Mommie Dearest: Frank Perry

The fact that Frank Perry’s Mommie Dearest, a biographical film about actress Joan Crawford and her abusive relationship with her two adopted children, won six Razzie Awards including the honorary award for the worst film of the 80s is nothing short of criminal. At the time critics dismissed this frank and terrifying portrayal of mental illness and child abuse as a piece of camp cinema. But that isn’t fair. It is actually an extremely well-written and well-acted examination of a handful of broken lives. The film seems to argue that Crawford was always a bit mentally unbalanced what with her obsessive compulsive desire for cleanliness. But as she aged and Hollywood began to abandon her, her compulsions evolved into full-fledged mental illnesses (an idea backed up by recent research which suggests that Crawford may have suffered from undiagnosed Borderline Personality Disorder). And more often than not her two children were the outlet for her uncontrollable rages and neuroses. I am fascinated by the critics who wrote that the film was too depressing or morose for it to be any good. Most of these same critics would give films like Schindler's List (1993) glowing reviews despite the fact that they would emotionally devastate their audiences in a similar way. If people can sit through Schindler's List and take it seriously, they can do the same for Mommie Dearest, a film which stands to this day as one of the most horrifying and honest portrayals of child abuse in cinematic history.

9/10