![]() Beverly considers it an unforgivable fashion faux pas.Reviewed by Dr. And the funniest moment concerns a woman who gets whacked for wearing white shoes after Labor Day. The grossest sight involves an internal organ that dangles on the end of the fire poker. But Waters, bless him, would rather be playful than profound. The film recalls David Lynch’s Blue Velvet in the way darkness lurks just below the surface of sunny suburbia. Beverly sings along with Barry Manilow’s “Daybreak” as she drives off to each kill. Without giving away the details, it’s fair to say that Beverly makes lethal use of a car, a fire poker, a pair of scissors, an air conditioner, a telephone and even a leg of lamb. Waters soldiers on, the banners of his bad taste flying high. These are the times that try the souls of filmmakers who don’t blame movies for instigating all the violence in the world since Cain and Abel. Serial Mom might also prove too violent for those who refuse to accept murder as a proper subject for laughter. “I don’t like to read about movies,” Beverly tells the cops. When the police later discover the letter p missing from her copy of Premiere, Beverly says the film magazine belongs to her nosy neighbor Rosemary (Mary Jo Catlett). “Is this the cocksucker residence?” asks the gleeful Beverly, who had previously dashed off a note to Dottie using letters cut from magazines: I’ll get you, pussy face. No gum chewing and no use of the f word, the p word or the “brown word.” But once the kids are off to school, she can’t resist an anonymous obscene call to her neighbor Dottie Hinkle, hilariously played by Waters regular Mink Stole. The scene is a cue for the wussies to exit and the Waters buffs to settle in for two hours of choice perversity. Superimposed over the gross image is a screen credit: written and directed by John Waters. In close-up, Waters reveals the squashed, bloody insect body. She grabs the swatter, takes aim and hits her mark. The culprit is a buzzing fly who flits from plate to plate, leaving fly goo on the toast and juice. Beverly, cereal box in hand, is rudely interrupted while serving breakfast to her family. Waters’ twisted touch is evident from the first scene. But you can practically hear Waters snickering behind the camera: “The better to fool you with, my dear.” Big bad wolf Waters assimilate? Never! Cinematographer Robert Stevens ( The Barbs) contrives to make everything look normal. Waters stealthily and steadily kicks ass. Though Serial Mom is a mainstream movie with a modest budget ($13 million) and a respectable R rating. There were only glimmers in his last two films, Hairspray and Cry-Baby. It’s great to see Waters up to his demented tricks again. But Eugene (Waterston in a delicious sendup of his usually somber self) refuses to believe it, not until he finds the Charles Manson scrapbooks under Beverly’s bed and the taped messages from Ted Bundy. ![]() The kids are slow to discover the murderer in Mom. He has created a virtuous housewife who kills in the name of political correctness and family values. Waters has rarely come up with such a fiendishly comic conceit to stick it to the powers that be. Turner’s found the crack comic timing she lost after The War of the Roses also back is the go-for-broke silliness she showed in The Man With Two Brains when Steve Martin shouted, “Into the mud, scum queen.” Warshawski, House of Cards and Undercover Blues. Serial Mom is a spirited return to form for the actress after V.I. ![]() Turner, even dressed in suburban frocks that hide her Body Heat allure, gives Waters star power to spare as Baltimore’s homicidal homemaker Beverly Sutphin. There’s no forgetting Divine’s Babs in the 1972 Waters classic Pink Flamingos as she snacked on dog shit or sucked off her son, Crackers (Danny Mills), who begged: “Do my balls, Mama.”īut enough tender nostalgia. Born Harris Glenn Milstead, Divine was a 300-pound drag diva who brought heft and heart to Waters films from Mondo Trasho to Hairspray. Waters, the writer and director of such beloved cinematic outrages as Multiple Maniacs, Female Trouble and Polyester, has been looking for a star big enough to personify his distinctively warped view of the mad, mad world since Divine died in 1988. ![]() It’s a killingly funny spoof of crime and nonpunishment that couldn’t have come at a better time for us or them. John waters and Kathleen Turner bring out the sicko best in each other in Serial Mom. ![]()
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