Mommie Dearest (1981) - Frank Perry
Mommie Dearest (1981) - Frank Perry [Amazon.com]
Mommie Dearest is a memoir and expose written by Christina Crawford, the adopted daughter of actress Joan Crawford that was published in 1978.
Presented by its author as nonfiction, the book depicts Christina's version of her childhood and her relationship with her mother. She alleges that for many years she was the victim of child abuse during her mother's battle with alcoholism.
Crawford's name has become a byword for parental abuse and cruelty. --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mommie_Dearest [Nov 2004]
The 1981 film has achieved cult status as a high camp classic. Dunaway later stated that she wished she had never appeared in it. --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mommie_Dearest [Nov 2004]
Mommie Dearest (1981) - Frank Perry
- Mommie Dearest (1981) - Frank Perry [Amazon.com]
The movie that made "No wire hangers!" a household phrase, Mommie Dearest is the very model of a modern "camp classic," so crazily outlandish that it's fascinating. Based on the scathing and scandalous tell-all bestseller by Christina Crawford, the adopted daughter of histrionic Hollywood movie queen Joan Crawford, Mommie Dearest was billed in advance as a serious dramatic motion-picture biography. But it turned out to be something much, much weirder--a genuine Hollywood oddity that serves up a bizarre mixture of melodramatic trash and outrageous tragi-comedy. Joan Crawford won an Oscar for playing the role of the self-sacrificing mother, the woman who would do anything for her daughter, in Mildred Pierce. As depicted by Faye Dunaway (playing the hell out of the role as if she's determined to win another Oscar of her own, damn it!), her role as offscreen parent puts her in a league with big-time scary screen mommies such as Mrs. Bates in Psycho, and Angela Lansbury's über-mom in The Manchurian Candidate. Dunaway's Crawford torments and terrorizes her adopted children in myriad ways--making them give away their own birthday gifts and rousting them from their beds for frantic after-midnight bathroom-scrubbing attacks. And when, after the death of her Pepsico chairman husband, Crawford tells the board of directors, "Don't f--- with me, fellas!" one is very much inclined to heed her warning. --Jim Emerson, Amazon.comyour Amazon recommendations
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