Serial Mom (1994)

Love this movie. A pure guilty pleasure

You can tell Kathleen Turner is having a blast

Fun flick.

Well, fuck you too , you whore !

Is this Four Two One Five Pussy Way?

PUSSY!

OP I love this movie but it’s not a mystery. It’s a comedic satire.

Sam Waterston and Kathleen Turner seem to get John Waters better than any other actor.

Listen to your filthy mouth, you fuckin' whore! 🤣🤣🤣🤣

It is a brilliant comedy and an example of what John Waters can achieve when his instincts are properly guided.

Some of the film's initial scenes. Simply hilarious.

I'm a divorced woman, please help me.

Are those PUSSY Willows?

I collect Franklin Mint.

I love this movie. Dottie Hinkle looks so different than Mink Stole in Pink Flamingos.

It was gore!

SUZANNE SOMERS, THIS IS MY BAD SIDE!!!

Every time I see a leg of lamb……

Annie will never be the same.

This is probably one of the funniest movies ever. John Waters is a genius.

BEVERLY! BEVERLY!!

I love how much fun Kathleen Turner seems to be having while playing this part.

Chip, you know how I hate the brown word.

I wonder what part he's giving Leslie Van Houten in his next film.

You imagine you need to introduce us to Serial Mom?

R10 that is a dopamine boost 😂

PUSSY!

Pussy Willow, 😂.

R24- We posted at the same time. That will never not be funny, 😆.

I just have one more word to say...

Is it menopause?

One of my favorite scenes in all of cinema is when she reveals to Dottie that she in fact Pussy Willows. It’s so brazen and over the top but they pull it off; doesn’t seem phony and is hysterical.

Dottie: Who is this??

Beverly: Mrs. Wilson from the telephone company.

l understand you're having problems with an obscene phone caller.

Dottie : Yes, l am. l'm sorry, Mrs. Wilson, but this is driving me crazy.

l've had my number changed twice already.

l'm a divorced woman. Please help me.

Beverly: What exactly does this sick individual say to you?

Dottie: l can't say the words out loud.

l don't use bad language.

Beverly: I know it's difficult, but we need to know the exact words.

Dottie: I’ll try… "Cocksucker."

That's what she calls me!

Beverly: Listen to your filthy mouth, you fuckin' whore!

Dottie: Goddamn you!

Beverly: Motherfucker! Cocksucker! -Rosemary.

Rosemary: Are you all right?

Beverly: Yes, of course, l'm fine.

How nice. You remembered.

Rosemary: lt's the least l could do.

l heard shouting.

Beverly: It’s that cable TV company.

You know how they are.

I lent my prim elderly parents some VHS tapes way back when and Serial Mom accidentally got mixed in. My mother called me the next day to tell me how much they enjoyed 'that Kathleen Turner' movie and she and my dad had been quoting lines from it all morning.

PUSSY!

Beverly, you've got some doodoo on your shoe.

I posted this the last time a Serial Mom thread came up. Every DLer sorts the recycling while listening to Barry Manilow's Daybreak.

WHEN I WATCH THIS MOVIE I think of it as a bird loving Dollface film.

This movie helped foster the prank phone call fetish that served as my primary form of entertainment for many years. Thank you, John.

Chicks with Dicks

Chesty Morgan

Ted Bundy ("It's LONELY here on death row!")

I love Bill Cosby pictures!

I sometimes watch this movie to help beat depression. No matter how depressed I am , this movie always, always makes me laugh. 😆

This was Kathleen Turner's last film before her disease!

R39, how are you feeling now?

R41- Happy to be here on DL talking to you wonderful bitches! 😘

Lick mommy's feet, get em' alllllllllll wet!

One night my brother and I were watching something on HBO I don't remember what but we were talking as whatever show it was ended and didn't really notice the next movie that started until suddenly there was Kathleen Turner on screen letting loose with the barrage of obscenities and I was completely caught off guard and it was one of the funniest things I've ever seen in my entire life. I don't think I'd ever laughed so hard as I did at that scene and the rest of the movie was just awesome and it's still one of my favorites.

Officer, I'm sorry, but we don't allow gum in this house.

So THAT'S where my tendency to say to people "You lousy pig-fucker" comes from!!

Mama's watching Annie!

Turner racing her station wagon across town to "Daybreak" while pursued by the police is probably the funniest scene of all time.

