The Hot Spot Rating
Mommie Dearest (1981)
Starring: Faye Dunaway, Diana Scarwid, Steve Forrest, Howard da Silva
Director: Frank Perry
Synopsis: dishing the dirt on dead and buried Joan Crawford by supposedly brutalized brat. Camp classic par excellence
“An insult to the art of moviemaking.” — Vincent Canby, The New York Times
“A camp classic, whether intended or not.” — Time Out Film Guide
“Faye Dunaway gives one of the most astonishingly over-the-top performances ever committed to film.” — Leonard Maltin’s Movie Guide
“The movie is simply too grotesque to be believed.” — Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times
“It never finds the emotional truth behind the melodrama.” — Variety
“What was intended as serious drama emerges as unintentional comedy.” — TV Guide
“Dunaway’s performance has become the stuff of legend.” — Empire
“One of the greatest camp films ever made.” — Entertainment Weekly
“The film has evolved from critical disaster into cult phenomenon.” — The Guardian
“It’s impossible to take seriously—and impossible to forget.” — BBC Films
A couple of especially famous contemporary reactions are worth highlighting:
“An insult to the art of moviemaking.” — Vincent Canby, The New York Times‘s
“Strange, creepy experience” Maltin’s
“Far over the top” Blockbuster Video
“Audiences started laughing in the wrong places” Psychotronic Video
Richard Attenborough once described Mommie Dearest as a horror film, and it’s difficult to argue with him. Bestowed with that most coveted of cinematic honours—the Golden Raspberry Award for Worst Picture of the Decade—this notorious biopic of 1940s and 50s screen legend Joan Crawford has achieved a kind of immortality few films can match.
Based on the memoir written by Crawford’s adopted daughter Christina after the star’s death, the film remains deeply controversial. Many have dismissed the book as an opportunistic character assassination of a woman no longer able to defend herself, while others have accepted it as an unflinching account of an abusive childhood. Whatever the truth may be, the resulting film is one of the most deliriously over-the-top camp melodramas ever committed to celluloid.
Faye Dunaway launches herself into the role with such fearless abandon that she creates one of cinema’s great cult performances. Every glare, every shriek, every theatrical explosion of rage is pitched at glorious maximum volume. It is a performance that somehow manages to eclipse even Bette Davis’s legendary excesses as Baby Jane Hudson. The infamous “No… wire… hangers… EVER!” sequence alone has earned its place in cult movie history.
Christina, meanwhile, emerges—perhaps unintentionally—as a permanently glum, sullen and rather irritating child, though after one encounter too many with a wire hanger perhaps that is hardly surprising. The film’s relentless emotional hysteria soon reaches such extraordinary levels that one stops regarding it as serious drama and simply surrenders to its sheer camp brilliance.
Winning the Golden Raspberry as the Worst Film of the Decade only cemented the film’s cult reputation. It is an achievement few productions can boast and one that has arguably ensured its survival far longer than many far better films.
Director Frank Perry followed this triumph with the equally notorious Monsignor, another celebrated misfire that remains high on the list of cinematic curiosities still waiting to be discovered. As for Faye Dunaway, she never quite recovered from this remarkable period of career excess, following Mommie Dearest with equally flamboyant turns in Supergirl and The Wicked Lady. After a distinguished career filled with genuinely great performances, there is a delicious irony that she may ultimately be remembered most fondly for portraying another legendary star rather than simply being one herself.
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