[Mother of Fears] The Past Comes Back to Haunt Cherry Falls (2000)
Welcome to Mother of Fears – a monthly column that will explore the various roles that mothers play within the horror genre. Mothers are a staple feature in horror movies, and yet, their stories, motivations, representations, and relationships with their children are so varied and complex that we never feel like we’re watching the same story twice. Every month I will take a look at a different mother from the world of horror, explore their story, and look at how they fit into the broader representation of women in horror.
TW - Sexual assault
While many of the movies I’ve covered as part of Mother of Fears place the motherly characters front and centre, this time I’ve decided to look at a film with two mothers, one of whom remains on the outskirts of the story, barely appearing on-screen at all. Instead, it’s her backstory and the effect she’s had on others that sets the whole story in motion.
Cherry Falls (2000) hit our screens when slashers were still riding the Scream (1996) wave and looking for new and different killers to add to the genre. While Scream leant into the typical rules that one had to abide by in order to survive a horror movie, Cherry Falls turned these rules on their heads by having virgins as the focus of this particular serial killer.
The opening scene of the movie is like many we’ve seen before, with teenage couple Rod and Stacy kissing in their car beside the town’s titular waterfall. However, Rod’s chat-up lines are beyond cringe, and even though he tries his best to put the moves on Stacy, she refuses to progress past kissing. At this moment, another car shows up, and Rod then Stacy are both murdered by what seems to be a woman with long hair covering their face. To drive their MO home, the killer carves virgin into both Rod and Stacy’s bodies.
Our final girl in Cherry Falls is Jody, the daughter of the local sheriff, Brent Marken, and therefore, under far higher levels of scrutiny than other teens her age. Jody is also caught kissing her boyfriend, Kenny, in the car, but this time it’s only Jody’s mother, Marge, who busts them. Marge is far more laid back than her sheriff husband, bumming a cigarette off Kenny before advising Jody to sneak inside so her father doesn’t catch her. However, Sheriff Marken is waiting inside Jody’s room for her to return, and he dishes out some strong words about Jody being out past her curfew.
The killer begins to slaughter more teens across town, and with Sheriff Marken leading on the case, his concern for Jody only starts to grow. While he’s not keen to encourage her to have sex to ensure that she stays out of the killer’s sights, he does give her self defence lessons to ensure she’s prepared. And it’s just as well he does because during a town-wide meeting in the school’s gym, Jody is attacked in the school corridors by the killer.
Thanks to the tips from her father, and some quick thinking on her part to scale the shelves in the science classroom, Jody manages to escape with only a few minor injuries. However, when she gives her description of the woman who attacked her down at the station, it only adds to Sheriff Marken’s problems. Jody overhears him telling someone the suspect looks like Lora Lee Sherman, and after the horror staple of a microfiche research session in the library and questioning her mother, Jody finally gets some answers.
Lora Lee Sherman was a student who Marge and Sheriff Marken went to high school with. The classic gothic loser outcast, no one really paid Lora Lee much attention. However, one night several members of the football team, including Sheriff Marken, stumbled across Lora Lee on the side of the road after her car had broken down. Lora Lee accused them of sexually assaulting her, but because they were popular and on the football team, and Lora Lee was considered a nobody, the town refused to believe her accusations. Lora Lee fled town and the men who were accused of raping her were free to get on with their lives and rise to positions of prominence on the town, including town sheriff and high school principal.
Jody is distraught at learning of her father’s possible involvement in the assault, but also at the way the town chose to deal with it. Lora Lee was offered no support when she needed it, and everyone chose to side against her rather than risk ruining the lives of some of the most well-respected boys in town. Jody cannot understand the way her mother sides with her father just because Lora Lee was a nobody, rather than believing a victim to offer them the support they need. This revelation pushes her away from her mother and father, and instead, she turns to her English teacher, Mr Marliston, for emotional support.
Sheriff Marken is intent on discovering if Lora Lee is connected to the murders, and so he tracks down her address and heads out to an abandoned-looking house in the middle of nowhere. He finds evidence that Lora Lee once lived there, including a ramshackle nursery in the basement. While he leaves without getting any real evidence, we see the silhouette of a woman watching him as he goes, suggesting that Lora Lee may be involved after all.