I sniff jury's underpants!

I love the humping scene! Kathleen Turner and Sam Waterston are hilarious in this

Waterston and Turner proved what pros they are -giving themselves completely to their characters in service of the director's vision. And the result is worth it!

Also when she kills that woman for wearing white after Labor Day after being acquitted and Suzanne Sommers face. Priceless.

I don't which Kathleen Turner performance is the best- this or Body Heat.

Turner really is a great actress. I like this performance best, just because it was so against type.

R54 Sam Waterston was against type, too. His movies before this included Savages, Capricorn One, Interiors, The Killing Fields, September, and The Man in the Mood.

Then Serial Mom

I always crack up at the scene of the daughter selling stuff outside the courthouse.

PUSSY willows

The reason why this film works so well is because she really is charming despite being a serial killer offering retribution for petty offenses. I think it was smart to have Kathleen be a complete Jekyll/Hyde— her public persona contrasting with her murderous ways and phone trolling. A lesser film would have had her somewhat “edgy or dark” in the public persona. Even in her personal life with the husband she is down right sweet and wholesome. It’s what makes the comedy work so well. And you don’t feel sympathy for any of the victims. Imagine being so pretentious that you won’t recite the words that an evil prank caller has said to a telephone operator. The only reason Dottie didn’t get killed is because she merely stole her parking spot.

R58 Fuck you you whore!

R52 that woman is the legendary Patty Hearst

I'm the audience cheering as Justin Whalin burned alive - if only it were Wil Wheaton.

Waterston was also in Hannah and Her Sisters.

R61 And I'm Camel Lips, the band onstage.

When Beverly is pranking Dottie, Mary Jo Catlett and her tits are flouncing over to Beverly’s from across the yard.

REWIND!!!!!!

I'LL GeT yOU, PuSSy fACe!!!

Imagine how bad it would be without Turner? There is no other redeeming value besides the euphoric, cocaine-addled performance of K.T.

I love Kathleen Turner so much. Each of her films is a joy to watch.

OMG, R67! You put a thought into my head: Lucy IS Beverly Sutfin!

With Lucy in the lead, Viv could play Dottie. The possibilities are staggering!

Kathleen Turner later played Chandler's trans father on Friends. She's always been awesome.

PUSSY!

I love the story John Waters tells of listening to Mink Stole and Kathleen Turner "upstairs" rehearsing the cock sucker scene.

It's that cable TV company. You know how they are!

Pussy willows

Dried ones!

The ASPCA refused to allow an actual fly to be killed in the opening kitchen scene, so the art director made a fake "dead" fly.

From the IMDB trivia page. I hope this is satire.

I feel like killing a coupla people MYSELF!

She just said Fuck You to me!

Lols

Kathleen should have been nominated for and maybe even win the Oscar that year in 1994.

R80 Jessica Lange deserved that Oscar for Blue Sky, but a nomination for Serial Mom would've certainly been worthwhile.

We need more Patricia Hearst!

No, we just need more John Waters.

A really testament to how crummy The Golden Globes are they didn't even nominate Kathleen in Musical/Comedy, yet managed to nominate:

Andie MacDowell for Four Weddings And A Funeral

Geena Davis for Speechless

Emma Thompson for Junior

Shirley Maclaine for Guarding Tess

And award Jamie Lee Curtis for True Lies!

It fucked up reading from the Book of Common Prayer at the church service.

The priest is supposed to say only one of those lines at the beginning of the Holy Eucharist, Rite II.

R84 Jamie was funny as fuck in that role.

But Turner deserved a spot more than most of the others there.

"I just loved you in Three's Company!"

“Mrs. Ackerman—Do you recycle?”

Some of the least impressive performances to ever garner an Oscar nod were recognized in 1994. Kathleen's committed performance towers above them all

Genna Davis should never have been nominated for that POS Speechless! Watch the trailer and you can’t even tell what the plot is about. She’s annoying too, eternally trying to be the cutesy little girl in every role.

I love how all of her victims deserved to die.

Mr. Stubbins, for being such a dick to Beverly AND that mother before her. Not all kids may be college material, but he doesn't have to talk to the mothers so harshly.

Misty's boyfriend Carl, for ditching her, banging a whore, and taking her to a flea market as a date. He deserved it.

Mr. Sterner, for ruining Eugene's dental work, insulting him, and eating sweet innocent quail.

