This movie starts right where the original ended, with former The Bad Seed Patty McCormack’s character Mrs. Sterling about to be executed by lethal injection for the murders in the first movie.

For some reason, her sister Beth (Brinke Stevens) has brought Mommy’s daughter to watch her die, as well as her attorney (Mickey Spillane!). Mommy is granted last rites and uses that to escape before being shot and wounded by her nemesis Lt. March (now played by Arlen Dean Snyder instead of Jason Miller) who has a stroke before he can finish her off.

For some reason — or we wouldn’t have a movie — Mrs. Sterling doesn’t go back on Death Row. Instead, her psychiatrist makes a crazy deal with the state. She’ll live as long as she undergoes a radical surgery where anti-psychotic medicine will be automatically be released into her body through a device implanted in her hand.

Sure! I mean, why not!

Everyone who crosses Mrs. Sterling as she tries to reconnect with her daughter gets horribly murdered, which we’re led to believe is all her doing. Or is it? There’s also the matter of her sister getting married to Paul Conway (Paul Petersen from The Donna Reed Show), the man who wrote The Mommy Murders, a book all about the first movie’s events.

By the end of the movie, rest assured, Mrs. Sterling is back to her old ways but strangely enough as the heroine of this story.

McCormack, Rachel Lemieux, Brinke Stevens, Marian Wald and Spillane all play the same characters as in the original film, while Sarah Jane Miller returns as the twin sister of the character that Mommy killed in the original movie. Shot in Iowa all over again, this movie even has a real TV show — Paula Sands Live — and takes advantage of Lemieux’s ice skating interest as part of her character.

The last shot of the movie, with Stevens looking like she’s about to kill everyone — was to set up a third film where she would try to do pretty much that while being opposed by a now heroic Mrs. Sterling.

Both of the Mommy films are available from VCI.