By Owen Quinn author of the Time Warriors and Zombie Blues
Photos copyright 20th Century Fox
There have been many mad feisty older ladies in television and movies but none have been quite as sassy as Delores Bickerman in 1999’s Lake Placid as played by the legendary Golden Girl herself; Betty White.
Lake Placid is a fun monster movie loved by everyone and spawned a series of gradually worsening sequels. It is a blast from start to finish populated by memorable characters. Oliver Platt and Brendan Gleeson are comedic gold in their love hate relationship while Bill Pullman ends up as the referee between the two.
But the stand out character is Mrs Delores Bickerman who lives in a house beside the lake where she rears cows. She looks as sweet as honey especially as she is played by the world’s sweetheart Betty White. Audiences had been used to seven years of her innocent character Rose on the famous sitcom so to have her in any movie or show was an immediate draw.
However the sweet little old lady was far from it. She had a mouth like a sewer and, as it turned out, valued most animals over humans (including her late husband). She hates the law sticking their nose into her business. Although she has a perfect logic in her head for her behaviour which seems to be genetic as we meet her sister Sadie in the sequel. Bickerman was so far removed from Rose, the very word “cocksucker” made the audience sit up and take notice…..earning a few giggles along the way.
When we first meet her she is hostile to say the least to Sherriff Hank Keough (Brendan Gleeson), Jack Wells (Bill Pullman) and Kelly Scoot (Bridget Fonda). She claims she killed her husband and buried him, challenging them to go dig him up if they didn’t believe her. She claims to not know or have seen anything strange around and in the lake.
However they soon learn that she is lying when they witness her walking one of her cows to the lake’s edge where the crocodile rises up and eats it. She is smiling and treating it like a pet. She has known all about the crocodiles since one ate her husband Charlie. Since then she has been feeding them and caring for them to the point they see her as friendly. She is furious at being discovered but defends her crocodiles to the hilt.
Her potty mouth tirade is at full warp speed here as she watches in horror as they airlift her cow up over the lake with a helicopter to draw the crocodile out. “Cocksuckers!” is her word of the day as she is helpless to do anything about it. When the sheriff asks her if she led her husband blindfolded to the lake, she tells him;
“If I had a dick this is where I’d tell you to suck it” and, when told she is under house arrest, adds “Thank you officer dickwad.”
She is just so outrageous and it shows that she sees the crocs as her babies, just trying to survive and doing what they normally do. It isn’t their fault that humans decided to go into the water, which is their home, after all. If someone came into your home without an invite you’d be pissed too.
But Mrs Bickerman is nobody’s fool. Despite two of her crocs being captured and one killed, she has the last laugh. The movie ends with her on the boardwalk, feet in the water, throwing food into the lake. We see baby crocodiles swim up; which she calls her little buttons.
The cast were simply magic in Lake Placid but Betty White’s inclusion as the fierce Mrs Bickerman adds so much to the movie. She and Brendan Gleeson spark off each other effortlessly. Between her and Oliver Platt’s croc expert Hector is it any wonder Hank complains all the time?
In a career thar spanned decades, Betty telling someone to suck her dick and slew of cocksuckers was a blast. It remains one of the highlights of her career because this rose was slightly thorny and won against the law and they never even realised it.
The Time Warriors and Beyond 