Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #10112 in DVD
• Released on: 1999-07-13
• Rating: R (Restricted)
• Aspect ratio: 1.33:1
• Formats: Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, DVD, Full Screen, NTSC
• Original language: English
• Subtitled in: English, Spanish, French
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 95 minutes

Amazon.com essential video
Director John Waters creates here a wickedly funny--and nasty--comedy starring Kathleen Turner as the ultimate suburbanite: a woman so obsessed with suburban perfection that she kills a neighbor for not separating her recyclables. Hubby Sam Waterston and kids Matthew Lillard and Ricki Lake don't have a clue that in fact it is squeaky-clean mom who is the killer at large in their Baltimore neighborhood and who has murdered, among others, the guy who dumped her daughter. The final courtroom scene is a riot, turning her into a celebrity defendant (long before O.J.) and featuring a terrific cameo by Patty Hearst (yes, that Patty Hearst). Not for the squeamish or the easily offended, Waters's fans will find him in classic form. --Marshall Fine

Amazon.com
Director John Waters creates here a wickedly funny--and nasty--comedy starring Kathleen Turner as the ultimate suburbanite: a woman so obsessed with suburban perfection that she kills a neighbor for not separating her recyclables. Hubby Sam Waterston and kids Matthew Lillard and Ricki Lake don't have a clue that in fact it is squeaky-clean mom who is the killer at large in their Baltimore neighborhood and who has murdered, among others, the guy who dumped her daughter. The final courtroom scene is a riot, turning her into a celebrity defendant (long before O.J.) and featuring a terrific cameo by Patty Hearst (yes, that Patty Hearst). Not for the squeamish or the easily offended, Waters's fans will find him in classic form. --Marshall Fine

From The New Yorker
John Waters takes a risk and goes mainstream for his latest stab at zero-taste comedy. Kathleen Turner plays Beverly, a Baltimore housewife with a dentist husband (Sam Waterston), two nice kids, and a sideline in multiple murder. Turner looks inspired, even when running someone through with a poker, but there's nothing behind the inspiration; the movie doesn't bother to saddle her slayings with a motive, or grace them with much of a plot. Waters rigs the look of it, and makes things easy for himself; when life has the silly shine of a fifties commercial, you don't have to dig very deep to find dirt. The film is neither as funny nor as shocking as Waters might like to think, but Turner rescues it; she enjoys herself hugely, and hauls us along for the ride. Her sex-bomb charge may be defused, but her career as a queen bitch is just beginning. -Anthony Lane
Copyright © 2006 The New Yorker

Customer Reviews

Fashion has changed! NO IT HAS NOT!!!!!
SERIAL MOM is John Waters at his delightfully darkest. Kathleen Turner plays a soccer mom who harbors secret psychopathic longings and begins acting them out in the most bizarre ways. Ever seen anyone killed with a turkey leg while singing a song from ANNIE? If you've seen SERIAL MOM you have! Wow! Kathleen does a great job, but also look for Ricki Lake, Traci Lords, and a before he was famous Matthew Lillard throwing in great support. Oh, and who can forget Suzanne Sommers? She's awesome too! Waters regular Mink Stole steals her pussy willow scene as well. This is a great one!

The DVD contains a commentary with John Waters, and as usual his track is every bit as entertaining as the movie. There are featurettes with all the leads talking about making this farce! It's a great package. DVD presentation is striking - good picture and sound of one of John's highest budget features.

a more mainstream effort from off-kilter king John Waters
SERIAL MOM is one of John Waters' more mainstream movie offerings and thus lacks the edge of earlier efforts (PINK FLAMINGOES, POLYESTER), though does have Kathleen Turner in one of her most accomplished tour-de-forces.

Beverly Sutphin (Kathleen Turner) seems like your ordinary stay-at-home wife and mother, but nothing could be further from the truth. Anyone who crosses her path and defiles her code of morals is instantly killed or abused, starting with neighbour Dottie Hinkle (Mink Stole) whom Beverly harrasses with shocking prank phonecalls after Dottie rudely cut her out of a parking space. Then there's the boy who broke daughter Misty's heart, impaled by a Franklin Mint fire-poker; the rude man who doesn't floss, crushed by his airborne cooler-unit; the woman who doesn't rewind her videos, bludgeoned by a lamb chop, and the list goes on...!

Beverly's murder trial takes on a life of it's own and becomes a media circus. Suzanne Somers is the frontrunner to play Beverly in a TV miniseries and Beverly acts as her own defence. Too bad about the annoying juror (Patty Hearst) who is wearing white shoes after Labour Day...

Kathleen Turner glows in her ghoulishly-gleeful turn as Beverly. John Waters directs a fine cast (including Waters stalwarts Mink Stole and Ricki Lake).

This movie is simply delightful off-kilter comedy at it's best. Ricki Lake and Matthew Lillard play Beverly's teens Misty and Chip with Sam Waterston as Beverly's guileless husband. The cast also includes Traci Lords, Scott Wesley Morgan, Walt MacPherson, Justin Whalin, Patricia Dunnock, Lonnie Horsey and Mary Jo Catlett.

Life doesn't have to be so bad, but it's hilarious anyway!
I thought this movie was a riot the first time I saw it. I was only vaguely aware of John Waters at the time, as he had hit it big with Hairspray a few years before. Watching this movie you can catch the little digs and subleties (the gal from L7 showing off her camel toe, that really filthy porn movie the friend Scottie is watching, etc.) here and there. Kathleen Turner plays the Divine role very well as the suburban housewife on the edge of exploding. Beverly is so obsessed with perfection and keeping her world in line that she snaps. The obscene calls to her neighbor Dottie (all because she cut her off in the parking lot at Joanne Fabrics) are hilarious. She kills the woman for not rewinding her video tapes before returning them, and even contemplates murder against her literbug neighbor for not recycling.

This was probably John Waters's salute to the courtroom groupie phenomena. We can turn mass murderers into celebrities, although I wish he had captured more of the party aspect of it rather than the sale of T shirts and merchandise. Patty Hurst is even in it, and if you didn't know otherwise John Waters was one of the Patty Hurst groupies back in the day. Suzanne Sommers even makes an appearance, in probably her most signifigant screen role to date, just being herself. It was a good time and captures one of John Waters's many obsessions.