I challenged myself to fill a gap in my cinema history this month and watched Mommie Dearest. I was very familiar with the movie due to how many drag queens reference it and because of Joan Crawford’s villainous reputation. However, I had never seen it in its entirety before, which is weird because I write about my own maternal baggage often. Without ever seeing the film, I knew this movie, categorized as a drama, belonged under my favorite genre label. Some sources even try to meet in the middle and classify it as a psychological drama, which is a phrase that does a lot of heavy lifting to remove itself from what it actually is. After all, what else should we call a film about being abused by the person who should love us most other than horror?

Does Mommie Dearest Belong in the Horror Genre?

The horror umbrella is massive and encompasses many subgenres including thrillers, sci-fi, and even true crime. I like to quip that movies like Mommie Dearest and Priscilla belong to the latter category. I even point out they have final girls surviving their monsters, but like most jokes, there is a lot of hard truth behind that. To be clear, Mommie Dearest is highly contested even by Christina Crawford, who wrote the book about the abuse suffered at the hands of her alcoholic guardian. However, the fact remains that there is an abusive mother terrorizing children at the heart of the horror. This is a tale as old as time in the genre, and we see these themes of motherhood, mental illness, and generational trauma often. So, why do we typically forget this movie when discussing titles like Psycho (1960), Run, Hereditary, etc.?

Mommie Dearest recounts a version of Christina Crawford’s upbringing by Hollywood royalty Joan Crawford. It depicts her as an unstable, jealous, manipulative woman who only holds space for her beliefs. As with most abusive parents, she takes out her frustrations and feelings of inadequacy on those around her. Specifically, those who cannot fight back due to the power dynamics at play. This version of Joan is a vicious bully, which feels familiar for many people who grew up with an abusive parent. How many of us never knew what would set our parental monster off, so just learned to walk on eggshells? How many of us grew up believing we were the problem for way longer than we should have? How many of us normalized the abuse for so long that it carried over into adulthood, letting us believe being mistreated is just part of living?

Watch the trailer for Mommie Dearest

The Lasting Impact of Abusive Parents in Horror Movies

While my mother wasn’t the active bully in our home, part of my struggle with her is her complicitness in the hell she helped create for all of us. Which is why, while I don’t think Mommie Dearest is a great film, I believe it’s a decent horror flick. It made me want to revisit a better movie, Umma, that also dealt with motherhood, mental illness, and trauma. Iris K. Shim’s 2022 PG-13 horror sees Sandra Oh playing a single mother who has not healed. After growing up with her own mother, who was especially cruel to her, she has built her world around that trauma and forced her daughter to live within its walls with her. As someone who was severely homeschooled by a woman who still really needs to find a therapist, Umma hits me in my feelings every time. 

Watch the trailer for Umma below

Maternal Monsters: A Common Thread in Psycho, Hereditary, and More

Before the film starts, Oh’s character, Amanda, has turned her back on her family and cultural heritage. She has built a life that she’s not really living as she hides in her home, afraid of electricity due to the abuse she suffered at the hands of her mom. So, when her uncle shows up with her mother’s ashes, she is triggered and haunted. All of the issues she hasn’t dealt with rush to the surface, manifesting in ways that begin turning her into her deceased mom. Amanda does eventually force herself to confront her past to avoid becoming her mother and hurting her daughter. So, while Umma is different from Mommie Dearest, it’s not hard to see they share some of the same DNA. Scary moms make the genre go round which is why movies like M.O.M. Mothers of Monsters, Serial Mom, Mother, May I?, and so many others will always pull an audience by naming the monster in the title.

I doubt I am the first person on Norma Bates’ internet to clock that some of horror’s most notorious villains are parents, specifically moms. I’m also sure I cannot be the first person to argue Mommie Dearest is a horror movie on many levels. After all, a large part of the rabid fanbase seems to be comprised of genre kids who grew up wondering why the film felt familiar. However, I hope I am the first to encourage you to watch these two movies if your momma trauma will allow you to hold space for a couple more monstrous mothers this month. Both have much to say about how we cope with the fallout of being harmed by the people who should keep us safe.

I have unintentionally surrounded myself with stuffed animals for most of my life. Not those ones, though. The ones seen in the antique shops I visit, and the museums I work at, sometimes covered by protective glass or left to gather dust. Some of them are beautiful, some hilariously horrifying.

My Grandfather’s Craft: Beauty in the Macabre

Bill Waldron, my grandfather, was a skilled taxidermist. I remember Christmases visiting my grandparents in Minnesota, sleeping in their dark, musty spare room in the basement. Adjacent was my grandpa’s workroom: a windowless, incredibly bright cave potent with chemical fumes from myriad acids, glues, and paints. He was self-taught, and his work was beautiful.

After hunting or fishing trips, he often gave my dad taxidermy pieces of the animals they caught together: bear, deer, walleye, and even caribou. This caribou hung in our family living room, a cobwebbed fixture high above the fireplace. It fell one year and would have killed our dog had he been sleeping in his usual spot.

A dead animal is a really weird thing to put on your wall. Americans have been doing this for centuries. Taxidermy was all the rage in the Victorian era: it was a sign of wealth, masculinity, and virility. A trophy won, stuffed, and displayed for guests to see in your entryway, man cave, or den. Teddy Roosevelt’s Sagamore Hill residence on Long Island is a perfect example of how we use the American wilderness as art and furniture. Bucks, bears; swordfish, Great White sharks; pheasants, wolves; and yes, even beavers have something to offer aesthetically.

