A look at some of horror cinema’s most unhealthy mother and son relationships.
It must be hard being a mother.
Their eternal burden. First to grow a human being inside them. A living, soon-to-be-sentient thing that swells and steals tissue and drains her and becomes a part of her very essence. Then, suddenly, that baby is violently removed.
It must be hard.
And then to care for that baby, to nurture it, to protect it and keep it alive. All the while, her hormones are surging, her sleep schedule shattered, the weight of the world bearing down on her as she puts the demands of this person she made before her own desires.
It must be so hard.
So hard to see them grow, to then inexplicably resist you, to not “need” you.
What’s a mother to do?
Look, it’s not wonder mum’s go a little mad sometimes. We understand.
But in the annals of horror cinema, there is wealth of stories of women whose attachments and need to control their kids gets twisted, gnarled, perverted. And more often than not, these relations tend to be between Mothers and their sons. And sometimes those relations tend to drift into even darker, more dangerous terrain.
Here then are 9 movies that spotlight some malevolent mama’s boys and the even more berserk mothers who helped make them.
Let us know if we missed your favorites in the comments below.
Mama's Boys
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PSYCHO (1960)
![PSYCHO (1960)]()
The mother of all Mama’s Boy shockers, Alfred Hitchcock’s take on Robert Bloch’s novel is worthy of all the praise heaped upon it these past 56 years. Norman Bates (Anthony Perkins) defined the unhinged mother-obsessed maniac, cross-dressing, grave-robbing and fixating on his desiccated and long dead mother, an obsession that is psychotic and sexual. Mother’s don’t let yer babies grow up to be Norman!
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BRIDES OF DRACULA (1960)
![BRIDES OF DRACULA (1960)]()
Hammer’s Christoper Lee-free sequel to 1958’s hit HORROR OF DRACULA, sees one of Drac’s disciples, the snivelling Baron Meinster (David Peel), kept in chains by his guilt riddled matriarch. Mom has clearly enabled her bloodsucking son for too long and now seeks to reel him in, to control him. Theirs is the most toxic of mother and son relations, one that ends like many of these real life situations do, with the child “rebelling” and attacking the parent. And sucking their blood.
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YOU'LL LIKE MY MOTHER (1972)
![YOU'LL LIKE MY MOTHER (1972)]()
Patty Duke stars as a pregnant widow who travels to remote, snowy Minnesota to meet her sort-of mother in law (Rosemary Murphy). But the matriarch is not nice. At all. After berating and tormenting the girl, mom drugs her and keeps her prisoner, refusing to let her leave. But all is not what it seems. And what is that scratching in the walls? A “bad mother” movie turns into classic toxic parent flick in this tense and twisted ‘70s melodrama.
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THE BABY (1973)
![THE BABY (1973)]()
Ted Post’s bizarre, blackly funny ‘70s Gothic sees a social worker (Anjanet Comer) called in to check on the state of a mentally challenged young man who has wears diapers and sleeps in a crib and is referred to only as “Baby” by his smothering mother (Ruth Roman). When the social worker takes a special interest in the fate of “Baby” and tries to wrestle control away from mum, an all-out war is waged with deadly results. A sick, strange and stunning slab of mean mother moviemaking.
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DERANGED (1974)
![DERANGED (1974)]()
Released shortly after THE TEXAS CHAIN SAW MASSACRE, this twisted Bob Clark/Alan Ormsby tale mines the same story that fueled both that film and Hitch’s PSYCHO, that of cannibal cross-dressing killer Ed Gein. DERANGED is just that, deranged, with a stunning performance by Roberts Blossom (CHRISTINE) as a sicker than sick momma’s boy who refuses to let go.
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FRIDAY THE 13th (1980)
![FRIDAY THE 13th (1980)]()
Throw in the myriad FRIDAY sequels in here as well, as they chart the adventures of horror cinema’s most enduring Mama’s Boy, Jason Voorhees. But it’s Sean S. Cunningham’s original flick that defines the perverted domestic drama, a sexless role reversal of PSYCHO with Mother Voorhees slashing her way through Crystal Lake’s horny teen population to avenge the death of her handicapped son, Jason. But Jason is not dead, of course, so it's all for naught...
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MOTHER'S DAY (1980)
![MOTHER'S DAY (1980)]()
Charles (brother of Lloyd) Kaufman’s perversely funny sick-family flick, sees an inbred brood capturing and raping and killing everyone they find, at the behest of their overbearing and completely insane mother. A shrill, arch slasher movie and an ample nasty one at that, with a bravura Drano finale. Remade by Darren Lynn Bouseman with Rebeca DeMornay. That version is pretty damned good too...
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SLEEPWALKERS (1992)
![SLEEPWALKERS (1992)]()
Mick Garris directs this Stephen King original script, the tender tale of an incestuous mother (Alice Krige) and son (Brian Krause) who are actually shapeshifting cat monsters. But they’re also afraid of cats, which is weird. Mom keeps her boy in the thralls of their shared supernatural state and refuses to let him go, resulting in maximum teen sexual frustration…that he takes out on his mom, natch. A fine horror flick with a darker oedipal subtext that isn’t as fully explored as it should be.
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THE BOY (2016)
![THE BOY (2016)]()
With dashes of THE BABY, YOU’LL LIKE MY MOTHER and, of course, PSYCHO thrown in for good measure, William Brent Bell’s THE BOY is a Mama’s Boy horror flick from Hell! In it, Lauren Cohan (THE WALKING DEAD) plays a troubled girl hired to “babysit” a porcelain doll belonging to an eccentric elderly couple. But is the doll alive? Or does it a far more malevolent secret? THE BOY was underrated upon release but will no doubt become an American horror classic and comes armed with a really creepy mother/son twist.
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