Mother of Tears/YMMV

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


  • Complete Monster: One of the Three Mothers responsible for the creation and spread of witchcraft itself, Mater Lachrymarum, otherwise known as the Mother of Tears, is an ancient witch and the most beautiful and powerful of her wicked sisters. Upon awakening from her deep slumber, Lachrymarum disregards the deaths of her sisters and proceeds to unleash a wave of violence onto Rome ranging from mass suicides to random acts of destruction. Lachrymarum also saw her devoted followers as expendable, allowing them to cannibalize and torture each other as they saw fit to her cruel amusement. Lachrymarum's ultimate goal was to usher in a new era of witchcraft starting with the obliteration of Rome; with victory seemingly within reach, Lachrymarum attempts to offer the heroine Sarah Mandy, daughter of the one good witch who had managed to once fight the Three Mothers, to her cannibalistic followers. Seeking to expand her powers until she blighted the world itself in darkness, Lachrymarum demonstrates the pure, unbridled evil of the Three Mothers.
  • Evil Is Sexy: Mater Lachrymarum, and justified for the reason of being known as the most beautiful of the Three Mothers.
  • Fridge Logic: Its an odd coincidence that the woman who happens to open the urn is the woman whose parents were killed by the sister of the Big Bad so many years before. In another country, no less.
    • Fridge Brilliance: Mater Lachrymarum is actually the weakest of the Three Mothers, as she does not have her sister's powers to draw on. This is why her home, the Palazzo Varelli, has fallen into disrepair, and why she has to rely on the tunic to give her power.
    • Whereas Suspiria owes its plot loosely to "Snow White", and Inferno to "Hansel and Gretel", Mother of Tears owes more to the urban legend - the present day descendant of fairy tales.
    • Fridge Horror: In Inferno, there's a BLAM moment where a caretaker and another woman are gleefully examining a large piece of meat. When Mark approaches her to ask a question, the caretaker tries to cover the meat, as if she had been caught in a compromising position. No explanation is given (to be fair, there's a lot in that film that's never explained), however, Mother of Tears, its sequel, establishes that evil witches in the Three Mother's 'verse are cannibals.
  • Les Yay
  • Narm: The monkey. Just ... the monkey.
  • Sequelitis: Critics and many Argento's fans thought it was a disappointing third chapter of the trilogy.
  • They Changed It, Now It Sucks: Argento took most of what made Suspiria and Inferno great and discarded them in favor of a more open environment and violence for the sake of violence. This doesn't fare well for Mother of Tears.