Did you ever see a hearse go by?

Posted by rhsmith on June 3, 2008

It’s hard to believe that, once upon a time, before I was a gore-fed, bone-a-fied, Famous Monsters of Filmland-schooled MonsterKid, horror movies belonged to other people. I heard about them kinda sideways-like, second hand, from family members and classmates who spoke in hushed tones about dark and terrible things that had happened. Where, I wondered. And why? And to whom? I wanted in, and they let me in… but once that door was opened for me, there was no turning back.

Picture Mommy Dead

I can’t remember what my reaction was, at the age of 7 or 8, to a title like Picture Mommy Dead (1966), but surely I was horrified. Why would I want to picture my Mommy dead? She made me pancakes and orange Kool-Aid and bought me Classics Illustrated comics sang me chorus after chorus of “Dunderbeck, O Dunderbeck,” a lullaby about a German sausage maker who used “pussycats and lousy rats” (in another version, it’s “kitchen cats and long-tailed rats”) as filling for his tasty links until the day his grinder got jammed and he crawled inside to free the clog and, perhaps not surprisingly, was turned into meat. The thought of something bad happening to my Mom would have been the true definition of horror – my brain couldn’t imagine a life without pancakes, orange Kool-Aid, or grim and gory bedtime songs. Another one my Mom used to sing me was “The Hearse Song,” which you might know from its chorus “The worms go in, the worms go out/In your stomach and out your mouth.” Oh, but she sang that one with the relish of a Nob Hill dowager banging out “Barbara Allen” on the clavichord. Coincidentally, that song is featured prominently in Picture Mommy Dead, one of the first horror movies I ever saw.

The actual plot of this Bert I. Gordon picture is really immaterial to this discussion. It’s the story of a young girl (Susan Gordon, left) coming of age in the aftermath of her mother’s tragic and mysterious death in a fire and her growing suspicions about who is really responsible. Zsa Zsa Gabor (who at the time I associated with Green Acres, mistaking her, of course, for her sister Eva) played the dead mother, Don Ameche the “grieving” husband and Martha Hyer his alluring new wife. I’d seen pictures from horror movies in books but this didn’t look like Dracula or Frankenstein. There were no castles, no bats, no hunchbacks. The terrible things that go on in Picture Mommy Dead happen not in the comforting monotone of black-and-white but in full color, in modern homes with plush carpeting in the living rooms, with fully stocked bars and cigarettes in little dispensers, to people who dressed nicely, the men in blazers and slacks, the women in smart cocktail dresses. In this way, the film revealed everything I feared about my parents’ world, where paternal smiles concealed more complicated emotions. This glimpse into adult falibility taken to its most horrific extreme gave me my first sleepless night.

Susan Gordon, Martha Hyer

Now that I think about it, Picture Mommy Dead cannily taps into childhood anger fostered by adult decision-making. Kids often harbor resentment toward their parents, whether justifiably or because they lack an understanding of the context in which certain adult decisions are made. The movie understands this and inflates those feelings – I think that’s why it seemed so profound to my friends and me at the age of 8. The movie addresses issues of loyalty (in this
case, a girl’s loyalty to her dead mother over her living father) that often plague and torment young children; on a more exploitive level, Picture Mommy Dead also panders to kids’ fascination with fire, bookended as it is by fatal conflagrations. It’s a borderline sleazy cocktail, superficially marketed for adults but appealing under the counter to kids. This dual nature is no doubt why I remember the movie from only a single viewing and why I’m in no particular hurry to see it again. After all, there’s horror and then there’s horror. As a kid, I took refuge in make-believe, in the patently false milieu of monster movies, in haunted castles and buzzing laboratories where the pull of a single lever could wipe the slate clean. In Picture Mommy Dead, there is no such deus ex machina, no redemption, no salvation. The madness born of lust and passion becomes mere madness by the final flame-out, a parent’s sad legacy to an unfortunate child. It may be a cheap little B-movie but it just strikes too close to home to be any fun.

9 Comments |

submit

9 Responses Did you ever see a hearse go by?

Posted By Frank Lehn : June 3, 2008 8:05 pm

Zsa Zsa Gabor was not in "Green Acres."

Posted By RHS : June 3, 2008 8:30 pm

It's feedback like yours, Frank, that makes it all worthwhile!

Posted By Dennis Mount : June 4, 2008 12:26 pm

Always good to hear from another FM kid. I've always
preferred the monster movies to the modern thriller types. It is
easier to say "It could never happen". I didn't see
Picture Mommy Dead until a few years ago when I caught it on
video. It seemed pretty formula to me but I'm no longer a
kid. The movie that got to me when I was a kid was The
Haunting.   I had the light on all night that night.
Even now watching it at home it makes me uneasy.    I
love the advertisement you have. Picture Mommy Dead in
color. Sure wouldn't want to picture that in b/w.On a
side note.   Were Zsa Zsa and Eva twins?
Sisters obviously but they didn't really look that much
alike.   The little bit I've read about them didn't
mention that.

Posted By RHS : June 4, 2008 1:33 pm

No, Zsa-Zsa and Eva weren't twins. I believe there
were three Gabor sisters, including one we never saw in
anything. Zsa-Zsa was the middle sister, older than Eva by a
couple of years.

Posted By Fred : June 7, 2008 11:43 pm

Richard, I always enjoy reading your reviews here and in Video Watchdog. Thanks for posting about “The Hearse Song.” For the past week, I’ve had that song in my head because something triggered a childhood memory of singing it in camp when I was 5 (the other kids taught it to me and we’d sing it all the time). Must be because my own son is almost 5. The song used to creep me out as a kid (it was the first time I’d ever heard of a hearse), but it also tapped into the monster kid in me. I was too young for “Picture Mommy Dead” (I was only 2 when it came out), but I guess it’s possible that some of the kids from my camp had older siblings who saw the movie and taught them the song.

Posted By rhsmith : June 11, 2008 10:29 am

Thanks for the kind words, Fred! Wouldn’t it be cool if some enterprising music producer got a bunch of alternative bands together to cut an album of creepy kid songs like “The Hearse Song” (I’m thinking Aimee Mann for this one) and “Dunderbeck, Oh Dunderbeck” (a natural for The Red Hot Chili Peppers)? I’d be Johnny on the Spot for that one!

Posted By Elisabeth : December 24, 2008 7:42 pm

Magda Gabor was the eldest child of the three. She appeared in some plays and I think a movie when still living in Hungary, but because of a stroke, was no longer able to speak fluently. She was the most recent to die of her family leaving only Zsa Zsa.
Check Wikipedia. I wrote a substantial part of it. :)

Posted By charlene tatum : October 23, 2009 5:48 pm

I remember the song the worms go in the worms go out where a little girl was singing it. I always wanted to see rhis movie again. I just could not forget that song.I love scary movies and this is one of my favorites since childhood. I could not remeber its title and I’am glad I finally found out what its title is. There is only one more movie I can’t remember the title of from childhood it was a story about two young lovers who in thier childhood put thier initals on a turtle later the turle grew so large it was as big as a ship but still had thier intials on it. If you know the name of it let me know. I want to find a copy of th

Posted By Richard Harland Smith : October 23, 2009 7:12 pm

Charlene, the movie you ask about is The Bermuda Depths, a TV movie from 1978.

MovieMorlocks.com is the official blog for TCM. No topic is too obscure or niche to be excluded from our film discussions. And we welcome your comments on our blogs and bloggers.