“I’m right on top of that Rose!”
Film: Don’t Tell Mum the Babysitter’s Dead
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“Oh Sue-Ellen, every girl over 25 should have a cucumber in the house”
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“I’m right on Top of that Rose!”
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The casual reference to Scientology practice “dianetics” which was being made popular by followers Tom Cruise, John Travolta and Nicole Kidman.
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David Duchovny in his worst performance ever as slimy Bruce
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The lead role of Sue-Ellen was actually written for Winona Ryder, who was busy filming Edward Scissorhands with Johnny Depp
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How much money did their mum actually leave them, it doesn’t seem nearly enough for two months?
Bryan fell into the sea at the start of their date, but was perfectly dry a bit later…?
When Sue-Ellen is asked if she’d like sweet or dry martini, why doesn’t she just choose one instead of saying ‘a little bit of both’?
Why did Rose even hire Sue-Ellen if there was a receding profit margin and the company’s losing accounts by the hour?
Released in June 1991, this coming of age comedy wasn’t a big hitter at the time reaching only 53 in the box office charts, but I feel that Don’t Tell Mum the Babysitter’s Dead is a near perfect blend of key 80s nostalgia that presses all the right buttons. If you’re looking for a feel-good film to inspire you to get off your butt and do something with your life, then Don’t Tell Mum the Babysitter’s Dead is it.
It’s also a film of flawlessly subtle character development. Sue-Ellen, or Swell, played by the wonderful Christina Applegate is the architype all-American teen brat, superficial and rude with little ambition and a selfish teenage nature. Even at this stage of the film you already like her, perhaps envy her a little with her edgy fashion and her boldness to lie in the back garden and smoke in front of her mum. As any seventeen year old in 1991 America would be, she has no other concerns than chatting to her friends all evening and hitting the beach.
"Why are you all wearing name tags?”
The first plot arch sees Swell having to deal with the bitter old babysitter. Swell shows she’s in charge by representing all the siblings in an inevitable face-off with Mrs Sturak. She also remains impressively calm after finding Mrs Sturak dead in her arm chair, I’d probably never recover. After they bundle the old lady’s body in her own chest and deliver it to the mortuary, she has her first moment of repent stating she should have been kinder to Mrs Sturak, ‘I should have co-operated’. But the next day, chin high in the air and a wave of arrogance she states to Zach that ‘life goes on’ and proceeds to drive the babysitter’s car and carry out her own plans.
This is of course just the start of Swell’s troubles, as they next discover the old bat had stashed the cash on her, presumably down her bra given that no one noticed a strange lump when they were stuffing her dead body into the trunk, and this is where the plot of the whole movie is then revealed. Swell’s journey starts. As the film unfolds, she steps up to every challenge thrown at her, handling increasing pressure, and herself, immaculately throughout. She’s never rude to anyone who doesn’t deserve it (has anyone else worked with a Bruce before? If someone yelled at me ‘Yo Gidgit, get on it’ I’d be in HR quicker than Cathy could type up a QED report) and holds herself with total poise during some incredibly difficult moments.
If this was a movie made in the 2000s, the character would have reached some obvious lows before the highs, so that the contrast was made starkly clear to the audience. Here in lies the essence of why movies of the 80s and early 90s just cut differently. This was a time when the plot wasn’t spoon fed to us, we are allowed to go along on the gentle ride of tribulations and redemption and still feel warm and fuzzy afterwards, without exactly knowing why. Sue-Ellen is one of my all time favourite movie characters because tiny behaviours reveal to us a caring and sincere person, a girl with substance. There’s the more obvious moments such as sitting down with Zach to discuss his relationship issues, or the friendship she strikes up with Cathy, but it’s also in the way she doesn’t bite back at Carolyn, the way she deals with Franklin in the warehouse, the fact that she never actually shouts at the kids despite all their criminal antics, and that’s before we even touch on the relationship she develops with Rose.
The fact that there’s allowance for these small moments throughout the film is, in a nutshell, why I adore films of this era. They are all essentially irrelevant, but yet they add a fleck of context to the film. No-one wants to sit through a three-hour comedy about babysitting so I understand that much of this type of content needs to end up on the cutting room floor. But somehow over the last few decades, it was determined that anything that isn’t essential to the film plot must go, and I miss it. I think it’s why we all watch these new Netflix films and yeah, we’re mildly entertained, but we come away feeling it lacks soul but can’t quite put our finger on why. When I watch films from the 80s and 90s I always look to find a truly unnecessary moment in the film that somehow made the cut. In this film I think it’s when Cathy turns up to the party with her husband and hands Sue-Ellen a jelly dessert. Its also superfluous for her husband to be extremely good looking, the whole piece does nothing for the plot, even Rose seems a little confused by it all. I love it.
