Here’s a story that isn’t much of a story: in June of 1991 my Aunt Lorie agreed to take me to the movies as a little “congratulations for making it through the 7th grade without being wedgied to death by bullies” gift. My aunt, who has most likely never looked at this website, was a totemic figure in my childhood as she’s the adult-ish figure primarily responsible for feeding me a steady diet of heavy metal and grizzly horror flicks when I was way too young to diet on said substances. The nights when she would babysit would usually begin with her sending me to the nearest Cumberland Farms on my Huffy to buy her a pack of Kool’s. Upon my return, she’d pull out her stash of VHS tapes; Mother’s Day...Faces of Death…The Texas Chainsaw Massacre’s Part 1 and/or 2. Then she’d plop me in front of the TV for the night and let me watch the blood seepage while she sat outside in her gold camaro and smoked cigarettes with her boyfriend(s). This time, though, we’d actually be stepping out to the cinema for the first, and sadly, last time. Lorie gave me two movies to choose from: Madonna’s Truth or Dare or Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead. Me being me…I chose ‘em both! And my aunt? She surprisingly acquiesced! Only one of these two films made a huge impression on me. Maybe you can figure out which one by taking this simple quiz. 30 years later…do I still A)—Stick my finger down my throat and make retching noises every time I see Kevin Costner? Or B)—Yell “Dishes are DONE, man!” every time I finish doing the dishes? If you answered “both A and B” the you are correct! Seriously though—the answer is obviously B. It’s only one of the most quotable lines in cinematic history…right up there with “we’re gonna need a bigger boat” and “I’m right on top of that, Rose,” the latter of which is from this very…same…movie!! “Vogue” is a banger and all but Don't Tell Mom is simply one of the greatest films ever made. And I can say this with authority because I just watched it again for the first time in forever and it still absolutely murders. What kind of brilliant cinematic wizard came up with this material anyway?? Did some dude walk into HBO Films and say “what if we cast Kelly Bundy in a flick that’s a cross between Home Alone, Working Girl, and Weekend at Bernie’s?” And did they then give this individual a lifetime achievement Oscar ON THE SPOT!! I mean…it still kind of sucks, of course. Would I still rather watch Don’t Tell Mom than watch Madonna blow a bottle of Aqua Panna? Any day of the week, friends.
What happens is this: dream crush of every singe cis male alive in the late 1980’s, Christina Applegate plays Sue Ellen “Swell” Crandall, a fashion-forward 17 year-old recent high school graduate who lives in a dumpy ass farmhouse with her single mother and her ten siblings way out in El Monte or some shit. All of Swell’s friends are fucking off to Europe for the summer but poor Swell’s mom refuses to bankroll her eldest daughter’s travel. Not because she doesn’t have the dough, you understand? Nah, ma dukes is heading to Australia for two months with her own damn friends. Swell is stuck at home with her brothers and sister, whom I will now introduce alphabetically: there’s her hesher long hair twin brother, Kenny (man who starred in the only film with the word “babysit” in the title that’s better than this one, Keith Coogan), 13 year-old sister who likes to torture insects for fun, Melissa (indomitable 2-time Michael Myers sparring partner, Danielle Harris), 11 year-old grad larceny enthusiast, Walter (actor who I do not know), and 14 year-old neighborhood lotario, Zach (child actor who got into drugs and died way too young, Chris Pettiet). Two things I notice right out of the gate: the score for this movie, by 15 time Academy Award Nominee Thomas Newman’ssssss brother David, is way way WAY over the top. This is a teen comedy comedy, not the opening credits to Psycho, bro. Later, the score will be dialed down in favor of an unholy avalanche of early 90’s soft rock tunes with lyrics that describe exactly what is happening in a given scene. Y’all know how much I hate literal soundtracking! And second—Christia Applegate smokes a metric shit ton of cigarettes in this film. She’s like Peter Stormare in fargo…lighting one with the end of a ‘nother! I feel like if this movie came out today it would be rated R for smoking. Unbeknownst to the Crandall kids, their mom has hired an elderly live-in babysitter named Mrs Sturak to look after them while she’s down under…because…you know…they’re just kids. This lady rolls up in her 1955 Buick Special Riviera (I looked it up) while Mrs Crandall is on her way out the door and she’s, like, a zillion years old (actual age: 78). The kids figure she’ll be a pushover but the second Mrs Crandall pulls away, she blows her whistle and turns into the drill sergeant from Full Metal Jacket. Once the kids realize they’re in for a summer of push-ups and skull fuckery there’s one of those neato-o dolly zooms like the one in Jaws. Mrs Sturak is cartoonishly mean. She tries to curry favor with the children by kicking their friggin’ dog upside the head. I’m immediately thinking…if the movie was just 105 minutes of this stupid shit, it would not be worth watching. Before Mrs Sturak can even unpack her Fixodent, she decides to take a look in Kenny’s room…and it’s REAL fucked up! Reefer plants…Motorhead posters on the wall (note: it kinda looks like he has a Christina Applegate poster on his wall too…which would be weird. For a lot of reasons), a half eaten pizza spinning on the turntable. The old bag is so frightened by the sight of this den of iniquity she has a heart attack and drops dead! That’s right, y’all—the titular babysitter doesn’t make it long enough to sit down for Wheel of Fortune. She dies about 3 minutes after the opening credits have concluded….’cuz this flick takes care of BUSINESS!
The kids hold an emergency household meeting to discuss next steps. Naturally, they alert the authorities, who remove the body and begin the process of notifying this lady’s surviving family members. Just kidding! Calling emergency services would shorten the length of this movie by about 90 minutes so they stuff Mrs Sturak in a steamer trunk and then leave the trunk on the front steps of a random mortuary like the world’s shittiest Amazon package. They figure Australia is, like, mad far away and it is also 1991 so there’s zero chance of Mrs Crandall learning about the babysitter’s death from social media (ROLF R babysitr is ded who has xanz??). Problem is: Mrs Crandall slipped the babysitter an envelope full of dough before she split and that shit is nowhere to be found! Dumb ass kids just threw away an old lady that was strapped with cash! Now they’ve got 3 pennies, a ball of lint, and one frozen Mama Celeste Pizza (product placement in the house!). Five human people are supposed to live two months on those things I just mentioned. Kenny splits the scene to hang out with his buddy Lizard and puff herb. Dude likes blazing with his buddies…he’s a fuckin’ pot head! Swell says “well SOMEBODY has to get a job!” And you and me both know it ain’t gonna be the little girl from Halloween. So Swell starts working at a disgust-o fast food joint called Clown Dog. Couple of problems with this; unless she already has food service experience (she appears to have never worked anywhere. Remember how she couldn’t afford a ticket to Europe) she would probably have to train at a reduced rate of pay for at least a week. From the looks of the joint, folks working there couldn’t possibly be making more than minimum wage…which was what…$4.25 an hour in 1991? Restaurants usually pay bi-weekly so maybe…MAYBE Swell walks home with a check for $170 less taxes after one month. Her mom is only gone for two months. Why not just grab some ski masks and knock over a Vons?? Swell takes the job anyway…and it just completely fucking sucks. Sure, she gets to work with this non-threateningly handsome kid Brian (popular 90’s actor who is not Josh Hamiltion, Josh Charles) so you know they’re gonna snog, but the place is the pits. The manager is an insufferable dork, she has to wear a bowtie, and the restaurant just oozes filth from every pore. There’s a river of fry-o-lator grease flowing through the kitchen and fossilized tater tots on the floor and shit. Do they have a Z on their front door?? I would not eat at Clown Dog, no sir/ma’am. One night, while Swell is scraping chicken entrails off the ceiling the manager asks her why she forgot her smile and she blows her stack and walks out. 86 Swell.
