sets in the film.

Contents

[edit] Plot

Beverly Sutphin (Kathleen Turner) appears to be a typical suburban housewife living with her husband Eugene (Sam Waterston) and their children Misty (Ricki Lake) and Chip (Matthew Lillard). In fact, she is a violent sociopath whose polite manners and socially correct habits — she recycles and never wears white after Labor Day — conceal her criminal behavior.

Beverly's overblown reactions to everyday events lead to murder. When Paul Stubbins (John Dilative), Chip's high school math teacher, criticizes her son's schoolwork, she runs over him with her car, killing him. When she sees her neighbor, Rosemary Ackerman (Mary Jo Catlett), spilling litter everywhere while taking out the trash, she flies into a murderous rage over her failure to recycle. When Beverly's daughter Misty is stood up by a date, Carl Pageant (Lonnie Horsey), she murders him with a fireplace poker.

Among the first to suspect Beverly's criminal tendencies is her neighbor, Dottie Hinkle (Mink Stole), who receives vulgar and threatening letters and phone calls from her. Soon Beverly's husband Eugene finds disturbing items in their bedroom, including an autographed photo of Richard Speck, an audiotape of Ted Bundy (voice of John Waters), and a scrapbook filled with newspaper clippings of Jonestown and Charles Manson. After Carl Pageant's death, Beverly's daughter 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 week (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). When they arrive at church, they are met with scorn and suspicion by the other congregants. The church's message board announces that the day's sermon is "Capital Punishment & You." During his sermon, the minister tries to justify the death penalty by rhetorically suggesting that Jesus Christ could have spoken out against capital punishment while he was being crucified.

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", and bludgeons her to death with a leg of lamb while screaming "Rewind!" at her. She then notices a family friend, Scotty, 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 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 forcing her to admit that she doesn't recycle. During the testimony of the man who witnessed Carl's murder, Beverly fans her legs, sexually arousing the man and causing him to commit perjury. The stoner chick who saw Beverly murder Mr. Stubbins is discredited by her intoxicated demeanor. Beverly questions a police detective about the merits of judging her a criminal by snooping through her garbage, bolstering her argument by displaying a porno magazine called Chicks With Dicks, which she claims was found in the detective's trash. And during the testimony of a forensics expert, the entire courtroom is starstruck and completely distracted by Suzanne Somers.

When the verdict is read and Beverly is found not guilty on all charges, she laughs maniacally and says, "Kids, I'm coming home!" to her family, who is less than thrilled by her acquittal. Beverly follows the juror wearing white shoes to a payphone and overhears her telling a friend that she always thought Beverly was completely innocent. Beverly kills the juror by striking her in the head with the telephone receiver and reunites with her family outside the courthouse. When the jury foreman discovers the juror's dead body, everyone stares blankly at Beverly, realizing she is indeed "Serial Mom".

[edit] Cast

[edit] Reaction

Mixed reviews resulted in a poor box office showing, as the $13 million dollar movie earned less than $8 million in domestic box office sales. However, like many of Water's other films, it gained a cult audience after its release on video.[1]

[edit] Trivia

 Trivia sections are discouraged under Wikipedia guidelines.
The article could be improved by integrating relevant items and removing inappropriate ones.
  • The copyright holders of the song "Tomorrow," heard playing while Mrs. Jenkins watches Annie (1982) in her living room, charged $60,000 for the rights to use the song because of the explicit content of John Waters' past films.[citation needed]
  • Mary Vivian Pearce, a Dreamlander, is featured in a cameo appearance as a book buyer.
  • The high school used in the movie, Towson High School, was the same school that frequent Waters collaborater Divine attended.
  • The Pee Wee Herman doll used in the movie served as a tribute to Pee Wee during his public exposure scandal.

[edit] References

  1. ^ Frank the Movie Guy.Hidden Gem: Serial Mom. 23 April, 2007. Retrieved on 7 June, 2007

[edit] External links

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