Debbie Jellinski from Addams Family Values
It’s time to showcase a comedic
villainess.
I was surprised to discover that Addams Family Values was a flop when it was released back in 1993, as in
my opinion it’s far better than the first film, and Joan Cusack damn near
steals the show as its villain. She plays Debbie Jellinski, a woman engaged in
that noble profession of marrying rich guys and then killing them to inherit
their fortunes. She’s been doing it for a while, successfully offing her unfortunate
string of husbands and evading law enforcement, but what elevates her from being
another run-of-the-mill black widow is Cusack’s performance.
There is truly nothing more fun
than watching her go from the wide-eyed, earnest, virginal (yet still
aggressively sexual) Debbie in the first half of the film to the cruel,
materialistic, vindicative monster-bitch (who remains aggressively sexual) in
the second. Joan Cusack just oozes malevolence from every pore, her facial
expressions and body language so completely predatory and over-the-top.
Her incredulous “you?” when
Fester admits he’s a virgin, her wriggling glee when she watches the Nightline exposé on herself, the look of dark intent when she
preps the bomb to take out her latest husband – all done in an array of
colourful sundresses. Her manipulations even get Wednesday and Pugsley sent to
summer camp.
The craziest thing is that if Debbie
had just been upfront about her intentions, the Addams family probably would
have welcomed her as one of their own (Morticia is cool with her scheming, it’s
the pastels she objects to). They even wish her good luck as she’s about to
murder them and make her escape.
What was a pretty clichéd villain
is elevated entirely by Joan Cusack’s deliciously evil performance. She
practically slithers her way through the role, and is the larger-than-life
villain that the previous film lacked; the perfect dark foil not only to the Addams
family, but also the obnoxiously chipper camp leaders. Not everyone can
paraphrase the Wicked Witch of the West (“I’ll get you, and your little hand
too!”) and own it.