The Crandall household is down to its last box of Cap’n Crunch so Swell still needs cash pronto. You know what that means, right? Time for a “gearing up to apply for more professional-type jobs'' montage! Swell shops for self-help books and tries on about a dozen different outfits while a craptastic cover of Tommy James’ “Draggin’ the Line” plays in the background. Come to think of it…the original “Draggin’ the Line” isn’t very good either. Whatever. Anyway, Swell gets all decked out and drives the dead babysitter’s car to downtown LA and brings her wholly plagiarized resume to a clothing manufacturing company called GAW, which is an acronym for “generalized anxiety whatever.” Swell arrives on the 17th floor and is given a thoroughly frosty reception by Carolyn (Jayne Brook), the frosty receptionist. TO BE FAIR…Swell is supposed to apply for a job down on the 5th floor. I’d probably be annoyed too! Fortunately, or unfortunately for Carolyn, she leaves her post for long enough for GAW president Rose (Joanna Cassidy) to materialize and inquire about her whereabouts. Rose is all “where is my damn secretary?” and Swell is like “does she look like she’s chewing her face?” Does she look like she’s chewing her FACE!? What does that even mean? It doesn't matter—Rose hears this and is all “grah hah hah you funny, girl…howdya like to be my personal Admin? The hub of my communications network??” Seriously, that’s all it takes?? One funny quip that isn’t even funny?? She isn’t even gonna have this girl vetted by HR? NOPE! She’s immediately ushered into her new office and the film effectively transitions into Working Girl. Peep this though—her office is even bigger than Sigourney Weaver’s in that film! Her job comes with a 401K, fully benny’s, and an annual salary of $37500, which is approximately 1.2 gazillion dollars in 2021 money. All of this happens in a head spinnigly short amount of time. The job only comes with one instruction—if Rose asks Swell the status of such and such…she’s to say “I’m right on top of that, Rose!” That’s it! Does she even know how to do anything?? Carolyn is positively livid because why wouldn’t she be??
Swell takes her siblings grocery shopping to celebrate her new gig. But when they exit the store, they discover the dead babysitter’s car in the process of being stolen by a trio of drag queens dressed like Liza Minelli, Marilyn Monore, and someone I did not recognize. First—it wasn’t really their car to begin with. Second—WHAT?? Why drag queens!?? I feel like maybe this was supposed to be a subplot that ended up on the cutting room floor. Or maybe the director had some drag queen pals who were hard up for a gig? Swell continues to receive romantic entreaties from Clown Dog Brian, who asks her if she’d like to watch the grunion’s run. She’s like “sorry, I don’t like punk rock music.” She’s sweet enough on this kid BUT…when she returns to the office she discovers that Brian is the brother of Carolyn the wicked secretary because of course he is. Things at GAW aren’t exactly coming up Swell either. She’s constantly being sexually harassed by Rose’s boyfriend Gus (the dead body from the Sheen/Estavez not-a-classic Men at Work, John Getz). He takes her to lunch in his Ferrari and orders her alcohol, even though she is secretly a 17 year old-child. He speaks of post coital bliss and getting a lady’s juices flowing. I barf all over myself. If this was now instead of then this motherfucker would be cancelled before the amuse bouche arrived. Then there’s asshole Bruce, played by real life sex addict who played one on TV David Duchovny. He’s always coming around sassing her up and stinking up the place with his Binaca breath. He’s quickly in cahoots with Carolyn as they try to dig up dirt on this baffling new hire. Then there’s the issue of Swell not knowing how to do anything (as I suspected!). Rose is like “I need those TPS reports on my desk by Monday!” and she’s all I`m right on top of that, Rose!” but then pawns the job off on the poor Lucy, the police dispatcher from Twin Peaks.
