A wise red haired woman once said, "The hand that rocks the cradle is the hand that rules the world." Julianne Moore's Marlene Craven ruled my world for sure. Click the link below and read on as I reminisce about 1992's The Hand That Rocks the Cradle.
In October Hulu released a remake of The Hand That Rocks the Cradle. As of this posting, I have yet to see the remake. I was super excited to see the trailer when I first heard there was going to be a remake. I'm not anti-remake, I quite enjoy a modern revisit to an older movie, especially when I am a fan of the original. However, I felt a little underwhelmed by the trailer, and have just taken my time to watch this new one. I did sit down with my snacks and a cold Diet Dr. Pepper to watch the original for the millionth time since it is also streaming on Hulu.
I don't know what it was about this most recent viewing, but I found myself really immersed in memories from when I saw the original in theaters and the impact it had on me. For those who have not seen this movie, it was released on January 10th, 1992. The film takes place in Seattle. The essential plot is that suburbanite Claire Barton (Annabella Sciora) is sexually assaulted by her OB, Dr. Victor Mott (John de Lancie. Hello Q!) she reports him to the police. The not so good doctor then takes his own life. As a result his widow, (Rebecca De Mornay) has a miscarriage due to the stress and then plots revenge and uses an alias, Peyton Flanders (no relation to Ned), and essentially wreaks havoc on Claire and her family as their nanny. Real solid cast. Matt McCoy plays Michael Bartel, Claire's supportive husband with a nice beard. I was so thrilled seeing him in this film, especially with his lower torso intact after watching him in DeepStar Six. Claire and Michael have a sweet daughter named Emma (Madeline Zima) and a baby boy named Joey (I have no idea who played the baby).The Bartel family receives help around their yard from dependable handyman Solomon (Ernie Hudson). Rounding out the main cast are friends of the Bartels, the badass Marlene Craven (Julianne Moore) and her husband Marty (Kevin Skousen.)
This film came out at a time where the thriller style of film was highly popular and made good money at the box office. The '80s and early '90s were chock full of this type of movie that you now see in over abundance on Lifetime. These movies received nice budgets. And provided pop culture water cooler type moments. Think boiling rabbit in Fatal Attraction. The stiletto in the eye in Single White Female. Or the leg crossing scene in Basic Instinct. The Hand That Rocks the Cradle offered two really big moments that had pop culture talking way past the credits. One involved Peyton breast feeding Claire's son, which is still disturbing and shocking over thirty years later. The other scene that really created a big conversation was Payton calling Solomon the R-word. In the film Solomon has special needs, and upon stumbling upon Peyton breast feeding Claire's son, Peyton uses some offensive language to threaten him.
I remember news stories covering both events in the film and really addressing issues around the disturbing breast feeding (can another woman be able to breast feed your own child, we discuss at 11!) and why certain language might no longer be appropriate (like the R word) and the question around the need for it to be used in film. This movie was a big deal in many ways. There were also some unintentional (maybe intentional) themes around race and ableism. I won't go into a whole thesis level break down of this, but in the film Solomon (who is a Black man with special needs) is initially met with fear (he startles Claire at her back kitchen window) and throughout the film is met with doubt and concern. Doubt in his abilities to be caring when around the children and concern that he might hurt them by accident (he isn't initially allowed to hold the baby for instance) or that he might not know exactly how to do his job at first, to say nothing of how quick they are to believe the worst about him. This all changes by the end of the film.
Meanwhile Peyton, a white blue eyed blonde haired woman who looks and sounds "safe" but is the literal definition of danger and should absolutely be met with fear and concern, is completely welcomed into the family with no real questioning of her abilities. We're talking blind trust and quite quickly. I know it's a movie, if Mr. and Mrs. Bartel had doubts and did more digging about Peyton's real identity, Peyton most likely would not have been hired and we would probably not have had a reason for the movie. Regardless, this dynamic with how both characters are treated by the Bartel family is very interesting and I am not sure if that was by design or something that naturally came out of the story and that era. I don't know, I have never really looked too much into it.
I do love this film though. I love the cast so much. The acting was so top notch and believable. I remember desperately wanting to see it. I was a few months from turning 10, and somehow talked my mom into taking me to see it. Truth be told she was just as interested. We have always been fans of thriller type movies, or anything with a dramatic what-will-they-do-who-will-survive type of story. So, that is what we did. On a Monday night we told my dad we were going to CCE (we were Catholic-ish) and instead of actually going to CCE (she taught CCE and I was a student) we skipped out that week and went to the movies instead. Now, my mom could have told my dad the truth, but she risked my dad saying something to my younger sibling who would have been devastated to miss out on a trip to the movies, though they were simply too young. (I fully realize that at the tail end of 9, I too was entirely too young to be at an R rated movie, but alas, it is what it was.)
