The Corner Penthouse

Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot arrives on Blu-ray as part of Mill Creek Entertainment's Retro VHS Style series, with packaging designed to look like the VHS videocassettes of the 1980s and 1990s. Several other titles in the series have already been reviewed on The Corner Penthouse, and I'm always excited when Mill Creek announces more. It's fun to see if it's a title I used to own on VHS, or one whose trailer I remember seeing at the start of some other VHS tape, or even some obscure movie I've never heard of before.


Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot (1992) is the story of Los Angeles Police Sergeant Joe Bomowski (Sylvester Stallone), who has his life turned upside-down when his feisty mother Tutti (Estelle Getty) comes to town for a rare visit. Mom is soon rearranging Joe's bachelor pad and meddling in his affairs, much to his embarrassment and the delight of Gwen (JoBeth Williams), his precinct supervisor and girlfriend. To add to Joe's problems, Tutti witnesses a murder and becomes his unlikely partner when she refuses to divulge information unless she's allowed in on the investigation. Just when Joe starts wishing he were adopted, Tutti comes through in the clutch, proving that Mother-knows-best.


I seem to remember my family owning this VHS tape in the early 1990s. I believe that I watched the movie when I was a teen, but I have zero memory of anything in it other than the clips from the TV spots. The only thing I really remembered about this film was the story about how Arnold Schwarzenegger tricked Sylvester Stallone into lobbying for the main role. Arnold read the script and knew that it wasn't worth wasting one's time and reputation on, so he announced that he would take on the role just so Stallone could "steal" it from him. Apparently, the story is true, as Schwarzenegger admitted it on Jimmy Kimmel Live in late October 2019.


This movie is one in a series of late 1980s/early 1990s comedies focusing on mismatched partners. Schwarzenegger himself starred in one of the best: Twins, a film that was directed by Ivan Reitman, one of the producers of Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot. The Ghostbusters producing team of Joe Medjuck and Michael C. Gross join him as producers on this film. The director of Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot, Roger Spottiswoode, also helmed one of the best in the genre: Turner & Hooch, featuring Tom Hanks and a dog! Unfortunately, Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot is more akin to the less successful Cop and a Half, in which Burt Reynolds plays a cop who finds himself partnered with a young boy. Watching Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot in 2021, I would best describe the film as "Police Academy featuring Beverly Goldberg from The Goldbergs".


Okay, let's be honest here. Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot is not a good film, and that's thanks to a script that treats the Tutti character as an over-the-top mother stereotype. Nobody would behave the way that she does. Nobody would be that completely clueless to the world around her. Estelle Getty, who was just coming off her successful run on The Golden Girls, plays the character well, but the character just isn't that likable. Any sane person watching this film will root for the bad guy, Parnell (Roger Rees), to take her out and put Joe, and all of us audience members, out of our collective miseries. The script is so focused on the overbearing mother, that the bad guys don't even get much screen time and their nefarious machinations are barely mentioned. Even now, I fail to remember what their scheme was, but the movie made sure that I'm stuck with the memory of seeing Sly Stallone in a diaper!


That's not to say that it's all bad. The film features a stellar cast. In addition to the two leads, bad guy Parnell is portrayed by Roger Rees, best known as Robin Colcord in the 1980s sitcom Cheers, the Sheriff of Rottingham in Mel Brooks' Robin Hood: Men in Tights, and as the voice of Piper in Extreme Ghostbusters: "The Pied Piper Of Manhattan". His henchmen are played by Martin Ferrero, the lawyer from Jurassic Park, and Gailard Sartain, from the Ernest Camp, Christmas, and Jail movies. Those of you who are fans of voice actors will be interested in seeing Christopher Collins (aka Chris Latta), the voice of Starscream in the 1980s Transformers series and Cobra Commander in the 1980s G.I. Joe series as the "Gang Member" who sells a gun to Tutti from the back of a van. Finally, the movie features early appearances from Ving Rhames (as one of the criminals in the opening scene), Richard Schiff (as the gun shop owner), and Vanessa Angel (as one of the stewardesses who talks to Joe when Tutti arrives at the airport).


In addition to the cast, the other aspect of the movie that I really liked was seeing all of the Los Angeles, California locations. I'm going to break away from the review for a few minutes to do a little bit of a Shot on Site rundown on some of the notable filming locations, and look at how they changed between 1992 and now. The movie shots used below came from the Blu-ray and can be enlarged for the original 1920x1036 frame. These full size images can also be used to show you the quality of the Blu-ray transfer.

