Aaron's Most Memorable Movie Mothers

This was the toughest list yet.  It made me realize how many horror/thrillers I watch and how many dramas I don't.

10.  Marylouise Burke in Sideways.  Delivers a hilarious turn as Paul Giamatti's space cadet mother who's so out there, she doesn't realize the damage her son's divorce has done to him.

9.  Piper Laurie in Carrie.  Laurie plays plain out of her mind to the hilt and lends sympathy to poor Carrie White even after she incinerates her senior class.

8.  Jessie Royce Landis in To Catch a Thief and North by Northwest.  Alfred Hitchcock was the king of movie mothers, and Landis played two of his best in two of his funniest movies.

7.  Frances Lee McCain in Gremlins.  Stabbing, blending and microwaving gremlins to protect her hearth and home.

6.  Dee Wallace Stone in E.T.  She supports her children through aliens dying and coming back and government agents kicking through her door.  And she looks good in that tiger costume.

5.  Anne Ramsey in Throw Mamma From the Train.  She got all the best lines like "Go bury him in the yard before he stinks up the place," and "Sultry."

4.  Angela Lansbury in The Manchurian Candidate.  Talk about an Oedipal complex, just watch Lansbury's turn as Laurence Harvey's brain-washing, treasonous mommy.

3.  Ellen Burstyn in The Exorcist.  I don't know if I could get my face thrust in my daughter's crotch and still look at her the same way.

2.  Melinda Dillon in A Christmas Story.  She worries about everything:  The Christmas turkey, that stupid leg lamp, Randy staying warm, Ralphie saying "fudge," Ralphie shooting his eye out.  I'd say she's the most realistic movie mom of all time.

1.  Anne Bancroft in The Graduate.  Evil.  Just plain evil.  Yet seductive and sexy and a lot better looking than Katharine Ross.  Forget the daughter, mamma's where it's at.