Written as part of the blogathon hosted by Wandering Through the Shelves. If you like movies, then you should join in: Just pick three movies that relate to the week's theme and tell us about them!
I love my mother. We share a very special, friendly, loving relationship (as most gay boys do with their mothers). A relationship, it must be said, that is COMPLETELY unlike any of the relationships in the films I have picked for this week's All In The Family Edition of Thursday Movie Picks.
Notorious (Alfred Hitchcock, 1946) Everyone goes on and on about the
technically non-existent mother-son relationship in Hitchcock's masterpiece
Psycho, but this one shits all over that, if you ask me. Alex Sebastian (super suave Claude Rains) is a Nazi spy living in Brazil after the War, who meets and falls in love with Alicia Huberman (Ingrid Bergman), the daughter of one of his former compatriots. But his mother Anna (the terrific Leopoldine Konstantin) suspects that not all is as it seems with Alicia. Turns out she's right - Alicia is spying for the United States - so she contrives to poison Alicia to keep her from reporting to her handler (Cary Grant) until her son sees to reason. It really is Madame Sebastian who holds all the cards in this household, just like...
The Manchurian Candidate (John Frankenheimer, 1962) ...Mrs. Iselin, who would do anything to see her husband elected to the highest political office. She's the perfect supportive political wife and mother. Except for that one little thing... SPOILER...
she's a Communist agent using hypnosis and brainwashing techniques on her son and other soldiers to install a Communist into the Presidency. If you haven't seen it, all I'll say is that if you only know Angela Lansbury as the sweet old lady from
Bedknobs and Broomsticks and
Murder, She Wrote, then you ain't seen NOTHING yet!
Friday the 13th (Sean S. Cunningham, 1980) Okay, yeah, this kinda feels like a cheat, but COME ON. If you've seen this film - or the opening scene of Wes Craven's
Scream - then you know that Jason isn't the killer in the original
Friday the 13th. His mother is. And frankly, who can blame her? Those stupid kids were off having sex, doing drugs, and listening to rock & roll music instead of watching her darling little boy, and what do you think happens? He drowns! So Mrs. Voorhees does all she can to honor her son's memory and make sure those damn kids never have any fun. After all, isn't killing for someone the best way to show them you love them?