The first place I'll look at is Joe's apartment, seen several times in the movie.


If you want to pay Joe a visit, you'll have to go to 1124 West Kensington Road. I think the building may have been split into two more apartments, as there are now two doors where those arched recesses were 30 years ago.


A significant event in the film is that Tutti buys a gun from the back of the van.



If you're thinking of buying a gun from Cobra Commander, you're out of luck. The location, on the side of the building at 100 North Santa Fe Avenue is no longer an active street. It was closed off sometime between April 2009 and May 2011, and the building in the background was demolished sometime after June 2008.



Tutti visits Joe at the police station.



You can report all of your crimes at 1111 West 6th Street, but they're going to give you some really strange looks since you won't find any police at the Universal Care Medical & Dental building.



As Joe drives away from the police station towards South Bixel Street...


...we see how much the area surrounding 1111 West 6th Street has changed in the past 30 years. Were it not for the skyscraper skyline in the background, you'd be hard pressed to know that this was the same place.


Mitchell is the other guy who was selling guns, which really belonged to the bad guy, Parnell. Parnell sends his goons, Paulie and Munroe, to Mitchell's girl's house. Joe shows up to arrest them.


Mitchell's Girl (yes, that's the character's name), lived at 251 Emerald Street. The walkway and second floor entrance is gone. You now have to walk down to the first floor to enter.


Joe chases Paulie and Munroe on foot.


The foot chase ends at 290 South Toluca Street.


The foot chase is accurate to the real-life location, as noted in this map. The scene starts off at 1 (Mitchell's Girl's House), then the foot chase goes to 2, and Tutti drives to Joe at 3.


However, as you can see, the street Tutti drove off of, to end up with Joe on South Toluca Street, is NOT connected to the front of the house on Emerald Street. Unless she drove off the railing on Emerald and down onto that side street, she could not have ended up there.


Also, the house on the corner of that side street and South Toluca Street is now hidden behind lots of foliage.


Okay, now back to your regularly scheduled review...

Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot is presented in a 1.85:1 aspect ratio with a runtime of 1:27:07. On the audio side, there is only an English 2.0 DTS-HD Master Audio track. Subtitles are available in English only. As is the case with most Mill Creek Entertainment releases, there are no special features. Normally, I would put a positive spin on that by commenting that the original videocassette lacked special features, as well. However, in this case, I can not do that. You see, this movie was previously released on DVD by Universal with special features! In the past, when Mill Creek would release a Universal title, they would include most, if not all, of the previous DVD and/or Blu-ray special features. For some reason, they did not do it with this release. Below is a list of everything that's missing, courtesy of DVD Compare.

• MISSING: 1992 Making Of Featurette (5:14)
• MISSING: Alternate Ending (2:15)
• MISSING: Theatrical Trailer (2:27)

The real "bonus feature" here is the vintage-looking VHS-inspired slipsleeve, with faux wear and tear, and fake "rental stickers" on it, while giving the appearance of a videocassette being pulled out from the right side (though the original VHS may have been in a bottom-loading box), complete with tape label side on the right spine. The VHS sleeves for all four March 2021 releases (The Babe, Gold Diggers: The Secret of Bear Mountain, Gorillas in the Mist, and Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot) are glossy, while all past sleeves were matte finish. I don't know if they will all be glossy in the future, or if this is a one-time occurrence.

Here's a complete look at this special slipsleeve. Click on it to get a better look.


The front artwork is based on the original U.S. VHS box art, as seen below. The back of the slipsleeve bears a similarity to the original VHS box art, but using different photos, aside from one that is the same though in a different place.


The case artwork underneath uses the original poster artwork, which means that the VHS-style slipsleeve may only be available for a limited time. In the photo below, the slipsleeve cover is on the left and the case artwork underneath is on the right.


Since Mill Creek Entertainment is a budget company, you can grab Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot on Amazon for a great low price right now. If you want some special features, pick up the old DVD as well.


The "Retro VHS Style" series includes the following Blu-ray releases, which are being listed in chronological movie order, and not the order they are being released onto Blu-ray. Some titles below may not have been released yet.



Images used come from the Internet Movie Database gallery of the film. The Blu-ray has been provided by Mill Creek Entertainment for review on this site.