Plot
Beverly Sutphin appears to be an archetypal housewife living with her dentist husband, Eugene; and their teenage children, Misty and Chip, in the suburbs of Baltimore. However, she is secretly a serial killer, murdering people over trivial perceived slights.
Killer Mom: The True Story of Diane Downs At 22.48pm on May 19th, 1983, a young, single mother pulled up outside McKenzie-Willamette Hospital in Springfield, Oregon, in a blood-spattered Nissan Pulsar, repeatedly shouting that someone had shot her children. Real Life Movies. Gangsters, fighters, athletes, serial killers, celebrities and so much more–these films are the best of the based-on-a-true-story stories. Gertrude Baniszewski lived in Indianapolis with her seven children.Since she had a tiny income, Baniszewski took in children for the Summer to earn extra money. In 1965, she agreed to board sixteen years old Sylvia Likens and her sister Jenny, who was a year younger.
During breakfast, Detectives Pike and Gracey question the family about the vulgar harassment of their neighbor, Dottie Hinkle. After the police and her family leave, Beverly disguises her voice to make obscene phone calls to Dottie as retaliation for Dottie having taken a parking space from Beverly. Later that day, Mr. Stubbins, Chip's math teacher, criticizes Chip's interest in horror films, believing they are affecting his mental health; and questions Beverly's parenting. Subsequently, Beverly runs Stubbins over with her car, killing him; the act is witnessed by Luann Hodges, a marijuana addict, nearby. The next day, Misty is upset when Carl Pageant stands her up for a date. Beverly spots Carl with another girl at a swap meet and fatally stabs him with a fire iron.
Eugene discovers that Beverly has hidden a collection of serial killer memorabilia beneath their mattress. That evening at dinner, Chip comments that his friend Scotty thinks that she is the killer. Beverly immediately leaves in her car; fearing for Scotty's life, the rest of the family head for his house. Unbeknownst to them, Beverly actually intends to kill Eugene's patient Ralph Sterner and his wife, Betty, for calling Eugene to treat her husband's chronic toothache on a day they were supposed to spend birdwatching. She stabs Betty with scissors borrowed from the Sutphins' neighbor, Rosemary; and pushes an air conditioner from the Sterners' window onto Ralph. Meanwhile, the rest of the family and the police arrive at Scotty's house, only to find him in his room masturbating to Deadly Weapons.
That Sunday, police follow the Sutphins to church as a news report names Beverly as the suspect in the Sterners' murders. The service abruptly ends when Beverly sneezing causes everyone to flee in panic, during which she escapes as police attempt to arrest her. She hides at the video rental store where Chip works, while a customer, Mrs. Jensen, argues with Chip over paying a fee for failing to rewind a videotape, calling him a 'son of a psycho'. Beverly follows Jensen home and fatally strikes her with a leg of lamb as she watches Annie. Scotty witnesses the attack through a window; Beverly spots him and pursues him after carjacking a passerby. Following him to Hammerjack's, Beverly sets Scotty aflame onstage during a performance by all-female band Camel Lips. The Sutphin family arrive as the police arrest Beverly.
Beverly's trial becomes a media sensation. She is dubbed 'Serial Mom', Chip hires an agent to manage the family's media appearances and Misty sells merchandise outside the courthouse. During the opening arguments, Beverly's lawyer claims that she is not guilty by reason of insanity, but she fires him and, citing law books she has read, proposes to represent herself, to which the judge reluctantly agrees. Beverly systematically discredits most every witness against her by using trick questioning to incite Dottie to contempt of court by repeated obscenities; finding a transsexual-themed magazine in Gracey's trash; goading Rosemary into admitting she does not recycle; and deliberately arousing Marvin Pickles, witness to Carl's murder, who unknowingly commits perjury. Only Hodges is not discredited, as she is unable to provide credible testimony under the influence of marijuana. During Pike's testimony, the courtroom is distracted by the arrival of Suzanne Somers, who has been cast as Beverly for a television film.
Eventually, Beverly is acquitted of all charges. Throughout the trial, Beverly expresses contempt at a particular juror for wearing white shoes after Labor Day. Beverly follows her to a payphone and fatally strikes her with the receiver. Somers angers Beverly into an outburst attempting to pose for a photo op as the juror's body is discovered. The film closes on a shot of Beverly's wicked smile and a revelation that she 'refused to cooperate' with the making of the film.
Movie Serial Mom True Story
There is even something about the way he shows sunlight bathing a breakfast table that's amusing; his Sutphins look like they live in a cereal commercial. He has the look and feel of their middle-American neighborhood just right, but the movie's comic premise doesn't go anywhere with it.
My Mom Is A Serial Killer
Beverly, the Serial Mom, is played by Kathleen Turner, a brave actress who has ventured here where several other actresses reportedly feared to tread. One thing I like about Turner is her willingness to tackle unlikely roles; her agent probably warned her against Danny DeVito's 'War of the Roses,' for example, but she and the equally fearless Michael Douglas took that exercise in matrimonial bloodshed and made it ghoulishly effective.
Serial Killer Mom True Story
In 'Serial Mom,' though, it's not so much that Turner's performance doesn't succeed, as that there's something sad about it that works against the humor. All serial killers are insane (at least I hope so). But in a comedy they need to extract some sort of zeal and manic joy from their atrocities; they have to give the audience permission, for the time being, to suspend the ordinary rules of good conduct.
In the slasher movies, the humor comes because the killers are seen as the victims of their programming, repeating the same obsessive behavior over and over again; we laugh because we see their mistake. In the classic horror films, we're amused because the evil is so stylized we can't take it seriously; Vincent Price licks his lips and rolls his eyes and intones his pseudo-Shakespearean imprecations, and his behavior takes the edge off his actions.
Watch 'Serial Mom' closely, however, and you'll realize that something is miscalculated at a fundamental level. Turner's character is helpless and unwitting in a way that makes us feel almost sorry for her - and that undermines the humor. She isn't funny crazy, she's sick crazy. The movie shows her triggered by passing remarks (a garbage man says 'somebody ought to kill' a neighbor woman who refuses to recycle). She gets a weird light in her eyes that I guess we're supposed to laugh at, but, gee, it's kind of pathetic the way she goes into murderous action. Like 'Clifford,' this is a movie where the comedy doesn't work because at some underlying level the material generates emotions we feel uneasy about.