After about a week on the job, Swell starts to feel the rigors of working an adult person job at 17. She’s always sitting in traffic on the 10 in her mom’s Volvo next to VW Rabbit’s full of kids her age headed down to Redondo Beach. (Note: a Volvo? My sympathy-o-meter stays pinned at zero). Her siblings continue to be lazy layabouts. One night, she chastises Kenny and his pals for blasting Slaughter. One of them says “ohh…PMS city”…which is not an actual place. She tells Kenny that he could do the dishes AT THE VERY LEAST! So Kenny and his pals haul the dirty dishes onto the roof, throw them into the air, and blast them to bits with a loaded shotgun. Dishes=done man. Here’s the thing, though—Kenny also starts to become quietly obsessed with Julia Child’s cooking show. Later, he will try to make every single recipe in The French Chef and they will make a film about it and call it Kenny and Julia. Oh…wait a minute. But yeah…the kid has caught the cooking bug…prolly cuz he’s high as balls all the time and has persistent munchies. Swell accompanies Brian to watch the grunion run (they were just fish this whole time!) and they almost hook up. Later he brings her to a department store where they gleefully bounce around on bouncy balls and the soundtrack goes “this is the best thing that ever happened to me.” When Brian drops her off for the night, though, he asks her where she works and she refuses to tell him. He tells her to stop acting like Henry the VIII. I’m not sure I know what that means…and I got a B+ in my college Shakespeare course….so I should know! They…like…break up. The soundtrack goes “In a perfect world…it would never end like this.” A real Greek chorus, this soundtrack.
Back at the office, Rose returns from her wild and dirty Santa Barbara weekend with Gus and tells Swell that she experienced a 48 hour orgasm. I feel like that would be extremely dehydrating. Like, you should probably go to the ER and see if they can’t put a stop to that. Swell receives her first paycheck and is shocked that it’s for less than she expected because of taxes, health insurance, etc. Welcome to every single pay week of my entire life, kid. She decides to “borrow” the office’s stash of petty cash so she can buy groceries until the big bux start rolling in. Unfortunately, she makes the profoundly unwise decision to bring the entire box of petty cash home and her brothers and sister steal it and now they’re freeeee….free fallin’. Zach buys his girlfriend an engagement ring and little Walter buys a monster home entertainment system. We’re talking laserdiscs and the whole nine! So that’s trouble with a capital O. Then Carolyn and Bruce discover that Swell has been outsourcing her TPS reports to the Twin Peaks gal and rat her out to Rose. Not only is Rose NOT angry at Swell, she’s impressed that she would manipulate a subordinate into performing free labor! Swell can literally do no wrong. Before Rose can present her with an Employee of the Month plaque, Swell receives an emergency phone call from home. Little Walter fell off the roof and broke his arm. She has to go pick him up from Cedars Sinai…where she tells the doctor’s that she’s his mother…even though they are only SIX YEARS APART in age! Do they not ask for health insurance info at this hospital?? They’d probably be on the phone to DCS before the plaster on Walter’s cast dried. When she returns home from the hospital, the full scope of her sibling’s pilferage becomes clear. She’s almost four G’s in the red! (“Everything sucks…everything’s fucked”—Fred Durst). Speaking of sucking—when Swell returns to the office she discovers that the company is in the process of being liquidated. Apparently their new line of school uniforms were ass ugly and sparked mass protests. Swell is like “gimme a sec and lemme see what ya girl can come up with.” She hits the raw materials racks and designs her own line of unready-to-wear school uniforms before lunch. Her clothing doesn’t make sense as uniforms for ANYTHING, let alone school. But I guess she would know, having graduated from high school as recently as three weeks ago. Rose is like “Swell, you done saved the company!!” She just needs to sell the new uni line to the Germans at an upcoming gala. Or was it the Swiss? Something vaguely racist, as per usual. Rose says to pay for the gala with petty cash, of which there is none. Swell says they can just have this meeting, where millions of dollars and the future of the entire company is on the line, out at her momma’s crib. Rose agrees because OH COME ONNN!!!!
Swell tells her crew that they need to prepare themselves for a “cleaning up the house montage.” So they do. Kenny starts preparing a menu, his buddies carve giant ice sculptures, and the younger kids completely refurbish the swimming pool. The soundtrack sings something like “can’t break these chains!” I’m sorry—were these people ever in chains?? Swell continues to pay little attention to Kenny's slow but steady transformation from deadbeat stoner to gourmand, which pisses him off something awful. She tells him that she appreciates him. He tells her to eat shit. These two—they bicker like a couple. If I’m being honest…there’s more chemistry between Kenny and Swell than there is between Swell and Clown Dog Brian. Maybe that helps explain why he has a nudie poster of her in his bedroom?
