Les Héritiers du Mal

This movie is slow at parts, but when you hit 'Exercise time boyyyys!' you'll be glad you got it.

This is one of the funniest sequences i've ever seen. It shows the two brothers doing these completely ridiculous training drills, climaxing when Mother says to Ike - 'Get the big one!' and Ike then grabs a huge watermelon, hoists it over his head and in a fit of rage, smashes it. This is all to the tune of a B-movie horror rendition of the Rocky theme song.

I give it a 7 out of 10 A classic for B grade horror lovers

MORD39 RATING: *** out of ****

Let's get something straight: This movie is offensive. It features an old mom urging her two misfit sons to brutally rape, torture, abuse, and murder young women for her entertainment. BUT IT'S BRILLIANT, AND WELL DONE FOR ITS TYPE.

With a shlocky piece of exploitation like this, we rarely if ever get a story and character development in the mix. The story of a group of young women planning a weekend getaway for their reunion celebration first provides us with background history detailing their personalities and personal problems. We get to know these girls...and once they get "caught" by the family of crazies, we share their dilemma.

I might also say that the surprise beginning really grabbed me (I first saw the movie in a theatre in 1980 and had no clue what was going to happen), and the ending is also pretty good.

As gruesome as these killers are in the film, you almost feel for them too. You sense that the imbecile sons are victims of their overbearring mother, and have had no proper upbringing to keep them from being such animals. Even mother is pathetic in a pitiful way.

MOTHER'S DAY will probably never be respected, and it is not for everybody. But I respect it and feel it stands out far in front of zillions of other exploitation/slasher knock-off's.

One of hundreds of grade-b exploitation shockers cranked out during this period; falls under the sub-category of rape and revenge films after Last House on the Left. This one has better acting and character development, but it's the addition of the crazy Mom character to the typical depraved psycho routine that makes this movie creepy and disturbing. The two brothers are scary slapstick rapists; "Can she spend the night with us tonight, Mom?" Next morning Mom asks "Where's your friend?" The boys tell her "She don't feel so good..." and they all laugh like it's Leave it to Beaver! ("they raped her to death..." my date said when we watched it in the theater back in the 80's.) This movie is also pretty funny, which really helps give you the chills. Probably only of interest to fans of this particular sub-genre. About the Troma release; I understand this movie was edited when it was first released, this version contains all the scenes. The pan and scan job is not very good, I'm surprised they did not release the film in a letter-box edition. Nothing in the movie however is as offensive as the opening promotional spots for Troma. I wanted to give them credit for attitude but I felt sorry for every one involved.

I introduced this Troma gem to my partner when we first started dating. She is a wonderful mom and an avid horror movie fan. We now watch it every year on Mother's Day. It's just the right mix of funny, gory and '80s cheese.

Mother's Day is sick, twisted and demented but this is a Troma movie and they wouldn't want it any other way! Falling somewhere between a regular slasher of the 1980's and early tropes of what a Troma movie has come to represent (exploitation, graphic gore, cartoon violence, surreal ideas, dark humour and of course a very low budget) this early effort from founder and producer Lloyd Kaufman and his kid brother director Charles Kaufman find their way into the horror market with quite a well made and albeit controversial film that I was ready to dislike but found strangely compelling.

Later Troma movies feel more tacky, more self deprecating, silly and shoddy but Mother's Day wants to earn it's horror chops so it's not quite as extreme or as exploitative as later output from the studio however this is still an uncomfortable watch as it effortlessly sucks you into a world of depravity.

A group of girl friends go camping for their annual meet up only to be violently attacked by two strange feral like men who rape, kill and torture just for fun, with the twist here being they are doing it to gain their Mother's approval and for her amusement. The family are clearly insane and should be locked up but they are on the loose for our entertainment and it's up to the group of friends to survive the ordeal and fight back.

Veteran actress Beatrice Pons, best known for being in the 1960's TV sitcom Car 54, Where Are You hams it up to chilling effect as the sick Mother who demands more depravity from her sons who are more than willing to please her every whim. The characters are not as one dimensional as you might expect from a movie like this and it has some shocking moments of gore to keep horror fans happy but the overall feel of hopeless dread, decay and filth is where it's most effective with tense moments and consistent nastiness of the brothers played with terrifying glee by Michael McCleery and Gary Pollard.

Troma would go on to develop cult characters, be more extreme with horror and violence and add a dark cartoonish humour to the likes of The Toxic Avenger (1984), Sgt Kabukiman N. Y. P. D. (1990) and Class of Nuke 'em High (1986) to name of few. Followed by a remake in 2010.