The Top 15 worst movie mums

 

It's a sad fact that you can't pick your family, but some of these characters really got the raw deal when landed with their fictional mothers. From the ultimate pushy parent to the teenager who never grew up - here are our favourite bad film mothers (click on the headings for YouTube clips).

1. Mommy Dearest
The original misery memoir, this tale of a Hollywood star's misguided attempt to build a perfect family by adopting two orphans, only to blight their lives with a neurotic quest for perfection is every slummy mummy's perfect excuse for just letting things slide now and then.

2. Carrie
If you've ever wondered how much of a religious obsessive a mother would have to be before her daughter turned into a psychokinetic killing machine, this is the film for you.

3. Gypsy
Rose Hovick was the ultimate pushy parent. When her showbusiness ambitions for her number one daughter were thwarted, she turned her other, shyer, daughter into the most famous burlesque performer in America. Nice.

4. The Manchurian Candidate
Turning your daughter into a stripper is one thing, but turning your son into a brainwashed assassin is, we would suggest, just that little bit worse.

5. Home Alone
Any mother who can forget to take her child on holiday twice (so a sequel could be made) could benefit from a few parenting lessons.

6. Aliens
James Cameron's high-octane sequel to 'haunted house in space' chiller Alien might at first sight to be a manly action vehicle, with testosterone-soaked dialogue and plenty of boys toys, but at its heart is a film about motherhood. Sigourney Weaver, as sole survivor from the first movie Ripley, adopts orphaned space colonist Newt and takes on the Alien Queen, mother of the entire armour-skinned goop-drooling race of nightmare beasties. The showdown, with Ripley in her futuristic forklift laying the smackdown on the huge toothy mother-alien is the classic school gate good mother vs bad mother conflict in its purest form.   

7. Little Voice
Slightly drunken and very intolerant of her almost mute but hugely talented daughter, Brenda Blethyn's character only pays attention to her daughter Little Voice once she realises her money-making potential.

8. Psycho
Quite what Norman Bates's mum did to turn her son into America's most inhospitable motel owner was never quite made clear in Alfred Hitchcock's seminal and still shocking masterpiece, but all the evidence points to something a little more hardcore than confining little Norman to the naughty step now and then

9. Mermaids
Cher plays the worst kind of mum, one who's still living out her adolescence when her children are almost through theirs. She makes them party food for dinner, refuses to tell them who their fathers are, and ups and moves with every failed relationship. 

10. The Graduate
There are a number of ways to prevent your cherished daughter from taking up with an unsuitable gentleman caller. Of these the 'Mrs Robinson' technique - commencing affair of your own with the callow youth, is considered the most enjoyable although (as the film notes) not always the most efficacious.

11. American Pie
Stiffler is everything you wouldn't want in a teenage son, promiscuous, rude, inappropriate and downright lecherous. But his mother (known in the film only as 'Stiffler's Mom') is no better, taking the virginity of one of his most geeky friends. A more modern and slightly less appealing version of Mrs Robinson.

12. Bridget Jones
Any twenty-something's worst nightmare of a mother, constantly pointing out her daughter's depressing singledom, criticising her clothes and attempting to set her up with her friend's children, then running off with a shopping channel TV host.

13. American Beauty
Uber-ambitious and cleaning-obsessed mother Carolyn Burnham, who is trying to take more of an interest in her daughter Jane's life by watching her cheerlead,  declares: "I'm so proud of you, you didn't screw up once!"

14. Kramer vs Kramer
A controversial choice, but Meryl Streep, playing Joanna Kramer, leaves her son, declaring : "I'm not taking him with me. I'm no good for him. I'm terrible with him. I have no patience. He's better off without me," thus breaking his heart, and ours.

15. Matilda
The mother of this embattled but magically-inclined Roald Dahl character doesn't even remember her own daughter's name.

Let us know if you can think of any more.

Comments

[Randall Matke]

How about a mention of the mother played by Joanne Woodward in
"The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man in the Moon Marigolds". First, she shows up drunk and humiliates her shy daughter on the occasion of her winning a science award at school ("My life is full!"), then comes home and kills her pet rabbit.

[Randall Matke]

How about a mention of the mother played by Joanne Woodward in
"The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man in the Moon Marigolds". First, she shows up drunk and humiliates her shy daughter on the occasion of her winning a science award at school ("My life is full!"), then comes home and kills her pet rabbit.

[KR]

I personally love the mom in "The Virgin Suicides." The religious nut mother keeps her teenage daughters locked away in a house until they go bonkers and all of them commit suicide. Lovely.

[gail]

CORRECTION on my Aug 29 post. I blew it. I hadn't seen "Ordinary People" for almost 3 decades. I did remember the impact it had on me then. I wasn't sure if I had recalled specifics correctly.....so I rented it.
Beth left Conrad and Cal. How could I have forgotten the last few scenes!
And it wasn't Cal's socks......it was his shirt and shoes (but those items were pointless anyway..... as Cal points out in the scene).

[gail]

Ah yes! Diedre Burroughs. Who paid to publish her own book filled with her unveiled pretentious poetry. What's really tragic--Deidre is not fictional. However, the film is based from her son's memoir with the same title. Both have different versions of the same events. Both are absurd and everyone seems to be basking together in a frustrated freudian mixture of joy tinged rage and envy. Yet, Augusten narrates like a bystander in his own life and those around him with slapstick humor. If you enjoyed the movie.....you'll love the book. And then follow up with Augusten's book DRY. His life in Manhattan after escaping the Finch's and Deidre.

