For Mother's Day, I have put together a list of some bad mothers from some notable horror movies, some of these mothers are merely protective of their children while others have different motivations. This is a fun list to highlight some of the reason for the bad mother's behavior as well as a reminder of how much need to show some love to dear old mom.
Massive Spoiler Alert!
Pamela Voorhees (Friday the 13th)
Betsy Palmer (1979), Nana Vistor (2009)
Mrs. Voohees was an employee of Camp Crystal Lake where she worked as the cook; this took away time to care for her deformed son Jason, so she depended on the counselors to look out for him. After he drowned due to their neglect, she swore vengeance on those she found responsible and murdered a number of them. She would then sabotage efforts to reopen the camp. Mrs. Voorhees was a revenge-driven killer who used surprise to take out her victims as they often trusted her and did not suspect her motives.
Norma Bates (Psycho)
Olivia Hussey (Psycho IV), Vera Farmiga (Bates Motel)
A widow who raised her son Norman in a strict yet loving manner that may have made him too dependent on her affection. Mother was often mentioned by Norman but never seen in the first movie. The strict tone of her voice was heard and would be revealed to be that of Norman. A later sequel showed her to be a woman who loved her son but would often punish him for his reaction to her over affectionate manner. Norman always listened to her, and when she found a potential suitor, he made sure that she would never leave him for anyone. The TV show Bates Motel does feature Mrs. Bates when she was alive with her younger son and acts as a prequel to the first movie. Norma Bates is manipulative, controlling and emotionally abusive to her son and may have driven him to his murderous tendencies.
Margaret White (Carrie)
Piper Laurie (1976), Patricia Clarkson (2002), Julianne Moore (2013)
A devoutly religious single mother of high school student Carrie White, Margaret is a strict and pious woman who kept her daughter sheltered from the world until she was forced to allow Carrie to attend public school. A seamstress by trade, Margaret often punished Carrie by locking her in a closet for sins that were often nothing more than her daughter asking questions. She hides the dark secret of her own mother's telepathic skills and sees it as a curse of the devil that she hopes to keep away from her daughter. Margaret White may suffer some mental illness if not paranoid fantasies.
Mother (Mothers Day 1980)
Rose Ross
A kindly old lady in a neck brace lures a couple to her remote cabin to then have her two dim-witted, but aggressive sons attack and rape while she cheers them on. Mother is shown to be abusive, foul-mouthed and enables her sons by encouraging them in acts of violence, brutal rapes and ultimately murder. She displays bouts of paranoia and is criminally insane.
Debbie Loomis (Scream 2)
Laurie Metcalf
Mrs. Loomis appears in the first sequel to Scream and is the mother of Billy Loomis who was revealed to be one of the two killers in the first film. She hides her real identity and pretends to be a reporter in the hope of exacting revenge on Gale Weathers and Sidney Prescott. Mrs. Loomis is revenge-driven and proves to be capable of hiding her true identity as she plots her murders.
Natalie Koffin (Mothers Day 2010)
Rebecca De Mornay
In this loose remake of the 1980 slasher classic Natalie Koffin plays a sociopathic mother who is called upon by her criminal sons to fix the mess they created after a botched bank robbery leads them into their old house with a new family being taken, hostage. While she seems perfectly sane and rational Mrs. Koffin is the real leader of this gang, mercilessly torturing the family and their guests looking for money that is hidden in the home. It is revealed that Mrs. Koffin may not be the birth mother of her kids and she seems to have no problem pitting them against each other if it leads to her goal of getting the money she is demanding.
Beverly Sutphin (Serial Mom)
Kathleen Turner
Mrs. Sutphin is a seemingly perfect mother and housewife who is willing to do anything to protect her family. Despite her wholesome appearance Mrs. Sutphin displays a level of anger that drives her to seek revenge and murder those who she feels have harmed her family or committed some minor offense that requires severe punishment. Mrs. Sutphin is a pure sociopath who is effective as a serial killer and is convincing enough to trick a jury into proving she is innocent.
