Mothers Day is yet another one of the Slasher Cash in's of the early 80's.Created by Troma founder Lloyd kaufman's Brother Charles Kaufman. Truthfully Mothers Day is a perfect example of how a slasher/Horror film can still be done well even with limited gore and budget.
The film opens with a group graduating some sort of seminar and as the class is leaving a couple of hippies ask an elderly woman for a ride. On the ride the hippies plan to kill the older woman but before they can the car breaks down and while the old lady tries to fix the car two insane men attack and kill the hippies and the old woman appears to be their mother as she watches on gleefully.
After the opening the movie is pretty simple, A group of college grads get together to reunite once a year to reminisce and catch up with one another since they have all moved away. The three girls Abby, Katrina and Jackie all decide to go camping. While the girls are in the woods they are stalked by the two boys from the opening scene. Soon after the girls are spotted they are abducted and taken to their cabin where they live with their crazy mother. The girls are held hostage and Jackie is taken first to be tortured and forced to play in their improv acts to entertain the Mother before they rape her. While Trina and Abby are trapped in a workout room , Trina manages to free herself from her bindings and then Abby lowers Trina from the room to free her , After nearly being caught she does manage to re enter the house to free Abby from the room and look for Jackie.Abby severely injures her hands while lowering Trina , so while she tends to her wounds Trina looks for Jackie. On her journey she comes across a couple of dead bodies before discovering Jackie still alive stuffed in a dresser drawer. Abby and Trina attempt to carry Jackie who is in a comatose state of shock out of the house but they are spotted by Ike. As Ike tries to recapture the girls, but Ike is distracted by Mother screaming from outside and claiming she was attacked by "Queenie". Trina and friends manage to make their way into the Forrest.
While in the woods, Trina heads out to retrieve their car while Abby is left behind with Jackie who dies shortly after. As Trina finds the car has been dismantled she comes across a cop. The cop turns out to be Ike and from here the movie is a long yet somewhat suspenseful game of hide and seek in which Trina finally manages to outsmart Ike and they make their escape further into the woods to plot the girls revenge. back at the house Mother and Addley discus "Queenie" which apparently is The Mothers sister who is hideously disfigured and is out to kill Mother.When Ike returns without the girls he is scolded by Mother and the next day the boys are set out to find and kill the girls. Before they can though , The girls arrive and kill Addley in brutal fashion by stabbing him through the neck with a wire and then hammer him in the balls before suffocating him to death. Ike spots the girls trying to hid the body, and he is poisoned with draino, Then smashed with a Television. As the girls prepare to go hunt down Mother, Ike manages to come back to life as Trina stabs him with an electric knife to finish him off. The girls find Mother and suffocate her with a pair of inflatable boobs to finalize their revenge. As Trina and Abby bury Jackie the mysterious "Queenie" jumps from behind a bush as the credits roll.
Mothers Day is about as minimalist as you can get with it's lack of gore and cast for that matter but it does manage however to be entertaining and even eerie at points. The Killers are well played and funny and mom is downright creepy at times. The girls are typical for the genre but that does not hurt the film really. I do think the film would have benefited from a higher body count and perhaps some more gore and nudity (It is a slasher flick after all) but this movie proves it is not necessary to get the point across. If you enjoy slasher flicks along the likes of Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Hills Have Eyes, you may enjoy this one but if you like your movies high on gore than you could skip this one as there are only a few real scenes of gore in the entire film.This is by far not the best slasher cash in I have seen but you can do far worse and this is one of those films that as a child I would always see on the shelves of the local video store and never rented for some reason or another, only too watch years later and find that it was half way decent. Worth a watch for a good laugh if nothing else. Also this is a good film to showcase the better films of pre-Toxie Troma, as it is one of the better ones they released in their early years.
Gore: 5
Nudity:1
Story:5
Characters:5
Overall: 5.5 Out of 10
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