A Parental Pentad in honour of Mother's Day: five of the most iconically marvellous mommies in monster movie history.
"OH MY GOD, MOTHER. BLOOD! BLOOD!!" As Norman Bates knew well, the dark, sticky liquid that went down the plughole in room number 1 of the Bates Motel is much thicker than water. Any good Freudian will tell you that the bond between mother and child is a powerful one, and when magnified and distorted by the lens of the horror movie camera, that bond can mutate to outlandish extremes.
Sure, mainstream cinema has it's archetypes of motherhood - I'm thinking of Joan Crawford in Mildred Pierce for example, or Shirley Maclaine in Terms Of Endearment - but those of us raised on a diet of monsters and aliens can't help but think that their struggles are kind of insignificant. How would Mildred Pierce have coped if her daughter was possessed by a pea soup-vomiting Assyrian demon? And after the death of her child, could Aurora Greenaway have launched a safety awareness campaign even halfway as effective as P amela Voorhees'up at Camp Crystal Lake? I think not.
With that in mind, here are five of the most iconic mothers from the worlds of horror and fantasy, who serve as role models to us all.
1. NORMA BATES
...Of course. First of all, anyone who by some miracle is not familiar with the complicated mechanics of Norman Bates’s... er, intimate relationship with his mother would be advised to (a) skip this section altogether (SPOILER ALERT!), and (b) buy a copy of Psycho (1960) immediately. Seriously, where have you been all this time?
Second of all, it's important to note that the feisty Mrs. Bates is included here on the strength of her legacy rather than her actual deeds. If, for the sake of simplicity, we disregard the convoluted plot twists and overlapping narratives of the sequels and her TV (re-)incarnation, we are forced to remember that she never actually appeared on screen. In fact, she'd already been dead for ten years the night 'Marie Samuels' first checked in to the Bates Motel, so her parental triumphs can really only be judged through the actions of her doting but loose-screwed son.
Despite the minor inconvenience not being alive, it's clear she managed to imprint robust moral values and a keen work ethic on young Norman (not to mention his enthusiastic adoption of her fashion choices, but that's another story). That she could inspire the kind of devotion that led her son to resist the charms of an attractive out-of-towner and insist that "a boy's best friend is his mother", speaks volumes.
For this, and for touching the lives of so many who came after her - most often with the pointy end of a kitchen knife - Norma’s place in our hearts is assured.
MOTHER'S WORDS OF WISDOM: “Go on, tell her she'll not be appeasing her ugly appetites with MY food. Or my son! Or do I have to tell her because you don't have the guts? Huh, boy? Do you have the guts, boy?"
2. HELEN BENSON
An intelligent and intuitive woman who saved the world without anyone really noticing. As portrayed by Patricia Neal in Day The Earth Stood Still (1951), war widow Helen was successfully coping with the demands of being a working single parent when fate - and a mysterious stranger named Mr Carpenter - called on her to avert the ultimate catastrophe.
When we first meet her, she seems ordinary enough; a secretarial job in a law office, a steady boyfriend, a young son named Bobby. But after a flying saucer lands slap bang in the middle of Washington DC, she begins to demonstrate the kind of instinctive good sense that's mostly beyond the rest of us.
"This spaceman, whoever he is, we automatically assume he's a menace. Maybe he isn't at all."
Well spotted! And those instincts, maternal or otherwise, never fail her. She trusts Carpenter with the care of her son, even though she's only known him for a day or two. When he reveals his true identity as an alien peace ambassador named Klaatu, her first response is not to run screaming for the nearest fallout shelter but to make sure that her bonehead boyfriend Tom doesn't mess up Klaatu's master plan.
When Carpenter is incapacitated, the resourceful Mrs Benson, alone and unarmed, evades an entire city-full of military personnel to break through their security cordon and enter the alien spacecraft, confronting Klaatu's deadly robot guardian Gort with the coded message that will stop him from destroying the Earth as a precautionary measure. Okay, she freaks out a bit when Gort looks like he's about to death-ray her into oblivion, but wouldn't you? Ultimately, Klaatu is rescued and the Earth is saved, all thanks in no small part to Helen Benson. AND she reminds Bobby to brush his teeth at bedtime.
MOTHER'S WORDS OF WISDOM: "It isn't just you and Mr Carpenter, the rest of the world is involved." Oh, and "Klaatu Barada Nikto".
3. MORTICIA ADDAMS
There's a lot of evidence to suggest that the lovely Mrs Addams, as immortalised by Carolyn Jones (sorry, Angelica Houston - Carolyn was there first) is in many ways the ideal wife. Intelligent, attractive, charming and an impeccable hostess ("If you want anything", she tells us, "just shriek"), Morticia always seems to retain her poise and ice-cool demeanour, whether she's clipping the heads off her roses, feeding her beloved African Strangler Cleopatra, or offering the neighbours "a pot of henbane soup, some of my dwarf's-hair cobbler, and marital advice."