The night before the big gala, Carolyn and Bruce break into Swell’s office under the cover of darkness and locate her wallet and a copy of her driver’s license. Why her wallet is at her office in the nighttime and not on her person, we do not know. Her ID confirms what these two yahoo’s have long suspected; Swell is only 17. Winger’s “Seventeen” plays on the soundtrack. I mean...I wish. Now it’s party time and the Crandall household has been fully rehabbed, as has Kenny, who has shorn his heavy metal locks. Lookin’ good, Coog! The entire cast of the film have stepped out for the big event! As the Welsh begin to arrive, Kenny furiously plates passed apps. Swell’s anonymous group of girlfriends arrive home from Europe just in time to model Swell’s new uniform line…because in this movie a fashion show needn’t take more than 5 minutes to throw together. Before they can get started, Swell tells Rose that Gus has been sexually harassing the shit out of her the entire time..both before and after he gave Rose her 2 day orgasm. Then Swell sprays water on Gus’s dick with a squirt gun. So that takes care of that. Now it’s Carolyn and Bruce’s turn to try to derail Swell’s night with their latest hand. Not gonna lie—they’re holding a pretty solid hand. We’re talking four of a kind…all aces! They lay it down for Rose, who once again DOES NOT CARE! She tells Carolyn to grow up. Swell is made of teflon! The fashion show finally begins and Swell’s friends show off their weird 1960’s Pan Am stewardess outfits, much to the delight of the assembled French. But while she’s in the middle of her spiel, Brian, who has been missing from the movie for the last 40 minutes, rolls up in his Corn Dog delivery truck, professing his undying love for Swell over the truck’s loudspeaker. Swell is like “bah hah ha this is all part of my line how you like my corn dog outfit??” The Dutch eat it up, which is awesome. But then her MOM shows up unexpectedly, which is less awesome. Mrs Crandall, Buzz Killington that she is, immediately outs Swell as a teenager and demands the party be shut down. Let’s take stock of the scene here, though: she left her house a fucking shambles. Swimming pool unfit to even skateboard in. Now the place is spic and span. Her youngest children are all wearing tuxedos. Her deadbeat son is serving beef tongue canapes that he made HIMSELF to the fleet of millionaires who dot the front lawn. And then there’s her previously unemployed daughter up at a podium about to sell her own clothing line. And she’s just gonna shut it all down!?? You remember what Al Pacino said to Kevin Spacey in Glengarry Glen Ross after he called him a C-word 20 times? You never open your mouth….UNTIL you know the score!
Apparently, Mrs Crandall cut her trip short because she couldn’t get in touch with anyone back at the house. She asks Swell to explain what happened in the movie while she was gone but Swell tells her she’s cranky and needs to go to bed and that they’ll talk in the morning…so that’s what she does. Now Swell has to face Rose. And wouldn’t you know it?? SHE STILL DOESN'T CARE!!! She’s like “the Norwegians loved your duds. You saved the company. See ya Monday morning?” But Rose says she wants to be a teenager for a bit longer. Maybe take some classes at community college when she can afford it. Rose is like “pssh—community college?? I can get you into Vassar TO-DAY!” Rose says “cool.” Nice job, white people. I see here in my notes I wrote “R.E.M.’s Life’s Rich Tapestry. I have no idea what that means but I’m pretty sure the actual name of the album is Life’s Rich Pageant. Brian is like “still wanna smash?” and Swell is like “sure” so they kiss long and nastily. He doesn’t bring up the fact that Swell COMPLETELY ruined his big sister’s professional life! Before they can get to the gettin’, Mrs Crandall appears at the back door and hollars “where’s the babysitter??” Ohhhhh shhhiiiiittttt!!!! Roll credits. I’m thinking felony charges of improper disposal of a human body for Swell and Kenny FOR SURE. They probably won’t do any time but it’ll be a bitch of a fine. The end.