[Natalie]

How about Annette Benning's character in "Running with Scissors"? She's flaky, self absorbed and her hardworking husband ends up leaving her after the booze doesn't drown out her whining anymore.

All she wants is to be allowed to be a writer, even though noones stopping her and she has the cushiest life supported by her husband.Then she leaves her adolescent son with her demented phychiatrist who hooks her on mind altering drugs in order to swindle her divorce money.

Finally she turns gay with a newlywed girl 20 years younger than her and doesn't want her son back, even when he has nowhere else to go.

[gail]

I would also like to add Geraldine Page from the Woody Allen film ....Interiors.

I also agree with the mother from "The Girl Next Door." Wow! It doesn't get more graphic then that!
And Mary Tyler Moore's character Mrs.Beth Jarret from "Ordinary People."........oh boy! I think she wins the prize!
Beth's character had been a cold heartless bitch before Buck died. His death just made her let her guard down a bit. In the end...her husband Calvin could see the only sane solution for Conrad and himself, was to divorce that heartless, soulless bitch Beth Jarret.
Even though this film was an emotionaly charged and interesting family character study (like looking at a train wreck.....you don't want to look....but you can't force your eyes away!)....great script.....fantastic acting and directing. I was still hoping Raging Bull would walk away with the Oscar for Best Picture.....and I still think even now, 28 years later. Joe Pesci was robbed of his best supporting actor Oscar by Timothy Hutton. For that matter....even Judd Hirsch was robbed of it! Hutton was o.k.........but worthy of an Oscar for that role? Nah.

[Willy]

Mrs. Pamela Voorhees, a.k.a Jason's mom, in Friday the 13th....

[John Stirr]

The music producer mother, Jane (played by Frances McDormand), in the movie, "Laurel Canyon." Along with her latest musical find and boy toy, Ian (played by Alessandro Nivola), Jane attempted to seduce her son's fiancee, Alex (played by Kate Beckinsale) into a kinky 3-way.

Jane's son, Sam (played by Christian Bale) popped up before anything could happen, but it broke up Sam and Alex's engagement. Fortunately for Sam, he apparently had Sara (played by Natascha McElhone) waiting in the wings.

Beautifully shot, but disgusting movie of California decadence!

[grouchy old bat]

There are some I know and some I don't, an interesting list.
I'd add Annie Girardot in "La Pianiste" - makes such a hung-up mess of her daughter (Isabelle Huppert) that she can't get it together with the student character (Benoît Magimel) - that's control-freaky - quite unimaginable - the Benoît Magimel bit. The daughter is a concert pianist and Conservatoire professor - mother and daughter sleep in the same bed . . .

Eileen Heckart as George Seagal's mother in "No way to treat a lady" (1968), possessive, control-freak, interfering, fussing about his diet, chickensoup etc (he's a detective in his 40's-ish) generally cramping his style . . .

Coo-coo-cachoo Mrs Robinson :)

Brenda's mother in six feet under? She is very demanding and dysfunctional. She took up with that creepy art teacher Olivier, her former son's lover.

[HGDAVE]

Thanks Sue, on 21st, 'Mother Love'...wonder if it's on DVD, must check Amazon!

[Maria]

How about a list of worst fathers???????? Why pick on the women only?

[Emz]

What about Jamie Lee Curtis in 'Mothers' Boys'?

[Amy]

Nicole Kidman as Margot in Margot At The Wedding. Monstrous is too kind a word. Her children, at least, Claude played by Zane Pais will be in therapy for the rest of his life and still, it wouldn't help. The child didn't know whether he was coming or going. She was brutal.

[rachel]

White Oleander - Michelle Pfeiffer plays Alison Lohman's mother- I watched this not long after tkaing my own mum in to see the psychiatrist and it was unnervingly accurate in places

[Kelly Parker]

Mary Tyler Moore in 'Ordinary People'. Hands down, contest over. Shivers up my spine every time I see it.

[Free Xbox 360]

Great list. I agree with the choices.

[Jay]

Worst mother of all:

Allison from Trainspotting. She let her baby die, then rot, due to a several week long heroin bender. That's some shitty parenting.

[ISOBEL]

I'd have to say the mother from The Girl Next Door, that film is messed up! She tortures her daughters both physically and emotionally, encourages the boys living with her to do the same, and when the older sister finally dies from being hung up naked in the basement with no food or water, she makes the eldest boy rape her dead body and forces the other boys (about 6 of them between the ages of around 8 to 13) to watch, stating "Finally, something she is good for".
If you are sensitive I would not suggest watching it, I had to turn it off after the rape scene cause I couldn't stop crying!

[Rhawk187]

I know someone else on here already said it, but I don't know how Cybil's mom could have been left off. I probably wouldn't have had her at 2 or 3.

"Trees aren't purple."

[Hom]

Sally Field in Mrs. Doubtfire. She had no legitimate reason to keep Robin Williams' character away from their children. She was simply spiteful and mean. Not just to her ex but to her children too.

[MysticMummy]

Fred's mom from youtube

lol

[Ray]

The role played by Lee Remick in "The Days of Wine and Roses"...

[MaryBeth]

Hehe, how about Mallorie's mom in Natural Born Killers? She was a weepy loser who let her husband rape and molest her daughter. Luckily, she got set on fire.

And then there's the mom in Sleepwalkers (Mary). She's basically a hermit and sends her son out for virgins to bring back to her and eat. He risks and loses all to keep his mother/lover alive.