Don't Tell Mom the Babysitter's Dead (1991) on Netflix
Sue Ellen Crandell's mother flies to Australia, hiring a babysitter for her five children. When the sitter dies, Sue Ellen forges a résumé and lands work at a fashion company.
- Netflix3.4/5
- IMDb6.4/1040,836 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes36%
Trailer
Plot summary
Sue Ellen Crandell, 17 and newly out of high school, cannot afford the Europe trip her friends are taking, so she looks forward to a summer in Los Angeles with her four younger siblings. Their mother leaves for Australia with her boyfriend and installs a live-in babysitter, Mrs. Sturak, who promises to look after all five children. Mrs. Sturak soon proves a tyrant, and Sue Ellen finds her dead in a chair. Rather than notify the authorities and lose the summer, the children put the body in a trunk and leave it at a mortuary, with the household money inside. Sue Ellen needs work, and after a brief turn at a fast-food restaurant she forges a résumé and becomes an executive assistant at General Apparel West.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Don't Tell Mom the Babysitter's Dead (1991)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Landau was inspired by the 1983 film Risky Business, in which a high-school protagonist is thrust into the adult world and manages to hold his own. The first draft, titled The Real World, was finished in 1987 and sold to 20th Century Fox, but was shelved.
- After the production ended the studio was forced to change The Real World title because of a conflict with MTV's new television series of the same name, and settled on Don't Tell Mom the Babysitter's Dead. Landau was initially unimpressed until he saw Johnny Carson make a pun about it.
- Jennifer Love Hewitt was originally cast as Melissa, but had to back out because Disney Channel would not release her from a television show in which she had been starring.
- In 1989 the film was picked up by Outlaw Productions, which attracted Christina Applegate to the project through her Married... with Children costar Ed O'Neill.
