Mommie Dearest is a 1981 American biographical psychological drama[4] film directed by Frank Perry and starring Faye Dunaway, Steve Forrest, Mara Hobel, and Diana Scarwid, with supporting performances from Xander Berkeley in his feature film debut along with Rutanya Alda and Jocelyn Brando.

Released in September 1981, Mommie Dearest swiftly garnered a reputation among audiences for its highly-charged performances and melodramatic style, leading Paramount to retool their marketing campaign, presenting the film as an unintentional comedy despite its dark subject matter.

With the help of her love interest, Hollywood attorney Greg Savitt, Joan adopts a blonde-haired baby girl and names her Christina.

Meanwhile, Joan resents Greg's allegiance to studio boss Louis B. Mayer, and after a quarrel between the two, they end their stormy relationship.

Joan's career once again begins an upswing when she obtains the title role in the 1945 film Mildred Pierce, which earns her the Academy Award for Best Actress.

Some time later, Joan has met and married Alfred Steele, president of Pepsi Cola, and moves to New York City.

After graduating from Flintridge, Christina rents an apartment in Manhattan and begins acting professionally, eventually landing a major role in a soap opera.

When Christina is hospitalized for an ovarian tumor, she is temporarily replaced in the soap opera by Joan, who is decades older than the character.

Christina Crawford sold the film rights to her memoir Mommie Dearest (1978) to Paramount Pictures in June 1978 for $300,000, and was promised an additional $200,000 to co-write a screenplay with Robert Getchell.

Christina Crawford, who feared that the film's portrayal of her mother was becoming too sympathetic, was subsequently asked to not to participate further in the production because Yablans "felt that she and Dunaway wouldn't be that copacetic.

The filmmakers originally planned to shoot the film on location at Crawford's mansion in Brentwood, California, but found it unsuitable.

Location shoots did take place at Perino's in Los Angeles, the Chadwick School on the Palos Verdes Peninsula, and the headquarters of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.

Cast and crew later recalled that Dunaway was rude, frequently arrived late to work, and was nearly fired by Paramount Pictures due to her conduct.

[10] In it, she describes the difficulty of working with Dunaway, whose method approach to playing Joan seemed to absorb her and make her difficult to the cast and crew.

"[11] Alda described the process of acting opposite Dunaway very unfavorably by claiming that she manipulated the director to deprive the other actors of screen time and required the members of the cast to turn their backs when not in the shot so she would have no audience.

[8] She also claimed that Dunaway was "out of control" while filming the scene where Joan attacks Christina (Diana Scarwid) in front of a reporter (Jocelyn Brando) and Carol Ann has to pull her off.

[3] Roughly a month into release, Paramount executives realized the film was getting a reputation at the box office as an unintentional comedy and changed its advertising to reflect its new camp status, proclaiming, "Meet the biggest mother of them all!

When Dunaway's Crawford, who's a seething volcano of emotions, finally erupts, the effect is laughable, rather than terrifying or pathetic, so pallid is the picture.

and weeping while inflecting 'Tina, bring me the axe' with the beyond-the-crypt chest tones of a basso profundo—but she also invests the part with so much power and suffering that these scenes transcend camp.

"[18] Gary Arnold of The Washington Post wrote, "one doesn't envy screen writers obliged to hack a playable, coherent continuity out of the complicated chronology and simple-minded psychoanalysis that clogs the book.

[27] Also, Dennis Price wrote, "Faye Dunaway portrays Joan Crawford in a likeness so chilling it's almost unnatural" in his assessment of the film for DVD Review.

[28] The British Film Institute's Alex Davidson similarly praised Dunaway's performance, writing in 2017 that it is "uncanny and captures Crawford's unusual beauty and slightly wobbly smile.

"[29] Guy Lodge of The Guardian, reviewing the film following a retrospective 40th-anniversary screening, was disturbed by it, noting: "Each time I've seen Mommie Dearest, its most violent scenes startle me anew: I find the harsh physical vigour of Dunaway's performance, combined with the piercing, uncontrolled-sounding pitch of young actor Mara Hobel's screams, profoundly uncomfortable to watch, and hear.

"[31] Writing for Collider, Luna Guthrie praised Dunaway's performance, but was critical of the film's pacing, noting that it "is not really structured like a real movie, but in a style that all too frequently permeates the biopic, rushes to condense decades of a notable person's life into two hours.

The website's critics consensus states: "Mommie Dearest certainly doesn't lack for conviction, and neither does Faye Dunaway's legendary performance as a wire-wielding monster; unfortunately, the movie is too campy and undisciplined to transcend guilty pleasure.

"[41] She also claimed that the performance took a heavy emotional toll on her[42][43] stating: "At night, I would go home to the house we had rented in Beverly Hills, and felt Crawford in the room with me, this tragic, haunted soul just hanging around...It was as if she couldn't rest.