A Bloody Good Time: ABGT Face-Off: Flesh Eating Mothers vs. Parents

Opening Logo courtesy of Benjamin J. Colón (Soul Exodus)

You may have seen a copy of a generic-looking DVD called Mom and Dad at your local video store. That is, assuming you still use video stores. If you don’t, shame on you. It’s the one with an angry-looking Nic Cage and Selma Blair on the cover, and it tells you absolutely nothing about what you’re about to watch. The film was released last week and I’ve been excited ever since I saw the bonkers trailer a couple of months ago.

Basically I said that if the selling point is that Nic Cage is acting crazy, he must give one insane. Anyway, the only way I can really do a proper tie-in is to take a look at two other movies that deal with murderous parents. They both came out in the 80s and neither are what I could call good (although they have their fans). This time, we’re looking at 1988’s Flesh Eating Mothers and putting it against 1989’s Parents.

The similiarities between these two movies is simple enough, they’re both about parents that eat people. Although the story in one of them is surprisingly way more complicated than the other. Flesh Eating Mothers is more akin to a Troma release (like, say, Rabid Grannies) but a little bit of research tells me they didn’t release it. The trailer does have Troma’s narrator from The Toxic Avenger though. It’s low-budget and relies mostly on the shock value. Parents has better production values and actual names in the cast. Does that make it a better film? Not necessarily, so let’s compare and contrast two movies about cannibals.

Round One: The Story

So let’s get the more complicated out of the way first. Flesh Eating Mothers has a title that would make you think you know every thing about it. It has mothers and they eat flesh. But the story is a little more intricate than that. The reason mothers are eating their kids and loved ones is because of a disease. Not just any disease, but a sexually transmitted disease. So if the mothers of this suburban community had sex with someone carrying it, then they become psychotic cannibals. Naturally, there’s a subplot about a possible cure.

The story in Parents is far more simple. A kid believes his parents are eating people (because they are) and wants to expose them if he can. At the same time, he’s hoping he doesn’t become their next meal. It’s like a more adult version of a Goosebumps story, something like “The Girl Who Cried Monster” if you remember how that one ended. The kid’s only ally is a friendly guidance counselor and you can guess how that goes.

Parents is the simpler of the two stories, but in a case like this, that’s all you need. Parents are killing people, someone needs to stop them. No need for a big backstory to justify the carnage.

Winner: Parents

https://youtu.be/em44PehOnGg

Round Two: The Characters

Flesh Eating Mothers really doesn’t have any well-defined characters. They’re all stock, even the mothers and the sexually-promiscuous man that infects them. You’d think with the work that went into the story they’d also spent time developing the characters. Not that I expect well-developed characters in this movie, but if you’re going through the trouble of one you might as well do the other.

Parents on the other hand, does have some solid development. We know a lot about Michael. He has an overactive imagination, which tends to result in people not believing him about his cannibal parents. His parents are also multi-layered, even down to the final scene. I’d spoil it, but while these films are over thirty-years old, they’re also little-seen. It’s best you watch them yourselves.

Parents does better with its world-building and has more interesting people in it. I mean, one of them is Randy Quaid doing his best to be intimidating. That alone gives it the point.

Winner: Parents

Round Three: The Gore and Effects

This category is where Flesh Eating Mothers shines. In general, for a movie that’s as low-budget and dumb as this is, it has impressive special effects. There are moments when the mothers’ faces become distorted as the disease continues to spread. There are also sicker moments when they actually eat people. It’s simple stuff, a fake arm here, some blood spray there, but it works for what they’re trying to do. And the mouth-extending scene is way too good for something like this.

Parents is low-key, so it often doesn’t rely on gore. There is a small bit, but you mostly only see the people eaten after they’ve been turned into meat and cooked. As for special effects, it does have a more modest budget. The movie even has an explosion! However it’s not really about that because that’s not what the director is trying to use to tell his story. Good for him, I guess, since this movie could have been extremely exploitative and it chose to take a different approach.

Just by the virtue of having gore and practical effects without the budget to do them, Flesh Eating Mothers wins. I really like that mouth-opening bit. Maybe it just looks more expensive than it is. Maybe she can actually unhinge her jaw. Who knows? It looks good.

Winner: Flesh Eating Mothers

Round Four: The Comedy

Ah now see, both of these movies are intended to be horror-comedies. Obviously black horror comedies, but they’re still meant to be funny. So it comes down to which one does a better job of being intentionally funny.

I say intentionally because Flesh Eating Mothers is not very good. The acting is over-the-top and wooden, which doesn’t feel like it was on purpose. It feels like they just hired bad actors to recite their dialogue, hoping the script would be enough. So the line delivery does draw some laughs, but there are some genuinely funny lines here and there. At one point the mother tries to eat her son’s head, so he tells her that “this time I’m really running away.” In another moment, a guy punches one of the mutants because his mother told him not to “deck a lady”, but she never said anything about a cannibal.

Meanwhile, this is probably the weakest element of Parents. There are a couple of laughs here and there, because how could you not laugh at Randy Quaid chewing the scenery? But overall it says it’s a black comedy and instead seems to want to play things straight. It seems to me, that the intent was that the movie would be funny simply due to how absurd its premise is. However it mostly ends up being a slog in that department. It’s okay, but it doesn’t seem to live up to its potential in the laughs department.

Flesh Eating Mothers gets another point, turning this into a surprisingly close race.

Round Five: Overall quality

This is where this gets tough. Believe it or not, I don’t like either one of these movies. Flesh Eating Mothers is too stupid and Parents is surprisingly too bland.

In terms of raw production value, Parents is better. It’s better shot, better acted and competently directed. The only faults I have with it are its tame approach to the material, the lack of laughs and honestly, while it has a simpler story it’s still not executed well. But it is competently made, so I can’t fault it on a technical level.

Flesh Eating Mothers has a lower-budget, has worse acting and an overly-complicated story, but it has some decent effects and one or two intentional laughs (as opposed to the numerous unintentional ones). It’s clearly a so-bad-its-good movie, so it manages to stick out more in my memory.

So while Parents is technically better made, Flesh Eating Mothers is more memorable. I don’t have to like it to recognize that it did something to stick out, while Parents is just kind of there.

Winner: Flesh Eating Mothers

Parents started out with a strong lead but Flesh Eating Mothers came up from behind to take it. This week was interesting for me. As I mentioned, I’m not a fan of either one so it allowed me to be a bit more analytical in my thought process when deciding who wins what. Perhaps I should match up more “bad” films more often.

Anyway, which movie do you think is better? Have you even seen these? Heard of them? Will this be the lowest-read ABGT ever? Vote in the poll and leave your comments below.

Ending Notes:

That’s it for me. Leave some comments here, on my Twitter or my Facebook.

Closing Logo courtesy of Kyle Morton (get your own custom artwork and commissions at his Etsy account)

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