Mommie Dearest (1981)
directed by Frank Perry
Rated R for just the worst mom
For fans of…So this is a docudrama about Christina Crawford’s terrible relationship with her famous adoptive mother, Joan Crawford. But it’s widely condemned by the other children and people who were there, so I guess this movie is for people who like scandalous accounts of real people’s lives and also psychological trauma.
My rating: Bad Mom! Boy oh boy, you just hate to see it.
Some thoughts: Happy Mother’s Day (yesterday)! I had to pick a bad mom movie, of which they are many, but this one really takes the cake. Apparently this is considered a bad movie, but I’m truly at a loss as to why. If you watch this as a horror movie, it is a fucking masterpiece. Faye Dunaway’s Joan Crawford is absolutely unhinged, a truly horrifying villain. I should be clear, though, I don’t really have strong feelings about the validity of the events being depicted. I just think it is a good story and all of the things it was criticized for–Dunaway’s performance, the script, the editing, the tone–actually make this a really upsetting film. Hell, Roger Ebert described it as “unremittingly depressing” and it “left [him] feeling creepy”. (He did not like the movie lol) It is crazy to consider some of the events are verifiably true. Joan Crawford did replace her daughter on a soap opera while her daughter had a ruptured ovarian cyst. That shit is true. A fading 60 year old film star stepped into her daughter’s role as a 28 year old on a soap opera.