"The Mother Of Tears" movie review by Ben Kenber

The summer movie season has so far given us one sequel that finally arrived almost decades after its predecessor, “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.” But there is another movie just released that was also decades in the making, and I am not sure if anyone outside of the Fangoria crowd is aware of it. The movie is “The Mother Of Tears,” and it is Dario Argento’s concluding chapter in his Three Mothers trilogy which started back in the 70’s with “Suspiria” (one of my all time favorite movies), and then went on to “Inferno” (which I have not yet seen) in the 80’s. The promise of a third mother film has dogged Argento for years and years, and it almost became as unlikely as the recent Indiana Jones. Now, that it has been released, it gives hope (maybe too much) to those who still wait for the next chapters in “The Evil Dead” series and “Phantasm.” To hell with “Hellraiser” and all its crappy direct to DVD movies!

The movie stars Dario’s daughter Asia as Sarah Mandy, an art student who works at the Museum of Ancient Art in Rome. One day, an urn is delivered to the museum, and a colleague of Sarah’s, Giselle, encourages her to open it up with her. Even in a Dario Argento film, you have characters doing something so stupid as unleashing a demonic power that has been dormant for ages. Of course, if they didn’t do this ignorant deed, then we would have no movie to watch, so I guess we should only argue about that so much. Anyway, this urn actually contains a tunic and other objects that belong to Mater Lacrimarum, the last of three powerful witches who have been spreading terror and death for centuries. But she is not just any ordinary witch, she is the most powerful (not to mention the most beautiful) of the bunch.

Once the urn is opened, as we have heard so many times before, all hell breaks loose. Demons come out and attack Giselle in brutal and beautiful Argento fashion as she is disemboweled and strangled to death. No one makes a death so gory as beautiful on film as Dario does, nobody. Soon after, Sarah is on the run as the third mother and her minions chase after her. At first, we think it is because she was witness to the unspeakable murder at the start of the film, but soon she finds that her mother (who had died at the hands of Mater Suspiriorum) was actually a powerful white witch. As a result, Sarah has inherited both psychic and supernatural powers that she can be used to defend herself and attack her enemies. As Rome succumbs to a wave of violence involving suicides, rapes, and murders, Sarah comes to find that only she can defeat the third mother, and she has to do it before the whole world goes insane (as if hasn’t already).

“The Mother Of Tears” is by no means a perfect film, and the fact it is from a director with a very strong body of work will go against it as would any other famous director like Scorsese or Spielberg. Some of the acting is overdone, the plot is almost impossible to describe (I had to go to IMDB and the film’s official website to make sure I knew what I was talking about), some of the effects are not very good, the script has plot holes and lapses in logic more often than not, and the end of the movie is rather anticlimactic to say the least. Now a lot of these flaws would sink any other movie, but then again, this is a Dario Argento film, and his films are usually filled with flaws like these. Even the best ones like “Suspiria” don’t exactly make a whole lot of sense. What matters is the look of the movie and the atmosphere of it, and Argento still proves to be a genius at giving his movies a look all their own.

“The Mother of Tears” is no “Suspiria,” but then again, it was really never meant to be. Like “Raiders Of The Lost Ark,” it was a one of a kind movie. On it’s own, “The Mother Of Tears” is a gloriously over the top horror/fantasy film that I had a ball of time watching. The look of the movie is orgasmic in its use of color and has an exhilaratingly creepy look that sucks you in the way an Argento movie should. Like I said, no one makes murder more beautiful than Dario does onscreen. The Fangoria crowd is gonna go nuts over this film as it has all the gore you could ever imagine a movie having. Disembowelments, beheadings, heads being bashed in, throat slashings in every other scene, rape (thankfully not shot the way it was in “Irreversible”), fights, nudity (mostly of the female kind), and A LOT of breasts. The Third Mother, like Catherine Trammel from “Basic Instinct,” does not believe in underwear. If that tunic had not been taken out of the urn, she may have gone thru this movie completely naked (not that I would have had a huge problem with that mind you).

After all these years, Dario still does an amazing job with color on the big screen. The color red is striking, and the use of green and blue makes certain locales appear more inviting than they should be. Seriously, it’s like looking like walking thru an art museum and not being able to take your eyes off even some hideous. You feel like you shouldn’t be looking at it, but you are still drawn to the poetry of brutality and violence in a way that nothing else does. Dario also pulls off some amazing shots here, and there is an amazing one as he follows Asia via Steadicam in an unbroken shot that lasts a good 5 minutes or so. He puts you in her shoes, and you are searching an apparently vacant house alongside Asia. It’s a brilliantly done sequence.

