Written by Rhea Dee

A while back (right around Captivity: the hoo-ha heard around the world) I discovered that most of the blogs and message boards I�ve frequented all seemed to agree on one thing: Buffy Summers is probably (99% probably) the best representation of a woman in genre fiction. I don�t disagree, really. Buffy Summers is an amazing woman�a real woman�and she�s a strong feminist icon, to boot (squee!).

But I don�t really like broad, sweeping statements like that because I think it disregards a lot of other strong, amazing women. I�m not talking about Dana Scully, Sarah Connor, Ellen Ripley, or any women characters from Joss Whedon�s works (or looking at my previous two examples, any women characters from Cameron�s films). I�m not talking about any cult/genre women that are well known and popular at all, actually. I�m referring more to all the women we don�t hear about, the ones that were lost to obscurity and time. I�m talking about all the unsung heroines of the cult and genre medium; all the women that were just as real and amazing and feminist-y.

Thus, �Unsung Heroines of Cult� was born. My little tribute to all the obscure ladies of cult and their honest to god awesome-ness. Here�s to you, ladies. Thanks for being so effing cool.

Unsung Heroines of Cult: The girls of Mother�s Day

Check it out if you loved: Death Proof. (Or if you just want to see a slasher/horror flick where the girl isn�t completely screaming-in-terror traumatized at the end of the film a la Texas Chainsaw Massacre).

Death Proof was such my perfect movie. It�s rare to see the victims of a slasher film turn the tables on the killer, thereby making him the victim. Really rare.

Death Proof reminded me of some of the greatest exploitation flicks of the late 70�s�those flicks where women refused to be victims for an entire movie. Flicks like that are different from your average slasher film�the heroines in slasher movies are singled out by chance almost, since the killer will have already methodically killed everyone else in the movie leaving just one lonely, scared girl who defeats the killer with a mixture of chance and cunning.

Now, don�t get me wrong, I love movies like that. But there�s just something about a woman who makes a conscious decision to not be that lonely, scared girl. Someone who wants to not only survive, but to get even�

Mother�s Day follows the lives of three college friends, Trina, Abbey and Jackie. After a slide show during the opening credits of their days in college, we tune into the threesome ten years later. We follow each girl in her home city (Trina is living glamorously in Beverly Hills, Abbey is being suffocated by an overbearing mother in Chicago, and Jackie is in a dead end relationship in New York City) and see each of them get a telegram. The telegram is the pact the girls made with each other in their college days�once a year they drop everything and go on a mystery vacation together. This year, it�s Jackie�s turn to choose the locale and she chooses Deep Barons in the remote wilderness�a place that just screams Deliverance. Thanks to the pre-opening credit sequence (a deceptive little thing that follows an old woman giving a shady couple a ride home from a self-help seminar, but while you�re waiting for the couple to strike, two men jump out of the woods and do the whole slice and dice. The girl, beaten and bruised, crawls to the old woman�s feet and begs for help, but it�s then revealed that the old woman is running the whole show�and that the whole slice and dice is a family affair which is just lovely) we know that Deep Barons is where the psycho family of mother and sons live. After a warning from the general store owner to stay away from Deep Barons, the girls venture on in and set up camp next to a beautiful lake. At the lake, the girls reminisce about their college days, and how they got rid of Jackie�s boyfriend, who was apparently �shitting� on her. This scene is played out in flashback and serves as foreshadowing of how the girls would always look out for each other and never let anybody take advantage of them. Ever.

After a few cheap shots that turn out to be pranks (Jackie�s fake knife in the back being the most memorable) the girls are kidnapped by the hick brothers of Deep Barons. The brothers drag the girls back to their dilapidated house in the woods where they present the girls to their mother. Gruesome events occur�mainly, Jackie is raped and tortured outside while Trina and Abbey watch helplessly through a window.

The next sequence focuses on the hick family and their extreme creepiness (their mother oversees the brothers’ grueling murder training program�seriously. They stab sacks of potatoes. During that, Trina and Abbey escape, taking Jackie with them, who is barely alive. The girls narrowly escape the brothers and try to get to their car, which is of course, out of commission (damn that slasher movie luck). The girls try to locate another means of escape, but realize after a few near misses with the brothers in the woods that they�re stuck.

And then to make matters worse, Jackie dies from her injuries. This of course, really pisses the girls off. I mean, it really pisses them off. So much so that they decide to �get the bastards� instead of running away (and really, the running away wasn�t doing so well anyway).