As Jody seeks comfort from Mr Marliston, she finds out he already has her father locked up in the basement, and after a scuffle, manages to secure Jody as well. It’s here we learn that Mr Marliston is Lora Lee’s son, and his time in that basement nursery was not a happy time. After forcing Sheriff Marken to reveal the truth, we find out that the football players did indeed rape Lora Lee after pouring drink down her throat. Lora Lee was secretly in love with Sheriff Marken, and this coupled with the fact no one would believe her made the whole situation even harder to deal with.
Believing Sheriff Marken is the father of her child, she beat and taunted him through his entire childhood, unable to deal with the situation which led to her pregnancy and forced her to raise a child alone and without any support. Mr Marliston absorbed all this hatred from his mother, and so chose to return to Cherry Falls to take revenge on those who wronged her. As well as punishing those who raped her, he decided to target the town’s virginal teens to hurt as many of the townsfolk as possible.
There are a few possible reasons why Mr Marliston chose to dress up as his mother to commit these crimes. First of all, as a high school teacher, he would be extremely recognisable in town, so he needed a costume that would make him look completely different, just in case victims ever got away, just as Jody did. Secondly, there’s the obvious homage to Psycho (1960), where Norman Bates frequently dressed up as his mother to try and work through the issues he had with her in life. Even though Mr Marliston clearly doesn’t have a good relationship with his mother, he still wants to get revenge on her behalf. By dressing up as her to commit these murders, it is as though they are working together to finally return to Cherry Falls and fight back. Finally, with the large silver streak in her long, lanky hair, Lora Lee has quite a distinctive look. By dressing up as his mother, Mr Marliston wants to put the fear into Sheriff Marken at the others involved once they realise what the killer looks like. He wants them jittery and on edge, because then they are more likely to make mistakes. And if they’re focussing on Lora Lee, they definitely won’t suspect Mr Marliston.
However, there’s never any real discussion as to whether this is what Lora Lee actually wanted. After all, it’s implied earlier that she watched Sheriff Marken roam around her house, and chose not to interact with him or attack him for what he did to her. It’s clear that she’s incredibly angry about what happened to her as a teenager, but does this mean she’d want to put more hurt out into the world by murdering innocent teenagers? We only see Mr Marliston get revenge on two of Lora Lee’s actual attackers, which may have been a more direct way to get vengeance for his mother instead of an over the top attack at the only shred of innocence the town has left. Once again, no one listens to what Lora Lee really wants or needs in this situation.
While Mr Marliston kills Sheriff Marken in the struggle as Jody makes her escape, he loses his life when he falls out a window onto the fence below. Jody and her mother are interviewed at the police station, claiming they don’t know why Mr Marliston turned to murder. While Jody chastises her mother earlier in the film for choosing to protect her father rather than support Lora Lee, she makes the same decision here to protect her father’s legacy in death. Admitting Mr Marliston’s reasons for killing would have pinned the rape of her father, especially if he was indeed Mr Marliston’s father. Something about this seems even worse, as Sheriff Marken was only suspected of the crime in the ‘70s. However, Jody heard him admit to the assault just moments before he died, so she knows for a fact she’s lying to protect a rapist. Even though she struggled to understand why her mother chose to be part of the coverup all those years ago, it turns out she may be a lot closer to her mother’s way of thinking than she first thought.
However, it seems like Cherry Fall’s problems may not be over. As Jody and Marge leave the police station, Jody sees a figure standing across the street that looks an awful lot like Lora Lee. With Mr Marliston dead, it seems that the real Lora Lee has returned to the town. Is she here to finally take her revenge for herself? Or has she heard of her son’s death and has come back to take down the town that has caused her nothing by pain? Jody thinks nothing of lying now that Mr Marliston is dead, unable to tell his side of the story, but she’s ignoring the way Lora Lee may feel, just like the town did all those years ago.
I can sometimes go months without having a panic attack. Unfortunately, this means that when they do happen, they often feel like they come out of nowhere. They can come on so fast and hard it’s like being hit by a bus, my breath escapes my body, and I can’t get it back.