Christina Applegate looks back on Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead (2025)

Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead was supposed to be Christina Applegate’s first major foray into movies, having established herself as a catch on Married…with Children. But not only did she not want to do it, it flopped, opening at #6 with $4.2 million, behind fellow newcomers Jungle Fever and City Slickers. Today, it’s a beloved cult favorite among a certain generation and Applegate herself.

Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead took a while to find its audience, which it did thanks to VHS and TV replays that kept it from dying on natural causes. But Applegate was initially hesitant because she didn’t want to come off as a sell-out. “I didn’t wanna do it, because it was a commercial film. I was so into indies back then. I was like, ‘I’m only gonna do independent film acting’…I was such a f*cking asshat…I had some personal stuff going on, off the scenes, which will be in the book, that were pretty horrific. So there were some really hard days. But, yeah, I loved everybody. But at the same time, I was still like, ‘This is, like, selling out.’”

The movie – which finds Christina Applegate’s Sue Ewell (“Swell”) taking over head of household duties once the family’s babysitter croaks – is absolutely deserving of a reappraisal, with some killer lines and scenes that make it a damn fun watch. As Applegate defends it, “What movie has a bunch of drag queens steal their car? And people quote it all the time. ‘The dishes are done, man,’ and all that stuff. I feel very proud now about it. I just hated what an asshole I was at the time.”

But instead of a full-on retrospective appreciation, we ended up getting slapped with a remake, which arrived last year. Not to diss that movie outright, but there’s an undeniable charm in the early ‘90s aesthetic that helps make Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead a capsule in a way.

Are you a fan of Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead? Do you think it’s deserving of a wider audience 30+ years on?