Serial Mom

Serial Mom
Directed by	John Waters
Written by	John Waters
Produced by	John Fiedler Mark Tarlov
Starring	Kathleen Turner Sam Waterston Ricki Lake Matthew Lillard
Cinematography	Robert M. Stevens
Edited by	Janice Hampton Erica Huggins
Music by	Basil Poledouris
Distributed by	HBO Films Savoy Pictures
Release dates	April 13, 1994
Running time	95 min.
Country	United States
Language	English
Budget	$13 million
Box office	$7,881,335

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 will release a new 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.

Plot

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

For example, Beverly arrives at a parent-teacher conference with a fruitcake for her son's mathematics teacher. When the teacher criticizes her parenting skills, Beverly runs over him with her car, killing him.

Beverly harasses her neighbor Dottie Hinkle (Mink Stole) with vulgar and threatening phone calls and letters. (One of the letters refers to Hinkle as "pussy face".) When Beverly sees her neighbor, Rosemary Ackerman, spilling litter everywhere while taking out the trash, she flies into a murderous rage over Mrs. Ackerman's failure to recycle. Beverly soon begins spying on her and Dottie Hinkle at Mrs. Ackerman's house. When she is discovered stalking, Mrs. Ackerman lets her into the house. When Beverly compliments Mrs. Ackerman's potted Pussy Willows, Dottie recognizes Beverly's voice as that of her threatening phone caller. Beverly acknowledges this and immediately smashes one of Mrs. Ackerman's Franklin Mint Fabergé eggs and blames Dottie for it. Beverly then takes Mrs. Ackerman to a flea market to replace the broken egg.

At the flea market, Beverly's daughter Misty is depressed after being stood up by Carl Pageant. When Beverly sees Carl and his girlfriend (Traci Lords) browsing, she follows Carl into the men's restroom and kills him with a fireplace poker as he is urinating. A piece of Carl's liver gets stuck on the murder weapon. After Beverly dislodges the liver from the poker, she accidentally slips on it.

Misty arrives, sees Carl's body put into a body bag, and screams. When Misty tells her mother about the murder, Beverly seems euphoric, ignoring the gravity of the situation. Mrs. Ackerman, having noticed Carl's liver residue on Beverly's shoe, discovers his blood on the fireplace poker and realizes Beverly is the killer. Misty leaves the flea market and goes to the video store where Chips works. She tells Chip and his friends that "our mother is Charles Manson."

Meanwhile, Beverly's husband Eugene finds some disturbing items in their bedroom, including a scrapbook filled with newspaper clippings of serial killers such as Charles Manson and mass killings such as Jonestown. Eugene also finds an autographed photo of Richard Speck addressed to his wife and an audiotape given to her by Ted Bundy (voice of John Waters.)

During dinner that night, Chip tells his mother that his friend Scotty thinks she's responsible for the spate of recent murders. Beverly shrugs off the claim but abruptly leaves the table and drives off in her car. The Sutphin family, fearing Scotty is Beverly's next victim, races to his house. Hearing his screams, the family bursts into his house and enters his room, where they discover Scotty masturbating while watching a porno movie starring Chesty Morgan.

Meanwhile, Beverly arrives at the home of her intended victims, the Sterners, dental patients of Eugene's who forced the Sutphins to cancel a birdwatching trip because of a toothache. Beverly sees them eating Cornish hens, reminding her of the cancelled birdwatching trip, and she overhears them making fun of her husband. Beverly stabs Mrs. Sterner with scissors and kills Mr. Sterner as he tries to flee the house by dropping an air conditioner on him from an upstairs window. Beverly then returns home to her family, who is relieved that Scotty is safe and no longer thinks Beverly is a murderer.

When the Sutphin family goes to church the next morning, they are followed by a fleet of police cars. They listen to a news report on the car radio about the murders of the Sterners which names Beverly as the prime suspect. When the Sutphins arrive at church, they are met with scorn and suspicion by the other congregants, including Dottie Hinkle, Mrs. Ackerman, and Scotty. The church's message board announces that the day's sermon is "Capital Punishment & You." During the sermon, the minister attempts to justify the death penalty by rhetorically suggesting that Jesus Christ could have spoken out against capital punishment while he was being crucified.

During the sermon, police detectives confirm that Beverly's fingerprints match those at the Sterner crime scene and attempt to arrest her. During a commotion, Birdie and Chip help Beverly escape and steal Scotty's car. They flee to Chip's video rental store and hide Beverly in a back room. Shortly, a customer named Mrs. Jensen returns a copy of Ghost Dad and rents the film version of Annie. Beverly overhears Chip making her pay an extra fee for failing to rewind Ghost Dad. She begrudgingly does so and 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". Beverly bludgeons Mrs. Jensen to death with a leg of lamb while screaming "Rewind!" at her. She then notices Scotty spying from a window and the two begin a chase back to the video store and Chip's car.

Beverly tries to stab Scotty 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 pursues him to a club 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. She then sets him on fire using a cigarette lighter and an aerosol can. Her family arrives to see Scotty die and the police arrest Beverly. As she is led to jail, the crowd repeatedly chants "Serial Mom!"

By the time Beverly's trial begins, her story has become a national sensation. She is dubbed "Serial Mom" by the media, and a TV movie about the case starring Suzanne Somers is in the works. Chip now has an agent who manages the family's media appearances. Misty and her new boyfriend, a reporter for the Baltimore Sun, sell merchandise about their mother's trial outside the courthouse. Eugene becomes an anti-death penalty activist, while Birdie has an epiphany and is now opposed to violence of any kind.

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 ignores 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 in the restroom, Beverly opens and closes her legs like Sharon Stone in Basic Instinct, sexually arousing the man and causing him to commit perjury. The stoner chick who saw Beverly murder Mr. Stubbins is discredited by her intoxicated courtroom 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 jury 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.

Beverly reunites with her family outside the courthouse, but she is stopped by Suzanne Somers, who wants Beverly to pose in a photo with her. Beverly snaps at Somers, "This is my bad side!" Meanwhile, the jury foreman discovers the dead juror's body and screams. Everyone stares blankly at Beverly, realizing she is indeed "Serial Mom".

Cast

• Kathleen Turner - Beverly Sutphin
• Sam Waterston - Eugene Sutphin
• Ricki Lake - Misty Sutphin
• Matthew Lillard - Chip Sutphin
• Mary Jo Catlett - Rosemary Ackerman
• Justin Whalin - Scotty Barnhill
• Patricia Dunnock - Birdie
• Mink Stole - Dottie Hinkle
• Scott Morgan - Detective Pike
• Walt MacPherson - Detective Gracey
• Lonnie Horsey - Carl Pageant
• John Dilative - Mr. Paul Stubbins
• Kathy Fannon - Betty Sterner
• Doug Roberts - Ralph Sterner
• John Waters - Voice of Ted Bundy
• Suzanne Somers - Herself
• Traci Lords - Carl's Date
• Bess Armstrong - Eugene's Nurse
• Joan Rivers - Herself
• Mary Vivian Pearce - Book Buyer
• Patricia Hearst - Juror #8

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.

Trivia

• 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.
• 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.
• In John Waters' original 1992 script, several small details vary from the final product:

In the original version, rather that Misty asking "Do you think i could get 50 cents for The Village People on Vinyl?" and Chip replying "You might get a buck" she asks "Do you think i can get 50 cents for Vanilla Ice?" to which Chip replies "I wouldn't give you a nickel"

External links

• Serial Mom at IMDb
• Serial Mom at AllMovie
• Serial Mom at Box Office Mojo