Mrs. Mott aka Peyton Flanders
(The Hand that the Rocks the Cradle)
Rebecca De Mornay
Finding the best nanny is always a tough task, and when the perfect one arrives, you don't want to let them go. The Bartel family hire Peyton, and she seems to be a perfect match as she bonds well with the kids and seems like a member of the family. Little do they know that Peyton is the widowed wife of the disgraced doctor that Mrs. Bartel had filed a complaint on during her pregnancy. His suicide left her penniless, homeless and she would lose her child after a miscarriage. Peyton's plan to ruin Mrs. Bartel's life starts with winning over the kids, the husband and then murdering the wife in a manner that would drive her husband into her arms. Peyton threatens a handyman, kills a family friend and almost succeeds in killing Mrs. Bartel but is stopped with the help of her handyman. Although Peyton wasn't a mother her desire for revenge on the woman she blames for all of her problems makes her scary enough to include.
Ruth Chandler (The Girl Next Door)
Blanche Baker
Although not the mother of Meg and Susan Loughlin, Mrs. Chandler is their aunt and takes them in after the two girls lose their parents in an auto accident. Meg soon becomes the target of her Aunt's abuse and is treated horribly by her along with her sister. Often being accused of being a prostitute and slut, Meg is tied up in the basement and forced to endure torture and sexual abuse, first from her aunt then by her cousins and some neighborhood kids. Mrs. Chandler would ultimately harm Meg to the extent that her death was a welcome reprieve from her inhuman abuse. What makes Ruth Chandler even scarier is that she is based on a real person and the events of the movie happened as they were presented in the shocking novel by Jack Ketchum. What motivated Ruth Chandler to harm her nieces is not certain but she may have shown jealousy to the young girl's beauty and having to care for her along with own kids may have pushed over the edge. She is easily one of the most sadistic villains on this list and without question the evilest.
Corrine Dollanganger (Flowers in the Attic)
Victoria Tennant (1987), Heather Graham (2014)
After losing her husband in an accident, Corrine Dollanganger takes her four young kids back to her parents home where she has been estranged from them since her marriage. The kids meet their grandmother and are put in a hidden room where Corrine intends to wipe the slate clean and let them die like mice in the attic. For a once loving and devoted mother to abandon her children for her selfish desires makes Ms. Dollanganger one of the worst offenders on the list. Unlike most others on this list, she fully intends to kill off her children and pretends they didn't even exist for the sake of reinventing herself with the desire to gain her inheritance that had a provision that she had to have been childless.
Nola Carveth (The Brood)
Samantha Eggar
If you are looking for a director that you most would not want to see a family movie from it is undoubtedly David Cronenberg. Nola Carveth is a patient who is undergoing a form of psychotherapy that allows her to manifest her rage in the form of childlike homunculi that go after the targets of her anger. She controls these killer minions like a queen bee with the big shocker being how she births them. Even after almost 30 years, this movie villain remains one Cronenberg's most controversial, and she is undoubtedly one you won't forget.
Vera Cosgrove (Dead Alive)
Elizabeth Moody
If ever there is an award for the most guilt-inducing and overbearing mother it certainly is Vera Cosgrove. Her adult son Lionel is timid and easily controlled by her overdramatic antics and is most upset when she finds out he might have a girlfriend. Her attempt to spy on their date has her bitten by a weird Rat Monkey that turns her into a zombie that is even more of a pain in the ass than when she was alive. Lionels inability to contain her results in the town being infected by her and he has to face off with an army of zombies alongside his new girlfriend. Mrs. Cosgrove puts Lionel into her womb to ensure that his girlfriend can't have him and his escape it one of the most bloody and over the top moments in a film that is already pretty crazy.
Mommy Robeson (People Under the Stairs)
Wendy Robie
Along with her brother/husband, Mrs. Robeson was a landlady who ran a collection of slums that brought them plenty of money due to the racist way they treated their renters. She also strictly cared for her children keeping them compliant and abusing those who were disobedient. Mrs. Robeson was psychotic and paranoid, and it is revealed that she kidnapped most of the children in her care and pretended to be their mother. The disobedient children would often be thrown into the cellar to become the feral monster that the young boy named Fool called the People Under the Stairs.
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