Only now does it occur to me... MOTHER'S BOYS (1993)

Only now does it occur to me... that MOTHER'S BOYS (1993) deserves its place in the pantheon of scary-campy "diva gone mad" thrillers, a proud tradition stretching at least from 1964's STRAIT-JACKET to 2019's MA.

Picture it: KRAMER VS. KRAMER, THE STEPFATHER, and SLEEPING WITH THE ENEMY, mashed together and directed by John Waters as a Hitchcockian thriller... and starring Jamie Lee Curtis!

It must be noted that Jamie Lee, in a rare villainous turn, is decked out as if her style icons are Angelica Huston and Annette Bening in THE GRIFTERS: cool sunglasses, dyed blonde hair in a "sea anemone" cut, and the most wicked blazers this side of a Joan Crawford movie. I mean, look at how Queen JLC elevates the pedestrian act of grocery shopping:

JLC plays "Jude," a mother of three who abruptly left her husband (Peter Gallagher) and kids for reasons the screenplay judges as "um, I dunno... unknowable crazy-woman motivations maybe involving a traumatic childhood?" She didn't leave a note, at any rate.

In the three years since, Gallagher's "Robert"––a primo soap opera archetype, the stiff-upper-lip architect dad who's trying to repair his broken heart––has moved on and is dating Joanne Whalley (WILLOW, NAVY SEALS). She is styled like Jeanne Tripplehorn in the thrillers of this era and in no way deserves the inspired madness which is deposited on her doorstep.

You see, Jamie Lee Curtis shows up out of nowhere––and she wants her family back, her Gallagher back, and Joanne Whalley... dead!

She is willing to use raw sexual/elaborately violent schemes to get what she wants, and I must say that this movie truly has a Joe Eszterhas-ian (BASIC INSTINCT, SHOWGIRLS) understanding of human sensuality. 

There are so many ludicrous happenings in this movie that Dame Vanessa Redgrave (!)

is pushed down a flight of stairs by a her grandson

 ––we're talkin' two, full-body flips––

and it's only, like, the fifth most insane thing to happen in this movie.

What are some others, you might ask? I couldn't dream of giving them all away, but I will say that Jamie Lee gets a bathtub masturbation scene as campy as anything in THE PAPERBOY or the Angela Lansbury workout video.

A personal favorite is when she buys a bunch of sugary cereals for her estranged family (on that grocery trip where she looked so fabulous) and, before she can gift them to her children, she sees them out enjoying a nice dinner with Joanne Whalley (the horror!). She does what any sensible hag-horror-heroine would do and drives into the sunset, sob-steering while she flings entire bags of groceries onto the highway.

To me, this is as iconic as the bunny boiling in FATAL ATTRACTION, Bette Davis' outbursts in WHATEVER HAPPENED TO BABY JANE, and the car burning in WAITING TO EXHALE.

There's melodrama for days, and Jamie Lee does a tremendous job, really giving it 110%––

"I'M STILL THEIR FUCKING MOMMA!"

––even when the three screenwriters let it be known that they have the combined psychological maturity of an adolescent boy who caught a double feature of THE CRUSH and POISON IVY on late nite TV after his parents went to sleep. This all works in the movie's favor, I believe.

Oh man, there's a scene where Jamie Lee tries to show her son her c-section scar in a (seductive?) attempt to manipulate him into becoming THE BAD SEED/THE GOOD SON, so... MOTHER'S BOYS is not without its groaners, I suppose.

Ooh, and there's a very proto-FIGHT CLUB bit where Jamie Lee gets into a fight with herself in Joanne Whalley's office

to make it look like Joanne is the crazy one who attacked her. Nice!

The grand finale involves a beautifully absurd scenario wherein Joanne is tied up and put on trial by "Mother's Boys"

and Jamie Lee orchestrates a murder plot which involves cutting the brakes on someone's car and sending out the family dog to make them swerve to their doom

and it's all camp, beyond camp, and it brought many a smile to my lips.

There's a glossy "taking this seriously" workmanship to the direction by Yves Simoneau (BLIND TRUST, BURY MY HEART AT WOUNDED KNEE) and a solid supporting cast which includes the aforementioned Vanessa Redgrave as Jamie Lee's mom, John C. McGinley (THE ROCK, SCRUBS, SURVIVING THE GAME, OFFICE SPACE) as a hapless biology teacher

and Joss Ackland (THE APPLE, LETHAL WEAPON 2) as a slimy divorce lawyer.

But, as you would assume, the entire project rides on the commitment and charisma of one Jamie Lee Curtis

Check out those fish earrings, a WANDA reference?

who I've now decided is the hero of this picture and will be awarded full custody. MOTHER'S BOYS, ladies and gentlemen.

Only now does it occur to me... THE HOUSE ON HAUNTED HILL (1999)

Only now does it occur to me... that the most concentrated five minutes of sheer "1990s" ever spat out upon celluloid probably occurs at the beginning of William Malone's (fortieth anniversary) remake of William Castle's THE HOUSE ON HAUNTED HILL.