“When are you going to start helping me you little punk!”
Kenny too, has a huge character redemption arc, which is less padded out in the film but you can accept as a viewer given the journey we’re taken on with Sue-Ellen. The worst of Kenny’s moments for us is not when he shoots the family crockery with a shotgun, or his lack of responsibility when it comes to Walter, it’s when he and his gang are sitting on the roof top, smoking weed and discussing ripping off their parents Mastercard. He turns and urinates straight off the balcony. What blatant disregard for society and common decency shown in a single action. Kenny is actually down a dark and dangerous path, and I think that Kenny is indirectly responsible for killing Mrs Sturak (via the state of his room). Kenny’s turning point seems to be when Walter falls off the roof, but actually the spark of change starts when Swell shouts at him ‘when are you going to start helping me you little punk!’. A flicker of shame passes over his face, and the fire is lit inside. Lovely bit of acting by Keith Coogan.
Zach, Melissa and Walter have their own problems too. Poor Walter, doesn’t even get out of his pyjamas until the final party and is obsessed with game shows. A serial killer in the making. Both Melissa and Zach are growing defiant attitudes with quick-witted come backs and rogue natures. The parents of these children have a lot to answer to, it makes you wonder how Swell has the substance to become such a rounded and strong individual.
“I’m the stork of fast food”
So let’s get into some of the other characters. Bryan the adorable Clown Dog delivery driver is an interesting choice of love interest for Swell. He’s quirky and awkward, a geek who loves marine biology, but blessed by extreme cuteness. Can you imagine Swell dating him at school? The whole film premise would be about her friends not accepting him and Swell’s battle with her feelings towards him. Thank god the film skips that, or perhaps thank god Swell’s friends are in Europe for the whole summer.
Choosing to date Bryan helps to showcase Swell’s real depth, a sweet girl at heart, but also one that’s confident in her choices. Even when Kenny shows her what he thinks of Bryan’s weird ‘I kinda like being the hero’ line, she shrugs it off and later agrees to go on a date with him. Again with the subtly of the era, we don’t need it forced on us that their childish date is the perfect respite Swell needs to stop being Sue-Ellen Crandell for a night, we’re merely shown them bouncing on space hoppers having the time of their lives. It beggars belief that such a lovely guy could have a sister like Carolyn, who he actually likes and hangs out with regularly.
Bryan seems almost as clueless in life as Rose, though both of them have seen something they like in Swell/Sue-Ellen so perhaps clueless is a bit severe. We don’t hold out much hope for Bryan and Swell in the future, his marine biology life and her high fashion career doesn’t seem like it would gel, plus she’d always have to know Carolyn and that’s surely too big a pill to swallow?
Who’s the void in Lindsay’s office?
Carolyn is a fantastic villain in this movie (though not the biggest in my opinion, more on that later) we are not given any reason to sympathise with her, as even though she lost her promotion to Sue-Ellen, which has got to hurt, she was absolutely vile to both Sue-Ellen and the person on the phone before we even found out her name. One element I do like about Carolyn is her disregard for any judgement on eating clown dog burgers for her lunches nearly every week. This leads us on to Rose, who despite earlier calling her clueless has got Carolyn’s personality pegged, although this seems to be a rare glimpse of astuteness from our Rose.
To me, Rose is the most complex character in the whole film. She is both brilliant and completely hopeless at the same time. She’s sassy and can seemingly run the whole of GAW, but then collapses on the floor eating M&Ms and staring into space when the pitch to the schoolboard goes badly. This is one of my favourite scenes in the whole movie, I relate to it wholly.
Are you familiar with the QED report?