Abbey, the mousiest of the three, suddenly takes charge of the revenge mission. It seems like Jackie�s death made something within her snap�now Abbey won�t take shit from anybody. Abbey and Trina don their riot grrrl outfits and carry Jackie back to the house and prop her up against a tree (so she can �watch� what they�re going to do). Then they break into the house.

Symbolism rules the death of the hick brothers. Skimming past some of the more gory details, Abbey ends up jumping on one and suffocating him�.with maxipads. I�ve never seen anything like it. Usually, in victim-cum-attacker flicks, the victim forces the attacker to become the victim because the victim will have assumed the attacker�s position, something that the original attacker (now victim) would have never expected the victim to do. If that seemed a little like Spaceballs �we�re looking at now now,� just think of Death Proof. The second group of girls ended up killing Stuntman Mike with the thing he used to kill the first group of girls (and probably countless other girls)�a muscle car. Stuntman Mike�s weakness lay within the fact that he never assumed the girls would fight back. Trina and Abbey, however, don�t only use weapons that were used against them. Instead they use things readily available to them�hence the maxipads. It works to double their advantage really�not only are they totally owning what the killers thought they�d never own, they�re embracing their femininity as they do so. It�s a pretty nifty thing.

Once the brothers are taken care of, Abbey goes downstairs, and employing the same fake knife in the back trick Jackie used earlier in the movie, tricks the mother into letting her guard down. Abbey then suffocates the mother to death, talking to her as if she was her own horrible mother (and to drive this point home, you hear voice clips from the beginning of the movie of Abbey�s overbearing evil mom). After the mother dies, Abbey realizes that she has metaphorically killed her own mother, which also provides interesting theories. On one hand, we have Abbey finally taking charge of her life (also demonstrated earlier). With the murder of the mother Abbey realized she always wanted to be independent and free and that�d she do anything (literally) to obtain it.

This scene can also been seen as rejecting the conventional ideas of motherhood�this family lived in a 50�s nuclear family mentality. I mean, it was totally messed up, but the base elements were there. Trina and Abbey subvert that ideology just by being modern women. In fact, you could say the mother underestimated the strength of these women because of her own limiting ideology.

But moving on. As the girls stumble out of the house, Trina begins to have a breakdown about what just transpired. Abbey grabs her shoulders and says �There�s a reason we survived, you just have to believe that much. We were meant to survive. We were strong�both of us.�

And then in a bizarre twist/cheap shot that only a cult classic from the 80�s could produce, a Bigfoot-type monster woman referred to earlier in the movie within the family (the mother was �attacked� by her�we didn�t see it) but then dismissed just as quickly by the brothers as nonsense, pops out of the woods. The movie ends on a freeze frame of the monster, doing zoom jump cuts towards its blurry face. This is the only time I will accept a twist like this�mostly because it�s just to get the audience scared. Nowadays a cheap shot of the monster/killer/mutant zombie thing opening their eyes at the end of the movie is usually just a lead in to a sequel. I really hate that sellout shit. The very last shot doesn�t really factor in that much anyway. The point is that Trina and Abbey have defeated the enemy. They survived and they avenged Jackie. Mission accomplished.

A final thought. I�ve read various articles and such that often question how such a film can be feminist. Their argument runs along the lines of �Just because women are taking the reigns of attacker doesn�t necessarily make the movie better�someone is still being victimized.�

Yeah, okay, so this ain�t your average feminist movie. But it�s the ideas that make Mother�s Day feminist-y to me. Trina and Abbey aren�t just getting revenge�they�re making a conscious decision to not become victims. Instead, they are going to do everything in their power to destroy the idea of the attacker. The stalker. The killer. And that is what makes Mother�s Day something that should not be forgotten.

About Rhea Dee: I’ve been a cult fanatic since I was nine, when my dad taped Evil Dead II off HBO (still my favorite pirated video). I have a Night of the Living Dead thermos. I like Martha Jones better than Rose Tyler. I just bought Man Stroke Woman. I’m more Spuffy than Bangel. I like to imagine that Mulder and Krycek had a passionate affair. I love Edgar Wright (and Nick Frost. And Simon Pegg) and spend hours writing their names over and over in my binder, surrounded by little hearts. Remember that? Ahhh, obsessions.

I’m all about pink glitter headbands.

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