Black comedy can be a difficult genre to get right, in the cinema as well as in the theatre. We can, I am sure, all think of films which were intended to be gross but hilarious and ended up as simply gross. There are too many examples to list them all, but high on my personal list of offenders in this regard must be "The Sweetest Thing", "Beautiful Creatures" and "Drop Dead Gorgeous". On the other hand, when black comedy succeeds, the result can be superb. Two of my favourites are Kubrick's "Dr Strangelove" and Scorsese's "King of Comedy", both of which derive humour from serious subjects (nuclear war and crime) but do so with a brilliant satirical wit.
John Waters's "Serial Mom" is not quite in the same class as those two films, but is one of the better black comedies of recent years. The main character is Beverley Sutphin, a middle-aged, middle-class Middle American housewife. Beverley, happily married to dentist Eugene with two teenage children, Chip and Misty, lives in an affluent, idyllic suburb which looks as though it has been taken from a fifties sit-com. (Like most of Waters's films, this one is set in his home town of Baltimore). There is only one thing which disturbs the peace and tranquillity of the area. Beverley combines her role as a housewife and mother with a part-time career as a serial killer. Her first victim is Paul Stubbins, a teacher who makes some unkind remarks about her son at a PTA meeting, and she progresses to her daughter's unfaithful boyfriend, a couple who are rude about Eugene's dental practice and various people who commit minor social gaffes such as failing to rewind rented video tapes (the film predates the coming of DVD), failing to recycle their garbage, and wearing white shoes after Labor day. (This last is, apparently, regarded as a major fashion crime in America). Eventually she is arrested and put on trial.
Waters has the reputation of being a director to whom the notion of good taste is quite alien, and, with a plot like this, "Serial Mom" could have ended up as nothing more than horribly tasteless garbage. It is, of course, horribly tasteless and not a film to see if you are at all squeamish- Waters does not spare us sight of plenty of blood and gore- but is saved from ending up as garbage by two things. The first is an often very witty script, displaying a refreshingly cynical sense of humour, which includes some great lines such as "He killed people, mom- We all have our bad days". and "Jesus said nothing to condemn capital punishment as he hung on the cross, did he"? (the local priest is preaching a pro-death penalty sermon).
The second is Kathleen Turner's manically over-the-top performance as Beverley, alternating between a model of bourgeois domestic virtue and a bloodthirsty maniac, and playing both with equal relish. My favourite parts were the courtroom scene where Beverley conducts her own defence with great brilliance and the scenes where she makes obscene phone calls to her neighbour Dottie, a woman who can be shocked by a phrase as seemingly innocuous as "Are those pussy willows?" Turner is an actress who has somewhat disappeared from view in recent years, but in the eighties and nineties she was one of Hollywood's best known leading ladies and gave some excellent performances in films like the neo-noir thriller "Body Heat" and "The War of the Roses", another very good black comedy.
Like most good black comedies, "Serial Mom" has some serious points to make. The mores of suburbia have been fair game for satirists ever since the first suburbs were built, and here Waters is sending up the culture of middle-class conformity which all too often attaches to such places. Beverley is far from being the only all-American soccer mom who looks with horrified disfavour on her neighbours' minor deviations from accepted norms; all that distinguishes her from millions of others is the extreme lengths to which she will go to punish such deviations. The satire, however, is not just aimed at Beverley, but also at her victims, some of whom are such obnoxious individuals that it is impossible to have any sympathy for them, despite their horrific fates. There is one grotesque scene where Emma Lou Jensen (she who fails to rewind her videos) sings loudly and tunelessly along to "Tomorrow" from the musical "Annie" while allowing her dog to lick her feet all over suggesting she is, to say the least, a somewhat strange person. Stubbins, who suggests that Chip is in need of "therapy" because of his love of horror films, is the sort of arrogant, self-important teacher who thinks that he is paid not just to teach maths but also to control every aspect of his students' lives, down to their taste in films.
"Serial Mom" may not be the best cinematic satire on suburbia of recent years (that must be Sam Mendes's "American Beauty"), but it is, for all its lapses of taste, a witty and entertaining black comedy. 8/10
