Mother's Day

Three college friends, Abbey, Jackie and Trina, have kept their friendship alive for a decade and mark it each year with a weekend camping trip. Their latest outing takes them to a remote wooded area, where they cross paths with an older woman and her two grown sons. The family lives nearby in isolation, and the mother holds a strange authority over her boys, who compete for her approval. What begins as an unwelcome encounter turns into a trap: the women are seized, bound and subjected to sadistic abuse while the mother watches. The film follows their struggle to get away and what comes afterward.

Charles Kaufman directed and co-wrote the screenplay with Warren Leight, and produced it with Michael Kravitz. It was released in the United States in September 1980, running just over an hour and a half, and blends horror with action and dark comedy. Nancy Hendrickson, Deborah Luce and Tiana Pierce play the three friends, with Frederick Coffin and Michael McCleery as the brothers and Beatrice Pons as Mother. Kaufman's earlier work was in comedy, and this film sits near the start of a short directing career.

Audience response has been modest: on IMDb the film holds a rating of about five out of ten from roughly seven thousand votes, and on TMDB it sits at a similar level from a much smaller number of votes. The narrow spread between the two suggests a consistent, middling reception rather than a sharply divided one.