When Paul Stubbins (John Dilative), Chip's high school math teacher, criticizes her son's schoolwork, she runs over him with her car, killing him. In fact, she is a violent sociopath whose polite manners and socially correct habits - she recycles and never wears white after Labor Day - conceal her criminal behavior.īeverly's overblown reactions to everyday events lead to murder.
Movies by Waters' creative influences, including Russ Meyer, Otto Preminger, William Castle, and Herschell Gordon Lewis, are seen playing on TV sets in the film.īeverly Sutphin ( Kathleen Turner) appears to be a typical suburban housewife living with her husband Eugene ( Sam Waterston) and their children Misty ( Ricki Lake) and Chip ( Matthew Lillard).
The original HBO Home Video DVD release is out of print. Universal Studios Home Entertainment and Focus Features released a collector's edition DVD of the film on May 6, 2008. Patty Hearst, Suzanne Somers, Joan Rivers, Traci Lords and Brigid Berlin make cameo appearances. Despite statements to the contrary in the movie, the story is completely fictional. The dialogue clips may amuse, offend or irritate, but they don't really disrupt the music and are infrequent enough to be forgiven."Serial Mom" is a 1994 dark comedy film written and directed by John Waters, starring Kathleen Turner as the titular character, Sam Waterston as her husband, and Ricki Lake and Matthew Lillard as her daughter and son.
This is the kind of music that Poledouris might have come up with had he been engaged to score a Joe Dante movie and, like the Goldsmith scores for Dante, Serial Mom is an enjoyable and tuneful piece of fluff. Poledouris doesn't quite revert to the upbeat opening material, the innocuous innocence wouldn't really be appropriate. The final two tracks are a the dark and lighter sides to the finale, with the serious Courtroom Suite (aside from a peculiar moment of bongo drumming) and the quasi uplifting I'm Coming Home. The Sterner Payback is something of a Goldsmithian action cue, with a generally serious tone, but the occasional comedic spark from time to time and Buckle Up, Scotty!!! continues the trend.
If you laugh long and hard at South Park, you'll love it, but rest assured that it doesn't obscure Poledouris' music to any great detriment.Īlthough the music tries to remain upbeat, the more sinister tones creep in more and more often, mixing effortlessly throughout It's Been a Crazy Day and Flea Market Suite. I'm not usually one to support the use of dialogue on soundtracks, but Waters' dialogue is so amusingly foul mouthed (I'm surprised there was no 'explicit lyrics/dialogue' sticker on the front of my copy) that I couldn't help but chuckle. Morning Suite continues the mood for a while, but soon starts raining on the idyllic parade with some hilariously gratuitous dialogue clips. Basil Poledouris' response is a score that certainly starts with a very sweet natured in the bouncy Main Title, a jaunty amalgam of Jerry Goldsmith's suburban music for Joe Dante and just about any comedy score tune ever penned by Alan Silvestri, James Newton Howard, Marc Shaiman or James Horner.
I wonder if this would have been the result had John Waters made American Beauty, a satire on modern American suburban bliss and the potentially psychotic underbelly it can inspire.