PARENTS (1989)
The song playing over the opening of Bob Balaban’s horror-comedy PARENTS perfectly telegraphs the tone of the 1989 film: Louiguy’s rendition of “Cherry Pink and Apple Blossom White (Cerisier Rose et Pommier Blanc)” has a kitcsh feel that seemingly fits the production design of suburbia into which the main family is moving—but at the end of each bar, the horns crash in a cacophonously discordant way, hinting at the unpleasant events that are brimming beneath the surface of this idyllic scene.
Balaban’s first theatrical feature as a director and written by Christopher Hawthorne, the movie is set in 1950s California and centres on ten-year-old Michael Laemle (Bryan Madorsky) after he has just moved into a new neighbourhood from Massachusetts with his parents, Nick (played by Randy Quaid bringing along his usual Stay-Puft creepy grin) and Lily (Mary Beth Hurt). We follow Michael’s suspicions that his Mum and Dad are cannibals, feasting on the meat supplied by the corpses Nick uses for testing at his job in chemical development. The film’s surreal tone is punctuated with Michael’s reoccurring nightmares involving pools of blood and dismembered hands.
Occasionally, the hallucinogenic elements seep into his waking consciousness. One particular sequence shows Michael hiding in a pantry. As he is talking to his mother through the closed door, we see a tentacle begin to wrap around his limbs. The close-up shows that the tentacle is actually made of salami, but before it goes on any further, Lily opens the door and Michael is not in bondage. There is a call-back to this image later on when he is literally tied up at the dinner table and talking to his father.
One could state that this symbolises the films’ comment on conformism: Nick is the parent ensuring Michael “fits in” and is more insistent that his son eats the meat that is cooked for him every night. We even see that Lily may not have always been in sync with Nick’s appetite when he tells Michael, “I’m sure you’ll acquire a taste for it. I know your mother did.” Which she replies, “I learned to love it.”
PARENTS’ oedipal subtext is evident in the way Michael gives his mother and father a cautious look whenever they physically display affection for each other. It’s exacerbated by the unfortunate moment he catches his parents having sex on their lounge floor in the middle of the night.
As he sees both parents’ faces smeared in lipstick, Michael may have thought that they were (literally) eating each other. It’s only Lily that consoles him about this. Also, Lily is frequently quick to jump at her son’s defence when he is called out or punished by Nick. Pointedly, there are no points where the mother and son attack each other, even during the film’s violent climatic fight.
Back to the idiosyncratic nature of PARENTS’ music: both Angelo Badalamenti and Jonathan Elias have composing duties for the film. Badalamenti cements the surreal Lynchian vibes to the Eisenhower-era dream sequences, while Elias (from his B-Movie catalogue including VAMP and CHILDREN OF THE CORN) seems to provide the more conventional horror sound cues.
Balaban, along with the cinematographers Ernest Day and Robin Vidgeon, make some heavily stylistic choices and really instill an intense atmosphere that mixes dread equally with a heightened and twisted sense of reality. In one frenetic scene, Michael’s guidance counselor Millie (played by the late great Sandy Dennis) discovers a corpse in the Laemle home, her scream prompts the camera to fly backwards out of the basement, through the ventilation shafts, and up through the ceiling. (Very similar to the shot of the mother discovering her baby has been kidnapped in 1987’s RAISING ARIZONA)
Balaban did not return to directing until a few years later for three episodes of the brilliant TV show, Eerie, Indiana. The show, and his 1993 film MY BOYFRIEND’S BACK, continue PARENTS’ themes of suburban weirdness and the absurdness of adults from the perception of a child.
PARENTS seems to be Madorsky’s only acting credit and, apparently, he has become an accountant during his adulthood.
Hurt has continued a consistent career in various acting roles and even returned back to horror, playing a judge in THE EXORCISM OF EMILY ROSE. Knowing about Quaid’s recent problematic behaviour, including multiple truly maddening statements and bizarre actions, makes this rewatch all the more disturbing.
The man clearly has mental health issues and a lot of his troubling escapades have included his wife as a seemingly willing partner in crime. Plus, his advocacy of Trump gives this film’s attack of villainous right-wing ideals an even sharper edge.
Even though it’s labeled as a horror-comedy, there aren’t that many belly-tickles to be found in PARENTS. However, it’s a film that never eases on its sense of dread that occasionally verges into dark humour. There is a uniqueness in its concept, which Balaban and company execute it to perfection. If you haven’t seen it, you’re missing out on one of the most disturbing movies from that era.
