Thursday 21 November 2013

DVD review: Mother's Day (1980)


When three beautiful young women set out for a relaxing weekend retreat in the woods, they unwittingly stumble upon a sadistic band of backwoods yokels.  Taken prisoner by the insane matriarch and her demented sons, the women are forced to fight back using anything they can get their hands on.  Heads roll, blood spurts, and genitals are mutilated as the women use myriad objects to do battle with Mother’s loving sons. Mother's Day is written by Warren Leight and Charles Kaufman who also is the director. The acting is pretty decent, some of it is straight, some of it is over the top and (I think) intentionally toungue in cheek, The camerawork and editing is good. The soundtrack is pretty good. The pacing is good, perhaps I´m a bit jaded but the silly black comedic moments kind of dampens the impact for me, sure some scenes are intense, some of them are not for the squemish, but (for example) the idiotic boot camp sequence just puts a dent in the horrific flick this could have been. It´s gory, violent and pretty brutal at times. There´s brief topless nudity in this, actually I think there is more male ass on display than female skin.
This review is based upon the region 1 DVD release from Anchor Bay Entertainment.
Rating: 4 out of 7. I can imagine this sparkling some controversy when it was first released in the 1980s due to some of the scenes. It´s a good flick but I can´t help wonder how Mother's Day would have been if they discarded the comedic bits (some of which are very silly) and just played it straight but then it might have aliented some of its audience, the Troma-fanbase seem to prefer the jokey flicks.

/JL

 




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