Mommie Dearest, the movie version of Christina Crawford’s  1978 memoir about her mother Joan Crawford, depicts the late actress as being abusive toward her daughter. The actress is seen as having a volatile and unpleasant personality. Those who knew Crawford dispute this characterization of her.  Crawford’s friends and others who documented her career insist she was a fine woman.

Joan Crawford (Faye Dunaway) feels there is something missing from her life. After suffering seven pregnancies where babies were lost, Joan tells lawyer Greg Savitt (Steve Forrest) that she wants to adopt. Greg says she would never be entrusted with a child because adoption agencies frown on those who live alone and on people divorced more than once. However, Greg helps Joan get a baby, and she names the child Christina. 

A few years later, Christina (Mara Hobel) sits in front of mirror with her mother’s perfume and practices an  acceptance speech. Enraged, Joan thinks the child is mocking her and begins to hack off all of Christina’s hair.

During an important meeting with MGM’s Louis B. Mayer (Howard Da Silva), Joan learns that after 18 years the studio has decided to dump her. She's made a string of flops and has become box-office poison. Joan signs with Warner Bros. but feels ashamed when she must take a screen test to have a shot at landing a role. Then, in 1945, she earns an Academy Award for Mildred Pierce.

Meanwhile, Christina has forgotten her mother's rule about clothes hangers. She must not use wire hangers but has done so with all her dresses. In one of cinema’s famous scenes, Joan savagely beats the child with one of the hangers. The volatile actress decides to send Christina to boarding school. One day at the school, Christina is caught alone with a boy in a barn, and Joan becomes furious. She takes the teenage Christina (Diana Scarwid) home where a reporter is waiting. Hearing Joan say that her daughter was expelled from school, Christina calls her a liar, and  Joan attempts to choke her to death. 

Mommie Dearest suffers from horrible execution by director Frank Perry, who also wrote the convoluted screenplay with Frank Yablans, Tracy Hotchner and Robert Getchell. It's notable only as a curiosity. Hobel delivers the standout performance here by conveying so much fear and emotion in her eyes. But Scarwid is miscast and has difficulty being convincing in her interactions with Dunaway, who does well in scenes where she has to alternate between sane and normal in an instant. Dunaway's portrayal of Crawford accurately captures what it's like to have manic depression, though most sufferers are non-violent, more prone to harm themselves if left untreated.

After Joan's death, psychiatrists told Christina that her mother may have suffered from this mental illness or a combination of it with other disorders. While Mommie Dearest may raise awareness concerning manic depression as well as about child abuse, I still cannot recommend it.

(Released by Paramount Home Video and rated "PG" by MPAA.)

Review also posted on www.movie-critiques.com.