"Mother's Day" is sick, silly and inane and yet it definitely is the greatest thing Troma Productions ever brought forward! There's quite a big crowd of fans that consider "Mother's Day" to be a pure genre classic, and even though I'm not that enthusiast about it, I really think it's an amusing mixture of grotesque splatter, eerie suspense and effective social satire. For their annual university reunion weekend, three girl friends go camping near the lake of Deep Baron's; just a couple of hours outside New Jersey. The area is deserted, apart from one cabin where a totally deranged elderly lady raised her middle-aged two sons to be perverted maniacs, skilled in torturing people and protecting their mommy from possible intruders. The girls are captured and serve as sleaze-toys for the two sickos. Poor Jackie doesn't survive the first night and when the other two manage to escape, they swear to avenge their departed college sister. The cool thing about "Mother's Day" is that it successfully blends two very popular contemporary horror sub genres at once! Two thirds of the film are like a typical hillbilly backwoods slasher in the trend of "Deliverance" and "Just Before Dawn" whereas the finale is genuine revenge/vigilante exploitation, like "Last House on the Left" and "I spit on your Grave". This is most likely the only Troma film that pays attention to atmosphere and set pieces! Even some of the violence is kept off screen to increase the disturbance factor, and that surely isn't producer's Lloyd Kaufman's usual style. Still, most of the dialogues are extremely poor and some of the gags and references towards other cinema classic are painfully lame. The end-sequence, on the other hand, is terrific and left room for a sequel that unfortunately never came.. If you only watch ONE Troma movie in your life, make sure it's either this one or "Bloodsucking Freaks".
Review of Mother's Day