She paints abstract art, plays multiple musical instruments, dances like a wild thing, knits, cooks, and does a mean impersonation of a bullfrog. And if husband Gomez's feverish devotion is anything to go by, we can only assume she has other talents that they aren't allowed to discuss on network TV.
But it's her credentials as a mother we're concerned with here, and we can only conclude that they are likewise impeccable. True, little Wednesday (and by the way, did you know her middle name is Friday?) ran away from home one time, and her big brother Pugsley did briefly go through an unfortunate 'wholesome' phase (boy scouts and a pet puppy, yuk), causing Morticia to ruefully ponder, "maybe we shouldn't have taken his axe away when he was a baby".
Nevertheless, on the whole it's obvious they adore their mother as much as she adores them. Just look at their faces when she tells them: "Children? Who wants to help mother pluck the albatross?" Picture her remorse when her children are first sent off to school: "I'm going to miss the patter of their little feet... sneaking up behind me." But don't just take the word of a Mere Man with a bit of a schoolboy crush; if you need any more convincing that Morticia is not just the sartorial inspiration for a whole generation of Goth Girls, but also an awesome role model / feminist icon, there are plenty of women out there (HERE, for example. Or HERE) who will happily set you straight.
MOTHER'S WORDS OF WISDOM: "A watched cauldron never bubbles."
4. MALEVA THE GYPSY
Surely the last word in maternal devotion. In The Wolf Man (1941), Maria Ouspenskaya's diminutive wise woman remains protective of her son Bela (Bela Lugosi) within their close-knit community, despite the fact that he turns into a bloodthirsty animal every full moon. Remember too, Dr. Yogami's dictum in Werewolf of London that "the Werewolf instinctively seeks to kill the thing it loves best". If this rings true for Bela like it did for Dr. Glendon, then surely Maleva is living on borrowed time.
Maleva's wisdom manifests itself in her unfailing grasp of The Bigger Picture. Think about it: she selflessly assists the unfortunate Lawrence Talbot when he is attacked by a wolf, knowing full well the implications of the event; firstly that Talbot has just murdered her son, and secondly, that Bela's curse will now pass on to him. "The wolf bit you ... didn't he?" she asks later when Talbot returns to the scene of the crime. Dark forces are at work, and only Maleva really understands them.
Maleva picks up the gauntlet in heroic fashion, keeping a watchful eye on Larry the lycanthrope until his untimely death. She even returned in Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man a year later, looking only slightly shocked when Larry returns from the dead and turns up in her camp somewhere in the middle of Europe. "I will guard you and take care of you, as I did my own son", she tells him, accompanying him to the castle of Dr F. in deepest Vasaria. An admiral display of compassion and benevolence, for which Maleva earns our respect.
MOTHER'S WORDS OF WISDOM: "The way you walked was thorny, through no fault of your own, but as the rain enters the soil, the river enters the sea, so do tears run to a predestined end. Your suffering is over, Bela my son. Now you will find peace."
5.ROSEMARY WOODHOUSE
And finally: poor Rosemary (Mia Farrow), who suffered through the pregnancy from Hell (so to speak) only to get a far worse surprise when she found out what her busybody neighbours were up to. Oh, and by the way, BIG SPOILERS follow. Okay, I'm sure that by now everybody must have at least heard how Rosemary's Baby ends, but I won't have that last unfortunate straggler who doesn't know on my conscience. I won't, I tell you!
Unfortunately, spoilers are inescapable. It's the big revelation at the film's climax that proves just what a terrific parent Rosemary is. And as I said, the preceding nine months are no picnic for her. Her new friend commits suicide, her doctor thinks its okay for her to look like a walking cadaver, and fussy old Minnie Castevet next door keeps feeding her some God-awful herbal mixture instead of vitamin pills.
As for her husband Guy, what a weasel he turns out to be, conspiring with his shady neighbours to use his own wife's womb as a vessel for Ultimate Evil without her knowledge, all for the sake of his career. Selling your own soul is one thing, but your wife's too... Rosemary bears up and goes along with it all, but you can't hold her naivety against her; as far as I'm aware, even in 1966, feminist consciousness-raising slogans never included "Keep Your Dark Lord Out Of My Ovaries".
It's proof enough of her mommy credentials that when she finally (or so she thinks) pieces together the whole sinister plot - "they're a coven and they want my baby!" - she rushes to rescue junior from imminent sacrifice with a great big kitchen knife and a complete disregard for her own personal safety. But of course she quickly discovers she was wrong about little Adrian. "What have you done to his eyes?" she wails. "He has His father's eyes," comes the reply. And here's what puts Rosemary at the top of the list: in front of her is the son of Satan Himself, ready to usher in a new era of evil. Close at hand is a potentially deadly knife. What does she do?
Gently rocks him to sleep. That's a proper mother for you.
MOTHER'S ADVICE: "You're rocking Him too fast. That's why He's crying."
Happy Mother's Day!
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