Mrs. Sterner, for the same, plus having a diaphragm at her age and expecting good sex from her gross husband.

Mrs. Jensen, for failing to rewind.

Scotty whats-his-name, for being crude and nosy, and having foul taste in porn.

Juror #8, for thinking fashion has changed. It hasn't.

"Mrs. Sterner...having a diaphragm at her age"

I don't recall this at all! I guess I'll have to watch the movie again!

"I don't like to read about movies. They're so violent!" Kathleen is a gem.

The 1994 Best Actress Oscar line-up was so weak (including the winner, Jessica Lange, for a film that was four years old by Oscar night). Replace them all with Turner, Isabelle Adjani (Queen Margot), Julianne Moore (Vanya on 42nd Street), Melanie Lynskey (Heavenly Creatures), and either Jennifer Jason Leigh (Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle) or Juliette Lewis (Natural Born Killers). It's a shame that Linda Fiorentino wasn't eligible for 'The Last Seduction.'

Hear Hear R93! Or maybe if Julianne Moore "Safe" or Nicole Kidman "To Die For" had been released a year earlier then it would have been an interesting category.

Mrs. Ackerman deserved to die for not recycling. Plot hole.

Not everyone who deserves to die actually dies.

Prior to her Rheumatoid Arthritis diagnosis Kathleen Turner used to be a bitch off screen. Now she’s actually one of the nicest people you’ll ever come across.

R95 she tried to kill her, but the opportunity never came up.

R98 But she did the next best thing. Had drinks with the garbagemen, and used her property to kill/harass others.

Rosemary's scissors were used to kill Mrs. Sterner. And her Premiere Magazine had its "P" cut out to spell...

The courtroom scene with Marvin Pickles testifying always cracks me up. The intensity on Beverly's face while she's scissoring her legs--hilarious!

Kathleen Turner is hilarious

This movie is brilliant. It so deftly skewers American suburban culture.

Why didn't Waters make more movies with Turner? Even after leading lady roles dried up for her, I can see Waters writing a script for Turner later in their careers, but it apparently never happened. Her different physicality as an older woman could have certainly worked in another John Waters film--this is the man who made Divine a leading lady so I'm sure he could've worked something out with Chandler's dad. Did they get along? It seemed like such a perfect pairing of auteur and muse, at least in SM.

R102 he would've:

Well, because I only made a couple movies afterwards. And with star names, the studios want you to get a new one each time. The only time that wasn't going to happen was when Johnny Knoxville was going to play the father in Fruitcake, the movie I didn’t make. I would work with Kathleen again in a minute, I think she's a wonderful actress. I go to see all of her theater, I've seen everything she's done. I'm a big fan and we’re still friends.

Recent interview with Kathleen Turner about Serial Mom, sounds like she had a blast.

That's a shame, R103. I guess they're both too far along in years to hold out hope for a reunion in a new film.

“They did a painting of Beverly for the living room, above the mantelpiece, and the eyes are Serial Mom eyes, not Beverly eyes. They gave me that painting afterward. I couldn’t bear it! I couldn’t stand to have it in my house. Anyway, I finally sold it on eBay.”-KT

Which one of you Queens has it?

That was a great article, R104. I love a brassy broad that calls people honey and pulls it off.

Why can't they give HER an honorary Oscar?

Angela Bassett is a legend, but Kathleen Turner should get one first.

One of my favourite comedy films. Turner was stunning in it.

Sold it on eBay? Seriously?

She sold it for alcohol probably

Matthew Lillard was cute, in a dorky rubber-faced way.

He still looks okay.

I don’t know for sure, but I would bet Matthew Lillard has an 8 or 9” cock and shoots big loads.

One of the things I've always appreciated about this movie is her setting Scotty on fire mainly because I always resented the actor who played him after he replaced the first and much hotter Jimmy Olsen on Lois and Clark.

[quote]I don’t know for sure, but I would bet Matthew Lillard has an 8 or 9” cock and shoots big loads.

*eyeroll*

This is easily Waters' best post-Divine film. If you read his Mr Know-It-All book he writes about how he went through hell with studio executives over this film.

There's one thing that bothers me about it- when they crash the Camel Lips gig, the family have just been to church...so this gig is happening on a Sunday morning?

