Mommie Dearest (1981) - Movie Review

By Melissa Antoinette Garza

I’m in love with Joan Crawford and I adore Faye Dunaway. I grew up on this film. Back in the 80s and 90s there were few weekends when this didn’t air and when I noticed it was on, I always watched it. Please bear in mind that though child abuse is serious, quite often I am not. Therefore, if in the review I seem callous toward Christina or the nature of the film, it is simply because I’m being an asshole and not because I approve of the behavior being shown.

With that, let’s start off with a question. How many wire hangers is the correct amount to have in your closet?

None. The answer is none and as long as you remember that, Miss Crawford won’t have to cut a bitch.

The movie opens with Joan Crawford (Faye Dunaway) rising from her lonely bed. She begins a morning wash-up routine of massive OCD proportions scrubbing herself insanely in the sink, before putting her head in a bowl of ice, and finally jumping in the shower.

She then jumps in her limo and fills out fan autographs as she is driven to the Metro Goldwyn Mayer set. She’s a gorgeous dynamo on the set revealing that maybe her beauty regiment was warranted.

Joan is just as hard and OCD on her staff as she is on herself. She chastises her cleaning lady because dirt is left underneath a heavy round plant.

Despite Joan’s success, she feels empty. She had been pregnant 7 times and lost them all. When she hands out presents during Christmas, she decides that she wants to adopt.

The agencies give her a hard time because she’s been divorced twice and lives alone. They tell her she’s unsuitable, but Joan doesn’t take that lying down.

She enlists the help of her lawyer boyfriend Greg (Steve Forrest) who gets her baby Christina. She’s initially ecstatic and makes all sorts of promises to her. She wants to give Christina everything she never had, but Joan is unbalanced.

In a few years, she adopts a boy named Christopher. She then throws Christina (Mara Hobel) a huge birthday party. When the little girl notices a grass stain on her dress, one can see the contempt on Joan’s eyes.

Christina is only allowed to keep two gifts, a doll from Joan and a bracelet from Greg. Everything else she has to give to orphans. It’s seemingly a publicity stunt that Greg isn’t in favor of but Crawford is a powerhouse gal that makes the rules and lays down the law.

She’s tough and strong and fierce. Sadly, shes also nutty and abusive. It’s too bad because had she been able to successfully fight those demons in her head, she would be viewed as a feminist hero instead of the chick that Dick Cavett wanted to beat the shit out of (for that convo start 10:50 seconds in on the below video). I love Dick Cavett.

Joan’s competitive intensity pushes young Christina over the edge and turns Greg completely off. After a few more knockout/drag-out fights, he hits the road leaving the kids alone with Joan. She begs him not to go in a rare showing of sensitivity, but when it fails Greg is dead to her. She cuts him out of every photo.

Her bat-shit crazy episodes get worse. She starts using corporal punishment and insane torturous maltreatment on the children. Christina in particular is locked in a pool house and nearly starved into eating bad meat. In one scary scene, Joan walks in and sees young Christina playing in her room. The girl is doing an innocent impression of Joan winning an award, but things go poorly. Instead of taking it as her daughter admiring her, she flips out. In a rage, she cuts Christina’s hair off and says awful things to the little girl.

Damn! It’s so crazy because Faye Dunaway is one of the most gorgeous creatures ever to grace the earth and she’s portraying someone else of amazing outward beauty, but damn if Crawford wasn’t some kind of crazy evil. It takes some sort of strange psycho to accuse a 5 year old girl of trying to tramp it up. One must assume, Joan had a similar upbringing but that is no excuse. The cycle has to end and I’m just happy it seems that it did with Christina and Christopher – even if it meant them getting cut out of Crawford’s will.

When she gets fired from Metro Goldwyn Mayer, things get worse. Crawford ends up in a gorgeous brown gown cutting roses in the garden in the middle of the night. She also has her maid Carol Anne (Rutanya Alda) get the kids out of bed to help. She chops down a tree with an ax at which point I think everyone was just happy she didn’t use it on the kids.

Carol Anne really needs to get hit as well. She is such an enabling bitch. She should have run to the authorities or the news or done something. Instead, she looked the other way for a paycheck and because she was so enamored by Crawford. She handed Christina over to her abuser again and again and again. I don’t understand that at all. Even the men in Crawford’s life put on blinders and let the abuse continue.

Christina ends up getting dragged out of bed because she has the wire hanger in her closet and then is forced to clean a floor that she already cleaned. People point to this as a hammed up scene, but I don’t see it. I’m so compelled by Dunaway’s performance and I feel horribly for Christina who when alone finally utters the words everyone is thinking, “Jesus Christ.”

Mara Hobel who portrays little Christina does such a superb job. She makes me hate two women that I absolutely adore. She sells every second she’s on. I feel so badly for the tyke.

Christina gets sent to a boarding school and as a teenager/adult she is portrayed by Diana Scarwid. The tensions between mother and daughter only gets worse as Christina gets older. When she gets caught sexing it up in a barn on campus, Joan nearly has a heart attack.

Thankfully, Christina has a fighting chance now. Though she wants to keep some semblance of a family together with Joan, it isn’t made easy. Even though she’s forgiving of her mother being a drunk and losing money, Joan still goes nuts on her. In an epic scene, Joan asks why she can’t have the respect she deserves and Diana Scarwid gives me chills when she screams, “because I’m not one of your fans.” She was doing mic drops way before they were a thing.

In the end, Christina and Christopher find some peace in the death of her mother and exposing her as the abuser she is.

I love this flick. It a go-to movie for me. There have been plenty of Sunday afternoons that I would just throw this on and fall completely into it.

The acting is fantastic. The pace is spectacular. The insight into one of the most treasured actresses of all time makes for a distressing but absolutely captivating watch. What makes this even more compelling are the normal scenes interwoven. At times, Joan seems like a caring and loving mother, but her mental illness just destroys any chance of normalcy. It’s very tragic. When Crawford descends into alcoholism, I still feel for the woman. As horrible as she is and as certain as she belonged in prison, Faye Dunaway never forgets the fact that Joan was still very much human – a terribly flawed human, but human nonetheless.