Within a single, five minute span we have: Geoffrey Rush doing a Vincent Price impersonation (his character is even named Price) and making Beanie Babies (!) references,

 

 

 

 

 

 


"the '90s-personified" singer-songwriter and glasses enthusiast Lisa Loeb as a local reporter interviewing him,

 

 

 

 

 

BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER's James "Spike" Marsters as her hapless cameraman,

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

(oh, did I mention this is set at an amusement park with X-treme rollercoasters?)

 

Loeb and Marsters riding an X-treme rollercoaster,

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

cut to: an early Macintosh PowerBook rocking some clip art,

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

haunted '90s email which deletes text on its own,

 

 

 

 

 

 

Famke Janssen (GOLDENEYE, ROUNDERS, THE FACULTY, MELROSE PLACE) in a luxurious '90s bubble bath,  discussing her birthday party,

 

 

 

 

 

 

followed by a montage of the party attendees, which include Taye Diggs (GO, HOW STELLA GOT HER GROOVE BACK, ALLY MCBEAL),

 

 

 

 

 

 

 
Peter Gallagher (AMERICAN BEAUTY, MALICE, CENTER STAGE, WHILE YOU WERE SLEEPING, THE HUDSUCKER PROXY, THE PLAYER),

 

 

 

 

 

 

 
Ali Larter (VARSITY BLUES, FINAL DESTINATION, DAWSON'S CREEK, LEGALLY BLONDE, SUDDENLY SUSAN),

 

 

 

 

 

 

 
who is waving around a Sharp ViewCam camcorder like she just don't care,

 

 

 

 

 

 

 
and Bridgette Wilson-Sampras (BILLY MADISON, MORTAL KOMBAT, SAVED BY THE BELL, I KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER, HIGHER LEARNING, THE LAST ACTION HERO)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

the latter two actresses of whom, slight hairstyling differences aside, I defy anyone to tell apart. And that's not all! Before the five minutes have elapsed, we meet SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE's Chris Kattan

 

 

 

 

 

 
in a serious (?!) role. And there you have it. I'm not sure there's a more concentrated dose of '90s out there. You might try HACKERS, sure, or REALITY BITES, EMPIRE RECORDS, SPICE WORLD, BIO-DOME, maybe even BATMAN AND ROBIN, perhaps TANK GIRL or THE PHANTOM, but I'm not sure you'll find it.

However, it brings me no joy to also tell you that: the rest of HOUSE ON HAUNTED HILL '99 is pretty mediocre.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 
There is a fun homage to SUSPIRIA with primary colored stained glass falling down to (near) murderous effect:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 
And a blink-and-you'll-miss-him cameo by REANIMATOR's own Jeffrey Combs as a mad scientist:

 

But, anyway. Aside from the 90s nostalgia, there's zero reason to recommend this over the William Castle original, which features everything from acid skeletons to a lesser Mitchum to Vincent Price doing whatever the hell he wants.

Film Review: HIGH SPIRITS (1988, Neil Jordan)

Stars: 2 of 5.
Running Time: 99 minutes.
Notable Cast or Crew: Peter O' Toole, Steve Guttenberg, Jennifer Tilly, Peter Gallagher, Liam Neeson, Beverly D'Angelo, Darryl Hannah.
Tag-line: " He's an American. She's a ghost. Vacation romances are always a hassle."
Worst one-liner(s): "No respectable ghost would live in California!" OR "I'm dead. So this is what it feels like. Like a hangover." OR "You're a ghost, I'm an American. It would never work out." OR "I mean I know you like passive women, Jack, but she's dead!"
Only good line, courtesy of Peter O'Toole: "What is going on here? Eamon? Why are chunks of masonry floating about?"

Neil Jordan. Director of THE CRYING GAME and MONA LISA. Hell, let's stick INTERVIEW WITH THE VAMPIRE up there, too. This cast. Peter O'Toole, one of the finest actors of all time. Steve Guttenberg, one of the most infectiously fun American comedy actors of the 80's. Darryl Hannah with an Irish brogue that kinda flits in and out. Solid actors like Liam Neeson, Beverly D'Angelo, and Peter Gallagher in the small roles that most comedies don't even attempt to cast with quality. A creepy mansion comedy of manners in the vein of CLUE. All these things should add up to something that's at least watchable.

I wanted to like this movie. I wanted to like it SO MUCH. I love questionable cinema of the 1980's. I love the Gute. I love Irishmen. I AM an Irishman. I love Peter O'Toole. He's one of the greatest drunks of all time, and he's in a movie called "High Spirits!" This is the guy who once went for a drink in Paris and woke up in Corsica. The guy who went on a bender with Michael Caine, and when they awoke, Caine asked 'What time is it?' 'Never mind what time it is, what fucking day is it?!,' O'Toole replied, and sure enough it was two days later. Now, O'Toole is obviously wasted for real for the duration of this film, which is the only reason this earned two stars.


He's even drinking with Guttenberg in one scene. I should love this. But dammit, there's not enough O'Toole and Gute. There's somehow too much, AND not enough. Instead, we get smacked over the head with a parade of some of the worst forced laughs in film history. The film is trying SO HARD to wring a laugh from me here and there, and I am trying SO HARD to love it, and somehow ne'er the twain shall meet. That makes me sad, and it makes me exhausted. Worth a rent only if you fast-forward between all the O'Toole drinking scenes.

-Sean Gill