Worst Movie Parents

[Mindymoo]

With so many years of cinema, we have been exposed to so many bad parents. Here are my select few. 

 

Tommy Walker's mum and step-dad in Tommy. First the step dad shoots the father after he comes home from WWII after being presumed dead. Tommy becomes deaf, dumb and blind because he witnesses this and because mum and step-dad berate him about it, saying "you didn't see it/ you didn't hear it/ you won't say nothing to no one never in your life/You never heard it/How absurd it will seem without any proof." They leave him with his cousin Kevin, who tortures him. They leave him with his Wicked Uncle Ernie, who rapes him. His step-dad takes an underaged Tommy to a prostitute (played by the lovely Tina Turner). Tommy only seems calm in the mirror, so his mother smashes it. Tommy become a pinball sensation, so his family capitalizes off of it, makes tons of money off of him, but don't give a damn about him at all. Just shit people all around.

 

Noah Cross in Chinatown. He raped his daughter, and is likely to start the cycle over again with his daughter/granddaughter that Evelyn had hidden away from him before she was shot. He also murdered his daughter's husband.

 

Ofelia's mother and stepfather in Pan's Labyrinth. Her mother marries a man she hardly knows and is pregnant with his baby, moving them to ground zero of the Spanish Civil War. Whether or not you believe the magic is real, everything the mother did up to her death was cruel. Yes her pregnancy was going downhill fast, but she hooked her star to a sadistic, evil, unfeeling man. When she died, the stepfather became even more cruel and evil to Ofelia, even imprisoning her. When he kills her at the end, I cry every time because I *want* the magic to be real, and for her to return to her real father, the king.

 

Helene McCready in Gone Baby Gone. Her daughter goes missing, and her sister seems to care the most. When the whole plot comes to light that her brother-in-law kidnapped the girl and gave her to Morgan Freeman's character to raise after he retired, I was so PISSED OFF that Patrick had to do the legally right thing and give her back to Helene, when she would have a better and happy life. As soon as Helene gets her back, what does she do? Does she vow to make a better life for her and her daughter? No, she goes on a date, even though she doesn't really have a babysitter, and just leaves him with Patrick. What a twunt.

Edited August 25, 2014 by Mindy McIndy

[Spartan Girl]

The father in The Uninvited was a selfish asshole.  Bad enough that he was screwing the nurse while his terminally ill wife was still alive, but he doesn't even wait a year after the mother dies to move her inside and get engaged to, regardless of his surviving daughter's -- who just got released from the psych ward -- feelings.  No wonder the poor girl went nuts.

[ChelseaNH]

I'm not convinced that Ofelia's mother was in a position to refuse her new husband's attentions.  I'm more inclined to see her as a woman trying to make the best of some very bad circumstances -- a flawed person, but hardly a monster.

 

Ofelia's stepfather, though, was a monster.