Side note, for those who are not Catholic, CCE was like continuing Catholic education. You'd go on a Monday night, learn about Bible stuff and just prepare yourself for Confirmation when you became a teen. Confirmation is basically like confirming yourself as a believer in Jesus and Catholicism. You get assigned a Saint and it's this whole thing. I dropped out though. We were sort of a religious family, but not really. Pop culture and food have been bigger spiritual impacts in our lives than the church. Just sayin.
So there we were. In the movies. Watching The Hand That Rocks the Cradle. When the opening score dropped in tone when the title appeared on the screen... chills and a sense of dread hitting my spine. There were some scenes that were uncomfortable to watch with my mom, like Claire's sexual assault and Peyton's miscarriage, I was too young to fully understand, but I could feel my mom being uncomfortable sitting with me watching that unfold on screen. And when the breast feeding scene happened, we both looked at each other like, "Did this chick really just do that?" We were disturbed but could not stop watching the movie.
And then there was Marlene. From the moment Julianne Moore saunters into the Bartel's house as Marlene for a double date night, being all loud and fabulous and immediately side eyeing Peyton, I was like, "I hope and pray I grow up to be that kind of cool." I loved everything about her. Her style was chic. Her attitude was everything. I resonated with Marlene more than any other character in the film. I mean my goodness Claire and Michael's daughter Emma was about my age but I was still like, "Nah, Marlene is who I would be if I were in this movie."
The movie progressed to the eventual point where someone finally realizes who Peyton is, and there I sat nodding, "Of course Marlene is gonna figure it out. And of course she is going to confront Peyton's ol' evil behind." My heart was beating a mile a minute. Wondering how in the world this was going to play out, and then my heart sank as Marlene stormed out to the greenhouse and thrust that door open and looked up as the class ceiling shattered all around her.
Side note, when I first learned about the concept of breaking the glass ceiling from a feminist perspective, I immediately thought of Marlene Craven and was like, she died for this, for all of us. Heaven help me.
Gutted. I was simply gutted when she died. I kept holding out hope that she'd make it. Those shards of glass didn't even seem that big. How did it kill her? That would mean that all the pieces would have had to land the right way, and some pieces could have hit her with the flat side of the glass. I was trying to learn physics and everything in that moment to prove that she should still be alive.
"Oh honey, the kind of glass in a green house is very heavy sharp glass, it'd rip a person to shreds," my mom told me, much to my dismay. I honestly don't even know if she really knew or was just telling me so I'd stop complaining about Marlene's death. I just couldn't believe it. My heartbreak did not prevent me from enjoying the rest of the film or being on the edge of my seat.
Once we got home, I had a hard time pretending like I hadn't just seen a movie and had my mind blown and my heart ripped from me. I immediately pulled out my dolls and toys and just recreated the movie. Sometimes in my reenactments Marlene would survive and claw her way back to the house to fight Peyton. Other times I'd be helpless as her fate would get recreated again and again. I would even do my own reenactments with just myself. Driving my own imaginary Mercedes rushing to tell Claire the truth. I'd sway the neighborhood kids into playing pretend and have them watch me run into my parent's garage as a stand in for a green house and I'd crash to the floor making my own sound effects of glass breaking. My obsession was far more intense than anything Peyton had going on, let me tell you.
I truly love this movie. And though Marlene met an untimely end, I got to learn about Julianne Moore, and every time I see her in a movie or on tv, in an interview, or whatever, I can't help but smile. Marlene gets to live on so to speak.
Anyway. I just wanted to share this story with you all. So many details around my first viewing of this film just came flooding back to me. I also noticed newish things. I forget that Q from Star Trek The Next Generation plays the wicked Dr. Mott. (That man is always causing problems when he shows up.) And, in the scene where Peyton threatens a bully at Emma's school, the bully and another boy are playing with the New Adventures of He-Man action figures (He-Man and Skeletor to be specific) and of course I can't forget to mention the bottle of Dior Poison perfume on Claire's vanity table. That is such a spellbinding scent, and makes so much sense that it had a cameo in the film.
There's been other movies I've been watching too as of late. Don't know that they'll get the same level of treatment as this post, but they deserve mentioning. 2025 has been a year for horror and Sinners and Weapons both have been talked about a lot since their releases. I loved both and regret not seeing either in theaters. I also finally saw Jason X, a film I have largely avoided for reasons I have never been fully sure of. I'm glad I finally did though, it was a campy mess in the best way, but also had some really interesting ideas that I wished could have been expanded. I do appreciate how wild they took the franchise though. I mean Jason in space, that's a wild turn for a series that heavily relied on a rustic camp site by a lake, barring the trip to Manhattan.
So that's about it for now. I hope you are all doing well and enjoying the holiday season. I'll be back with more posts soon. I've got lots of things to talk about from the 40th Anniversary of the Peaches and Cream Barbie to some fun toy stories. Until then!
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