Make It a Double Feature: ‘Serial Mom’ and ‘Strait-Jacket’

With Halloween approaching, this month’s column entry is an ideal opportunity to recommend good scary movies. However, instead of usual suspects like the original Halloween and the classic Universal Monster movies, which do occupy my own Halloween watchlist, I’ve decided to go with less traditional options. In particular, it is a double feature for those who love not just good thrills, but esteemed actresses in showcase roles. Furthermore, each film is one celebrating a big anniversary.

First is the cult classic Serial Mom by John Waters, which turns 30 this year. Serial Mom follows Beverly Sutphin (Kathleen Turner), a suburban housewife hellbent on keeping order in her household by going on a murderous rampage toward those who cross her and her family.  Gory with humor as sharp as the titular villain’s sewing scissors, Serial Mom is a skillful puncturing of society’s fixation with sensationalizing highly publicized court cases that’s as relevant now as it was in the 90s when cases such as the Tonya Harding scandal and the O.J. Simpson murder trial, which took place a year after Serial Mom was released, took the media by storm. 

Its blend of horror and campiness also shines through into the murder sequences with none being structured in a more facetious manner than when Beverly kills neighbor Mrs. Jenson (Patsy Grady Abrams) with a hunk of meat. As Beverly creeps into her house ready to strike, instead of traditional, creep-up-from-behind suspense music usually heard during a murder scene, the scene is set to the harmonious song “Tomorrow” from the 1982 film Annie with each eventual bludgeon to the head being perfectly in tune with the melody. 

Along with John Waters’ pitch-perfect writing and direction, what makes Serial Mom soar is the central performance by Kathleen Turner, who’s clearly having the time of her life as the berserk Beverly. From her acute line readings to how her artificial smile drops into a piercing scowl, Turner is always on point, proving that not all villains need a tragic backstory or motivation to be compelling. Who knows why Beverly gets triggered by so much as poor Dottie Hinkle (Mink Stole, a frequent John Waters collaborator) stealing the parking spot she wanted while out and about? But when the opening prank phone call scene where Beverly gruffly asks Dottie for the “c**ksucker residence” is a hoot and a half, it’s hard to care why. 

The fact that Turner defied her agents to play what was deemed a career risk for an acclaimed actress like herself makes her casting all the more satisfactory. Turner makes the role of Beverly her own and is vital as to why, after watching the movie, you’ll find yourself sure to always press rewind after watching a movie and avoid Mrs. Jenson’s fatal mistake, never wear white shoes after Labor Day, and most of all, always wear your seatbelt. 

Keeping up with the theme of actresses playing women going berserk is the 1964 horror flick Strait-Jacket which plays during one scene in Serial Mom, and celebrates its 60th anniversary this year. While it has the same camp factor as Serial Mom, Strait-Jacket veers further into straightforward horror territory as it follows Lucy Harbin (Oscar winner Joan Crawford), a woman released from a psychiatric hospital where she was put away for murdering her husband and his lover who becomes suspected of a string of axe killings with her sanity being called into question. 

Packed with thrilling psychological mystery, the campiness found in Strait-Jacket stems heavily from Joan Crawford’s leading performance. As a woman who may or may not be back to her past ways, Crawford brings the right kind of broad theatrics to a film such as this right down to the excessive axe wielding during the film’s opening scene where Lucy kills the doomed lovers in bed. Scenes like the one in the family barn where the killer creeps out of the shadows before killing the family handyman provide genuine suspense. Yet, the histrionics of Joan Crawford are what put Strait-Jacket in enjoyable camp territory.

Strait-Jacket is also an enjoyable continuation of the “psycho-biddy” genre that Crawford and fellow Oscar-winning legend Bette Davis helped birth a few years prior with the Oscar-winning horror pic What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?.. A horror subgenre that’s been long criticized for exploiting older actresses, the “psycho-biddy” genre, which is also known as the “Grande Dame Guignol” genre, still has served as an outlet for veteran actresses to maintain their star status the way Crawford did throughout the 60s. While Lucy killing her adulterous husband may play into a big criticism of the genre involving women driven mad by aging and being cast aside, its commercial success with an adjusted $71 million domestic gross still proved that Crawford was a bankable name before she stepped away from the big screen with Trog in 1970. 

For Kathleen Turner, Serial Mom came as she was moving past the peak of her leading lady career, decreasing her workload due to health issues. Although she still hasn’t had a film role like Beverly Sutphin since then, the legacy of her performance and the film surrounding it live on. Meanwhile, Strait-Jacket might not hold the same classic status as What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? Yet, it’s still a thrilling showcase for an actress who always reinvented herself to keep audiences intrigued and maintain career longevity. If you’re a fan of such dynamic actresses and are in the mood for campy thrills, why not watch both films this Halloween and make it a double feature?

Serial Mom is available to rent and buy on various platforms. Strait-Jacket is available to stream on Tubi TV.

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Matt St. Clair

Matt is a New England-based freelance journalist who lives and breathes the world of cinema and has been an Oscar watcher since the age of eight. His writing can be found on outlets such as The Film Experience, Roger Ebert, Digital Spy, and Slashfilm. He is also a Rotten Tomatoes-approved critic and a Gay & Lesbian Entertainment Critics Association member. You can follow him on Twitter @filmguy619. (He/They)

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