Picture Mommy Dead
Picture Mommy Dead (1966) Rewatch: ❎
Two Bert I Gordon films in one day? I spoil myself. Ok. I hadn’t seen Picture Mommy Dead before and I’ve had no good reason for putting it off beyond “ooh, another shiny film” so it was time to break the seal and head on in and…
It’s remarkable how a film can be quite an entertaining psychological thriller and complete nonsense at the same time! It was enjoyable for that alone!
It looks absolutely luscious, oh the deep colours on the sets give it all an air of Hammer gothic, a big old house is always a winning setting and though it’s nowhere near as opulent as some, it’d dressed to look the part. It all looks really rather good. So, good start - some great work on behalf of everyone throwing the set design together and giving it all a real mood.
There’s no comedy soundtrack at inappropriate moments, no teenagers, no dancing and not a single giant iguana to be found. As Bert Gordon films go, this is absolutely restrained as all get out. Were the script and performances not so bizarre at times, you could almost mistake it for something akin to what we’d now try and pass off as “prestige horror” but it’s largely people muttering over some moody camera work and sometimes someone shuffles a chair or coughs a little too loudly. It shares a lot of DNA with other mid sixties genre pieces but you could probably throw it into black and white and it could be from any time in the few decades prior to its release, it’s theatrical enough in the main.
Story wise, the film doesn’t so much as have twists as fuck it, we’re doing this now and it worked on me entirely. Spend even a second wondering about motivation or whether there’s any consistency to someone’s character and it’ll fall apart. I’ve always found the answer to that particular problem is to, well, don’t ever wonder. Sometimes a film will overwhelm me with a level of unfathomable that Captain Nemo would struggle with and fair enough, we all have our limits, but mainly I just do not think and roll with it.
That said! Oh my sweet baby Molyneux, the ending to this film is fucked up. The whodunnit is solved relatively normally, certainly I’ve seen much stranger or less comprehensible in much more respected films than this but for one final shocking twist, it goes all kinda incestuous and, if I’m honest, creepy but not in the horror film sense of creepy and … I don’t think there’s any point asking why, it just does. Someone thought it was a really good idea to wrap up with the lingering vibe of ick and in all likelihood, that was a deliberate decision to make you go ewwww one last time so fair enough. It wasn’t entirely out the blue either, certainly it was signposted a few times prior but the film is messy enough that you never quite know - until the end, anyway - what it’s taking as entirely serious.
It’s so try hard that you kinda have to laugh and yet, it also does do the job it was clearly put there to do. I did, indeed, find myself going “ewwwww” one last time. Mission accomplished and the film certainly more memorable for it.