Asia herself is really good here, even when she is verbally espousing very clichéd dialogue. Regardless of what others may have said, she has always been a really good actress, and she is not afraid of going to the edge in some parts. This is not a role that plays off her sexuality or exploits it (as many other American films have like “XXX” among others). She gives a vulnerable heroine who we root and care for, and she makes sequences where she has to make herself seem invisible to those chasing her seem not so far-fetched or unbelievable. It goes without saying that Asia kicks ass in so many different ways.

Many have accused Dario Argento’s films of being misogynistic, and that’s complete bullshit. It is clear that he loves women, and they are more often not the heroes of the stories he writes and directs. Yes, women get hacked to pieces in the most beautiful ways possible in his films, but guess what? So do the men! Heck, one man gets his face bashed in by a woman, and I mean REALLY bashes his head in. Like John Carpenter did in his movie “Vampires,” Dario in the end proves that he is an equal opportunity abuser. Whereas American films these days tend to favor butchering the young and most attractive people available, he shows no age bias who ends up being sliced and diced. Dario even includes, in a very horrifying sequence, an infant. Had this movie been submitted to the MPAA (and I assume it wasn’t considering that it was released unrated), it almost certainly would have received an NC-17.

One of the t-shirts I got recently at a Fangoria Weekend of Horrors convention has the MPAA logo on it, and it said this underneath:

“Must Punish All Artists.”

There are other scenes that seem like homages to other horror films whether they intended to be or not. One scene with a woman carting a baby down on a bridge in Rome reminded me of Mrs. Baylock from “The Omen,” only this woman was not as protective of the young child (if only he were Damien). There are several other moments where very attractive witches prance around airports and train stations on their way to Rome to reunite with the Third Mother. They go around like annoyingly loud teenagers without a care in the world, having not yet discovered how cruel the world can really be. But of course, these witches already know this and they revel in it while Rome falls victim to rash acts of violence. There are moments when they stand and stare at others from a distance like zombified humans. They come off like all those who stared at the church where the vat of Satan is held in John Carpenter’s “Prince Of Darkness.” Whether or not these homages were intended doesn’t matter because for me, they only added to the fun.

Aside from Asia, several other Dario Argento regulars pop up in this film. Among them is Udo Kier who plays Padre Johannes, the one priest who opens Sarah Mandy’s eyes to what she is really dealing with, and who she really is. While Udo completely overacts here to the point where you cannot help but laugh a little, he is always a welcome presence in a movie like this. Also in the movie is Daria Nicolodi, Dario’s ex-wife who plays Sarah’s mother who appears in spirit form at various points in the film. While her dialogue comes off as ridiculous at times, she still creates an intriguing presence in a movie that is cheerfully over the top. This is Daria’s first appearance in one of Dario’s movies since “Opera,” and that was almost twenty years ago.

Also on board with Dario is composer Claudio Simonetti, once a famed member of the group Goblin. Goblin has of course created many memorable music scores to Dario’s movies in the past like “Suspiria” (again, one of the all time best) and “Tenebre” among others. Claudio’s work here veers more towards the orchestral more than his electronic scores of the past, although there are electronic elements in the score all the same. Perhaps this film needed more of an orchestral score to illustrate how much more powerful this Third Mother is compared to the other two. It’s a strong score that I am ever so eager to get on CD, assuming that it ever gets released in this lifetime (it’s constantly being delayed).

“The Mother Of Tears” is being shown in a limited release in America from state to state. This is probably being done to anoint the movie with a cult status that it has simply brought on itself. It’s almost shame that American distributors can’t see the audience of movies like “Saw” or “Hostel” flocking to this one, considering that Argento’s older movies have more or less inspired them. But in the end, the biggest audience for this movie will more than likely be found on DVD where it should be loaded with extra features up the wazoo.

For me, the biggest thrill of seeing this movie is that it is the first Dario Argento film that I have ever gotten to see on the big screen. I was never sure if I would ever get the opportunity, but I’m glad I did. Even while the plot doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, and the ending could have been a lot better, I was swept up by the colors and the look of the movie that is the hallmark of all of Dario’s work. He continues to remain a master of horror on a visual level, and I am eager to see what he will do next. “The Mother Of Tears” is not his best movie, but I have a feeling that his most ardent fans will appreciate it more than some of the other movies he has done in the last couple of years.

And like a friend of mine at work in a point also emphasized by Juno herself:

“Dario Argento is the shit!!”

***1/2 out of ****