The Role of Taxidermy in Horror Movies

While the taxidermy animal may have been a specimen of craftsmanship and a symbol of American masculinity, in a post-Psycho (1960) America, the image of the taxidermist became ominous. They were recluses with a weird hobby, one that, more often than not, insinuated murderous impulses. After all, several real serial killers slaughtered small animals in their youth and took up taxidermy as a hobby (or cover-up). Ed Gein and Jefferey Dahmer, the former being the inspiration for Norman Bates, are notable examples.

The products of the taxidermist’s work adorn haunted, cracked walls; hide secrets; torment the living; and serve as portentous reminders of life’s absurdity. These mounted, macabre monstrosities can be incredibly campy, too. In some cases, perhaps the chemical fumes got to the artist’s head. The horror genre has embraced taxidermy and the allure of the skillful yet dangerous taxidermist.

The following list of characters is neither a ranking nor an analysis of their use of taxidermy on human victims. Wings and/or four-plus legs are prerequisites, folks!

Jame & Bubba

While chainsaw-wielding Leatherface (TCM, 1974) and the deranged Buffalo Bill do not explicitly perform animal taxidermy in their respective films, it’s hard to imagine them not experimenting with animals before, well…

Gumb, due to his perceived gender dysphoria, is drawn to the beautiful world of bugs. His favorite, the Death’s Head hawkmoth, became a creature synonymous with the horror genre. The Asiatic moth, raised from eggs, nourished by honey and nightshade, was “loved” by Gumb. “The significance of the moth is change,” states Dr. Hannibal Lecter, “Our Billy wants to change too.”

Taxidermy exposes the delicate beauty of moths and butterflies, focusing on the vibrant wings. Gumb’s walls were covered with odds and ends, a mixture of fascist imagery and delicate butterfly paintings. I wouldn’t be surprised if a framed butterfly or moth taxidermy display was framed somewhere in that house of tortures.

Similarly, Bubba Sawyer, known as Leatherface, enjoys toying with physical change in his respective house of horror. But, his apparent taxidermy, littering the walls of the Sawyer home, has nothing to do with his desire to transform.

Bubba’s taxidermy is focused on what’s around him in the Texas heat: longhorns, deer, armadillos. While the monarch butterfly is native to Texas, I think that would have been too delicate a taxidermy for a Sawyer to attempt.

Joe, “I’m getting into taxidermy.” “Of course you are. Classic!”

Joe is a lesser-known horror slasher. He is new to the craft, but boy is he busy! You’re Killing Me (2015) is a coming-out-as-a-murderer story, with Joe fresh out of a psychiatric institution and ready to start dating… among other things. The small animals he targets are mainly chickens and canaries, though it looks like he also dabbled with reptiles.

We learn that Joe comes from a stifling home life with a domineering mother, like Norman Bates, who had him committed to the hospital to curb his impulses. Speaking of Norman…

Norman, “My hobby is stuffing things.”

For not knowing much about birds, Norman seems to specialize in them. All kinds of birds! He is the quintessential taxidermist of horror, surrounding himself with his craft. “I hate the look of beasts when they’re stuffed,” Norman reasons, why he chooses birds for taxidermy. Scholar Subarna Mondal argues that Psycho “brought taxidermy in mainstream narrative cinema at a time when taxidermy was beginning to be reviled.

Concern for animal rights, wildlife preservation laws and a clear shift in cultural response to taxidermy had already begun to see the art as the grotesque mind’s propensity to create grotesque bodies.” (Mondal, 2017). Norman’s birds are symbols of his caged madness rather than mere stuffed animals.

Norman’s birds of prey are impressive, and beautiful in their likeness, despite Norman’s assertion he knows “nothing” about them. His work is merely a “hobby… to pass the time, not fill it.” I argue horror’s most passionate taxidermist comes in the form of an Oreo-loving, vampire-killing, pot-smoking grandpa who may or may not be a member of the undead.

Grandpa, “Talk about a Texas Chainsaw Massacre!”

Grandpa Emerson of The Lost Boys (1987) is an endearing figure. We first meet him playing dead to scare his family, which is the perfect segue into his home décor. His man cave’s aesthetic is Teddy Roosevelt meets the American Southwest… on a budget. It’s “a real “Texas Chainsaw Massacre,” as put by his grandson, Michael. Grandpa’s taxidermy is neither threatening, as with Leatherface’s body of work, nor precise, like Norman’s. This is evidenced by the odd critters he decides to preserve and gift his family (and dates!).

Maybe all the stuffed animals in Grandpa’s house are decoys for Santa Clara’s vampires, to throw them off the living humans inside. After all, he saves his whole family from the vamps. When I think of horror taxidermists, Grandpa always comes before Norman Bates. I prefer my taxidermists to be heroes. 

My grandpa won competitions and awards with his taxidermy. In a feature for Minnesota’s Detroit Lakes Tribune, he was cited as a mentor for a local man getting into the craft, particularly woodcarving and painting fish. “He (Waldron) said, ‘I don’t want to offend you, but you could use some help with your painting.’” (Bowe, 2010).

Being a lineman for most of his adult life, the profession took a toll on his body. He became addicted to opioids in his 70s, resulting in a downslide physically and mentally. He passed away in 2024.

I still have the sunny he preserved for me; one we caught together on the lake. Funny, he always reminded me of Quint from Jaws, with his torn hat, mustache, and rough hands. Quint just didn’t have the artistry in him, I suppose: “Back home, I have a taxidermy man! He’s gonna have a heart attack when he sees what I brought him!”