"Serial Mom' is a real killer

A doting mother impales her daughter's cheating boyfriend with a poker purchased at a swap meet, then daintily plucks his dripping heart from the shaft. She crushes a teacher who flunked her son under the wheels of the family station wagon, then throws it in reverse to finish the job with another sickening thud. Someone sneezes, spewing mucus in an infant's face.

Are you giggling yet?

If the answer is no, don't dare select John Waters' latest gag-festSerial Mom as a pleasant movie diversion. But if you have an acquired taste for Waters' brand of proudly tasteless comedy, his return to raucous, R-rated mayhem is a reason to rejoice. After a detour into more palatable PG territory with Hairspray, Polyester and Cry Baby, Waters is back, bolder and funnier than he has been in years.

As usual, Waters' humor is based on shock, but it's doubtful that he has ever had a stranger surprise for moviegoers than his lead performer in Serial Mom. Can that really be world-class actor Kathleen Turner camping it up as a homicidal housewife? It certainly is, and Turner is terrific in a booster-shot role for her flagging career.

Beverly Sutphin (Turner) appears to be supermom, dishing out cornflakes and sage advice to her family at the breakfast table. Nobody except the audience notices that maniacal gleam in her eye when she smacks a fly with a swatter (which Waters lingers upon in colorful close-up). Beverly doesn't allow gum or profanity in the house, wants everyone to buckle-up and still believes white pumps shouldn't be worn after Labor Day. She's also into hydraulic-speed sex, obscene telephone calls and would kill for a decent parking space. Beverly's love of family is best measured by a body count, but she means well.

Most actors wouldn't accept such a gross and potentially embarrassing role, but Turner cuts a hilarious swath across the screen in a courageously over-the-top performance that perfectly fits Waters' twisted vision.

Turner can flash a Donna Reed smile, a Linda Blair glare or, in her best moments, offer a loopy combination of both. She's so unpredictable that we hang on every word, whether it's delivered in a lecturing mother's sing-song rhythm or a guttural growl that would rattleThe Exorcist. Turner relishes every morbid moment of a role as close-to-the-bone and revelatory as Marlon Brando's in Last Tango in Paris or Paul Newman's in Slap Shot.

An actor even more typically earnest, Sam Waterston (The Killing Fields, TV's I'll Fly Away), plays Beverly's husband Eugene with a plastic grin and an inflating lump in his throat as the truth about his wife becomes apparent. One of Waters' discoveries, talk-show host Ricki Lake, appears as Misty, one of the Sutphin offspring, in a part apparently filmed before her publicized weight loss of more than 100 pounds. Her moon-faced infatuations and cartoonish naivete are adorable. Matthew Lillard rounds out the Sutphin household as wisecracking son Chip.

Serial Mom traces Beverly's attempts to do right by her family, which means taking murderous revenge on those who wrong them, like the aforementioned boyfriend and teacher. Beverly gets so proficient at her hobby, however, that she plots to extend her wrath to anyone who breaks the rules, like some sociopathic version of June Cleaver. Along the way, she crosses that line that separates infamy from celebrity and becomes a cult hero for a society demanding juicy scandal from its villains. Waters' slapdash dalliances with this issue are the closest thing to social commentary you'll find here.

Even with its sick premise, Serial Mom may be Waters' most "normal" comedy ever. Instead of his usual garish sets, costumes and make-up, Waters uses a real-world approach to suburban hypocrisy that makes the situation more believable. This heightened realism makes any excursions into exaggeration _ a sinister meatloaf or Beverly's scrapbook of serial killers, for example _ even funnier.

Serial Mom is a dizzying display by a filmmaker who enjoys an audience's groans as much as its laughter. Call Waters brilliant or perverted: He has heard it all before. But you have to admire a guy with the gumption to use Barry Manilow's Daybreak and Tomorrow from Annie as background music, and do it in such outlandish fashion, ensuring we'll never hear those tired old songs quite the same way again.

Serial Mom Grade: B+

Director: John Waters

Cast: Kathleen Turner, Sam Waterston, Ricki Lake, Matthew Lillard

Screenplay: John Waters

Rating: R; violence, profanity, sexual situations, brief nudity

Running time: 94 min.