R116 True. Also, just before that, Chip is in a hurry to open his video store. But he was only there because they left church five minutes into the sermon.

Had church not been interrupted by cops and a riot, he would not have made it to work in time to open.

John Waters has never worried about the finer points of reality and continuity.

I would definitely have sucked Chip off

Mystery-comedy????? It's satire, OP.

I know most John Waters fans have a soft spot for his work with Divine, but Serial Mom is my absolute favorite. It also taught me not to wear white shoes after Labor Day.

Didn’t your mother teach you that?

Pussy willows, Dotty!

She was also hilarious with Dennis Quaid in "Undercover Blues".

Loved that film R124. Must watch it again.

R116 could've been. Like a daylong festival type show. It's Not unusual for bands to start around 10:00 11:00 a.m. for those kinds of shows.

Don't forget Joan Rivers cameo!

How nice that Marvin Pickles knew which stall had the gloryhole

[quote]I love Bill Cosby pictures!

As the sarcasm was intended, this line has aged incredibly well. Prescient!

[quote] When Beverly is pranking Dottie, Mary Jo Catlett and her tits are flouncing over to Beverly’s from across the yard.

In a bit introduced at 9:23 by special co-host Florence Henderson, Mary Jo Catlett in an uncredited performance on a 1966 episode of Candid Camera.

Had the pleasure of "meeting" Justin Whalin (Scotty) at a gay bar, now long gone in West Hollywood, called Capones. He was adorable and insatiable and we talked about the film and how much he enjoyed being a part of it.

R131 He was very fuckable back in the day.

I love Basil Poledouris' score for the film. The main title starts out conveying suburban bliss but at 2:02 there's a note that suggests something dark under the surface. I'm still amazed at how music can tell a story.

[quote]Had the pleasure of "meeting" Justin Whalin (Scotty) at a gay bar, now long gone in West Hollywood, called Capones. He was adorable and insatiable and we talked about the film and how much he enjoyed being a part of it.

Whoa I'm gonna need more info, r131. I just came here to ask WEHT to Justin Whalin. Are you saying you hooked up with him? He's gay?

R134 He's a drama teacher at the two LA private schools that his mother owns, apparently. He was married but then divorced. Who knows, maybe he sucked off Dean Cain back in the old days.

Mystery-comedy?

(r134) He was definitely gay with me although I think he was probably bi. I had no idea who he was except that he was this really cute guy eating alone in the restaurant that was part of Capone's in the mid-90's. I was also eating by myself and perusing a book I had just purchased at Different Light. He said, "is that how you stay so slim when you eat out. You read and that's food for thought..."

I was visiting L.A. and was attractive enough at the time (I was 30) and I laughed at his remark. He joined me at my table, and we talked about things that had nothing to do with show business. The next morning, he gave me his phone number and we stayed in touch for a year or so. I didn't watch much television so never really put the name he gave me - "Justin" together with the actor until I saw him on television a few months later and called and asked him. Duh! I guess I wasn't real worldly wise.

He was very funny, very sexual and had I lived in the area, I would have tried to see him again.

Yummy!!

"I'm a divorced woman. Please help me."

PUSSY WILLOWS!!

Mom: Hi Betty. Oh I love your outfit.

Betty: Thank you. It’s a Liz Claiborne.

That’s hilarious!

John and Kathleen should reunite for a sequel.

He made a DVD commentary with Kathleen Turner that is pretty fun to listen to.

"I don't use bad language"

She is Serial Mom.

R138 Justin Whalin was rather fuckable back then.

I love everything about this movie, especially Dottie Hinkle unraveling on the witness stand.

That Vulture article makes me love Kathleen Turner even more.

Won’t someone help me? I’m a divorced woman!

Who on Earth?

R138 Would have loved to see Dean Cain put it to him back in the day.

(as police are closing in)

BEVERLY: "Do you think I need to call a lawyer?"

CHIP: "You need an agent."

Beverly! Beverly!

You can't wear white shoes after Labor Day!

Dottie: l can't say the words out loud.

l don't use bad language.

Beverly: I know it's difficult, but we need to know the exact words.

Dottie: I’ll try… "Cocksucker."

That's what she calls me!

Beverly: Listen to your filthy mouth, you fuckin' whore!

Dottie: Goddamn you!

Beverly: Motherfucker! Cocksucker

No! Fashion has changed!

I don’t use bad language

Pussywillows....