Mama Fratelli from The Goonies | Mrs. Lift from Throw Mama From the Train
Actress Anne Ramsey was so masterful at playing horrible mothers we couldn’t pick just one of her characters. Mama Fratelli’s perma-scowl looks harder than a slab of concrete, and it pretty much sums up her motherly touch as well. As the leader of the nefarious yet incompetent Fratelli gang, Mama was always berating and pushing around her two sons Jake and Francis. She treated her third son, whom she lovingly referred to as Sloth, even worse. Like, chained-up-in-the-basement worse.
Mrs. Lift was a verbally abusive old battle-ax who treated her son, Owen, like a combination slave and emotional punching bag. How bad of a mom do you have to be to make your son actually hatch a plot to kill you?
Lucille Bluth from Arrested Development | Malory Archer from Archer
Jessica Walter is another horrible-mother portrayer so good that we couldn’t choose just one. Besides, Lucille and Malory are actually pretty similar: They’re both selfish, drunk, neglectful schemers! When Lucille drunk drove a car into one of her sons, she managed to pin it on another son who’d been knocked unconscious and given amnesia in the front seat. Malory, on the other hand, lied to her son about who his father is — in reality, she isn’t sure — forgot to alert his boarding school that she’d moved, and routinely puts him in mortal danger for her own personal gain.