On one hand she understand the business, but fails to understand the marketplace. She doesn’t want Carolyn anywhere near her, but then she been dating Gus for seven months, for god’s sake. Is this woman’s mental health okay? Gus oozes 80s swagger for sure, but if we ignore the slime that comes out of his mouth for one moment, we’re still left with his slouched ‘guilty’ posture, cliched gestures and his ambivalence to his actual job, and this is the man that she spent a weekend in Santa Barbara with? How his behaviour wasn’t apparent to her is a mystery. It reeks of poor Rose having suffered a multitude of bad relationships in the past if she’s willing to put up with Gus. Probably slightly blinded by his slick suit and good job which in yuppy central New York 80s, was the height of aspiration. Gus is villain number one in my books, having worked in office environments where creeps like him really did exist (hopefully a thing of the past), the pressure to navigate him would have been almost overwhelming. Luckily for Sue-Ellen, she was naïve enough to not fully understand it, and as career progression wasn’t her main goal, she could later call him out without worrying about any repercussions (which you get a sniff of, when he calls her ‘some silly girl’ to Rose later).
The hub of the communication network
Would we say the this film passes the Bechdel test? Sure Sue-Ellen and Rose do chat about Gus, but this is more of a cautionary chat Sue-Ellen is having to determine the risks associated with this awful man. They do also talk about work a lot and I enjoy this thoroughly, having worked in marketing for years I love it when Rose tells Sue-Ellen to start compiling bi-weekly reports from the department heads and that she can access the format on the C Drive. This was my life too once and I want to get right on top of that for Rose.
Along with shoulder pads and hairstyles, women empowerment films in the 80s were huge. It reflects the societal changes where women were breaking glass ceilings, ‘sister’s doing it for themselves’, and a cultural shift that led us firmly down a feminist path that we’re still on today. The film also includes a small time-lapse of house development, another key theme for 80s films and one I wish there was more of. Despite the recession of the 80s there was a sentiment that anyone could be rich if you worked hard enough and this often translated to houses as well as careers and even social stature. So when the Crandell kids and Kenny’s friends all chip in to help sort the house out, particularly cleaning up that pool, it invokes the same feeling we still all feel today when watching home and DIY programmes – essentially, accomplishment at its finest. And that, is what Don’t Tell Mum the Babysitter’s Dead is truly about. It leaves us feeling ready to take on the world, with integrity. And Mocha Swiss Belgian waffles.
The Chores
I’ve taken a look at some of the chores Mrs Sturak set the kids on the big white board, and can confirm that Mrs Sturak must be a complete lunatic. She wants the lawn mowed four times a week, door knobs polished and sheets washed every single day, and the mattresses flipped five times a week?! Zach gets Tuesdays off and Melissa gets Wednesdays, but Swell and Kenny have to work every day. It seems she will stop at child labour as Walter doesn’t have to do anything too heavy and has Saturdays off, but he is resigned to spending most of the week polishing door knobs.
Later in the show they renovate the house and make their own chore board, let’s take a look:
We know Swell has to work (with a lot of overtime) but unbelievably she doesn’t have to lift a finger all week (although we do see a shot of her messing around with a hose pipe). This time little Walter has to paint the house and clean the pool. He will be with his siblings though, and so far has only been given two jobs. Kenny finally mows that lawn and we see Melissa washing the windows and Zach sorting the newspaper out. Who’s going to tidy up Mrs Sturak’s room though…? Not me…
The Clothes
Obviously as the film is about Fashion, we are blessed with so many incredible outfits from Swell, her friends, Rose and even her mum. The absolute must haves for a Swell look is her collection of earrings, and her luxurious black sweet-heart line velvet ball gown she wears at the end. Here are a selection of items we’ve found to create the looks.
The Jewellery
As any good fashionista knows, jewellery is essential to finish off a look and we’re given so many wonderful pieces in the film. Rose’s brooches are fabulous, Swell’s drop earring collection is to die for and Swell’s friends bring a pop of colour and fun.
The Food
Kenny and Walter are first inspired by watching Julia Childs make Chocolate cake (on their new state of the art TV station, bought with petty cash money tut-tut!). Kenny cuts his chefing teeth experimenting with waffles, and in an incredibly short amount of time (let’s not mention the time-scale issues of this film) he manages to master evening casseroles and fancy party canapes. We spend half of our time watching this film with our mouth watering, so here are some recipes to cook up for your friends when you can afford to be hospitable.
The Accessories
It’s all in the detail when it comes to nostalgia films, these are some key props used which send us spiralling back in time!
Merchandise
Rose is a big fan of the puff sleeve, she wears this yellow chiffon piece to the big presentation party, paired with a pair of white cycling shorts. Brave choice, totally nailed it.
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