June 18: Junesploitation’s topic of the day — as suggested by F This Movie— is 90s comedy! We’re excited to tackle a different genre every day, so check back and see what’s next.
I never saw Drop Dead Fred — I was 19 when it came out and despite my love of The Young Ones and everything Rik Mayall ever did, I somehow just never made time for it — when I was a kid, but man, this is one of those movies that’s at once perfect for children and also so anarchic and wild that their parents may never want to show it to them.
It also comes from a very, very dark place.
While originally intended for Tim Burton to direct and Robin Williams to play Drop Dead Fred, it ended up with Dutch director Ate de Jong and Mayall being involved. Yes, the director of Highway to Hell and the man known for abusing Adrian Edmondson on both The Young Ones and Bottom were selected to make a movie for children.
In 2021, The Telegraph published “Rik Mayall’s mental health misadventure: how Drop Dead Fred repelled America,” de Jong revealed that as he rewrote the script, he based much of it on his own life, saying “…the trauma of child abuse goes deep and its claws reach far in time. It was not something ever spoken about on the set, not with Rik or anyone, but for me it existed.”
This is the same movie that Rotten Tomatoes summarized as “Tackling mature themes with an infantile sensibility, Drop Dead Fred is an ill-conceived family comedy that is more likely to stir up a headache than the imagination.”
Gene Siskel said, “This is easily one of the worst films I’ve ever seen.”
Hmm. Maybe I saw a different cut.
Drop Dead Fred feels different in a world that understands childhood abuse and the ways that we cope with it. Elizabeth Cronin (Phoebe Cates, who the movie tries to make look like a woman who has never grown up and who is dowdy, but come on, it’s Phoebe Cates) grew up with a mother (Marsha Mason, absolutely perfect in this movie) who repeatedly emotionally abused her to the point that she found happiness with an imaginary friend named Drop Dead Fred (Mayall). After she caused too much chaos with Fred, her father forced her to symbolically — but totally not — duct tape Fred into a box and put him away forever.
This scene is also based in horrifying childhood memories. A friend of co-writer/executive producer Carlos Davis named Steve Burnette told the story that his mother had an imaginary friend as a girl which upset her mother so much that she demanded that she flush it down the toilet and kill it. This traumatized her for years.
When Elizabeth grows up, she remains the same unassertive and frightened little girl, just accepting her husband (Tim Matheson) leaving her for another woman (Bridget Fonda in an uncredited part), losing her job, getting her car stolen and having to move back home with her oppressive mother. Despite help from her friend Janie (Carrie Fisher), Elizabeth remains trapped, a victim of past abuse.
Then she unleashes Fred by opening the box and in a fit of pique, he responds to her growing up by smearing dog crap all over the carpet.
Drop Dead Fred has come back because his whole job is to figure out how to make Elizabeth — Snot Face, as. he calls her — happy again. But can she be happy? Her father abandoned her to a mother who, at best, used words to make her never feel like she was right or if she mattered. And then, when she tries to assert herself, her mother places all the blame on her, saying that she’s too emotional or being silly. Of course you’d invent — or be open to — an imaginary friend.
Seriously: I had an imaginary friend — in the form of a doll — named Freddy when I was 3 years old, a character well-known enough to my parents that my father made a book called Freddy Did It that recounted stories of where I broke things around the house for attention and blamed the doll.
At the end of all this, after enduring so much real life and even having her mother infantilize her by bringing her to a child psychologist to get pills that will make Fred go away, Elizabeth instead goes into a dream universe where she learns just how important that she is and that at least one person, Fred, truly loves her, values her and views her happiness as valid. She has learned from his dream world everything she needs.
The film originally ended with Elizabeth at Mickey’s house. After she reads his daughter Natalie a bedtime story, the little girl comes downstairs with her teddy bear torn apart and says that Drop Dead Fred did it. There’s a shot of a book with Fred in it and you hear his voice. Audiences hated this and wanted him brought back. The ending is so poignant and perfect to me, as Natalie now needs Fred. Elizabeth knows this and knows she can no longer see her best friend but now, someone who will be very important to her has needs just like she did. But unlike everyone else, she can believe in this little girl and support her and give her what she never did.
How dumb am I for ending this movie crying for ten minutes after it was over?
This is a movie for children where the main character and her childhood dream friend discuss eating her mother and pooping her all over the dining room table and here I am just overcome with emotion.
I have no idea why this movie was so hated when it came out and why no one isn’t talking more about it today. I also have no idea why I waited so long to see it, but it was exactly what I needed today.
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