Director
Bob Balaban
Cast
Randy Quaid - Nick Laemle
Mary Beth Hurt - Lily Laemle
Bryan Madorsky - Michael Laemle
Sandy Dennis - Millie Dew
Juno Mills-Cockell - Sheila Zellner
Nearing the BIG & bloody100
My 1,000 days of watching horror movies you forgot about, wanted to forget about, or just haven't heard of...yet...is creeping up to my one-hundredth movie.I personally consider that an accomplishment considering I've persevered through some creepy, disgusting, and truly forgettable stuff, as well as some newly found horror favorites since 2018.
Anyone familiar with my reviews and comments here, and especially over at my non-horror blog dontfastforward.blogspot.com probably knows I have a penchant for video rental stores and VHS tapes. It's pure nostalgia.
Anyways, over on DontFastForward, I have a list going for films I'm familiar with thanks to the old video rental store, California Video, I grew up near back in the late 1980s into the mid to late 1990s. I call that list Video Rental Chicken Fat.
For the next 13 movies until my one-hundredth review, I'm going to do the same kind of thing here. I'm going to check out some horror movies that I either haven't seen since renting them from the video store, or check out movies with box covers I remember seeing in the horror aisle of California Video. I'll call these reviews simply, "Nostalgic Horror Rentals." And I'm starting with this cult classic - Parents.
~ The Review ~
For reasons I can't remember, I rented this movie in my early teenage years, or perhaps before then, when my interest in horror movies was developing just like a lot of other things were back then. How I managed to talk my mom into renting this movie for me to watch is a feat to say the least.
It didn't make any kind of sense to me. That much I remember. But despite it flying way over my young mind, I haven't forgotten this movie.
Now, watching it through my adult eyes, thankfully Parents makes more sense.
The story takes place in 1950s suburban Massachusetts as 10-year old Michael Laemle (Bryan Madorsky) along with his parents, Nick (Randy Quaid) and Lily (Mary Beth Hurt) have just moved into their new neighborhood.
Michael is a shy, socially awkward kid with an active imagination. He suffers from strange dreams and the images they leave in his head stem from suspicions about what his parents are doing after he goes to bed. The move to a new neighborhood is also a heavy weight for Michael.
At his new school, his somber demeanor, comments, and artwork reflect what's going on inside.
He's able to make one friend - Sheila Zellner. She's also new to the school, and has suspicions of her own about her own parents.
One night, Michael wakes up and catches his parents in the living room having sex on the floor. This traumatizes him, and adds to the psychology turmoil he's enduring. Why they picked the living room to get it on doesn't make sense. But often kinkiness is born in bad decisions.
Anyways, his father works as a scientist and medical examiner for a company called Toxico. The company is developing a chemical defoliant for jungles. Nick examines human cadavers to see if the chemicals from Toxico have any role in their deaths.
He takes his son to work with him one afternoon, where Michael learns what his dad does for a living.
Shortly after, Michael begins suspecting his parents are cannibals.
He has a dream one night were human body parts are hanging on meat hooks in the basement. Or, was it a dream?
He takes his suspicions to his school counselor, Millie Dew (Sandy Dennis).
Unbelieving, she tries working with Michael to get to the core of his social anxieties.
Dew finally visits his home, when the unthinkable occurs leaving Michael with a decision no child should have.
Labeled a "black comedy horror," Parents isn't the kind of dark comedy that'll get laughs like, say, Beetlejuice or Army of Darkness.
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| Randy Quaid and Mary Beth Hurt in Parents |
This kind of comedy makes light of a dark and horrific subject matter. It's also a bit satirical as it takes place in the golden era of 20th Century America - the 1950s. It does get a little convoluted in regards to just what it wants to be - satirical or dark comedy. But regardless, I can see why this movie has a cult following.
Watching it again, my first impression was that it's like A Christmas Story (minus the Christmas) meets The Shining.
Styles reminiscent of both movies are present in Parents.
The low camera angles, extended shots, cold atmosphere (emotionally speaking), and the symbolic scenes displaying Michael's descent into fear and maybe madness, particularly through his dreams, remind me a lot of Kubrick's The Shining as well as A Clockwork Orange.
Michael has one particular dream where, in slow motion, he jumps into his clean bed. But his bed then slowly falls into a deep pool of blood where he's completely submerged in.
The child's dreams play an important part in Michael's perception and developing fear of his parents is similar to that of Danny Torrance's mental images caused by his "shining." While Michael doesn't have this extrasensory perception, dreams are much more sensible.
Like Kubrick, Director Bob Balaban really utilizes the key to good storytelling - show, don't tell. The composition of some scenes truly depict how the characters are feeling. For instance, there's one scene setup with Michael in profile sitting in the living room distant from his parents, not speaking or looking at them, while his parents are at the dining table - Nick standing over his wife from behind her like he's speaking into her ear - in the background engaged with each other and then looking up at Michael.
It seems everything in this story is carefully setup and composed. The effort is clear and worthy of appreciation.
Some scene transitions convey what's going on as Michael begins suspecting his parents.
One such transition takes place when a scene inside the medical examiner's room shifts to the next scene of Lily preparing meat in the kitchen. It might come across as a little too obvious but it grabs the audience's attention.
The setting has a tinge of satire towards fallen human nature, and how low man can fall, covered by the squeaky clean façade of post-war America reminds me of the humor found in Jean Shepherd's writings, and his film A Christmas Story which takes place in 1940s Indiana rather than in the late-1950s Massachusetts suburbs. Only, in Parents the humor is a lot darker.
I'm glad I haven't forgotten this movie despite how high if flew over the head of my much younger self. I certainly appreciate it much more, and find myself still thinking about it days after watching it.
I found an inexpensive copy packaged as a double-feature with another horror movie called Fear starring Ally Sheedy, and I'm glad I bought it. I've added Parents to my mental list of favorite horror films.
The acting is decent enough with Randy Quaid playing the quintessential father-knows-best type of dad. It mixes well with Mary Beth Hurt as Lily - a standard 1950s mom who spends her time in the kitchen, has her hair done perfect, and keeps a clean and white smile on her face at all times to hide any and all dirty laundry within. Hurt has a way of letting her dark secrets show through small facial features and expressions as she tries to keep up her appearances.
Despite a bit of confusion as to what kind of film Parents is trying to be, I still found it gripping and entertaining.
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| Bryan Madorsky in Parents |
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