Bloody Mama

Shelly Winters plays a wild Ma Barker in this decent Roger Corman directed flick about the Barker gang of the great depression era. Everyone playing Ma Barkers sons, who include Robert Deniro, gives a good performance. Bruce Dern also has a small role as sort of an outside member of the gang. The Barker gang is on the run, lead by their fearless mother. They rob banks and whoever they can get their hands on. There is one particular good scene involving Deniro, complete with his Max Cady accent, where he acts on the advances of a young blonde swimmer who flirts with him while he sits on the dock. Her flirty ways turn to terror as Deniro realizes he tells her some forbidden information and can't afford to let her live. Deniro lost 30 pounds for the role. He also told Corman he could drive even though he didn't have a license. Pat Hingle, a great character actor, as a high profile man who the gang kidnaps to get ransom money is also very good. This film is no "Bonnie and Clyde" but I'm surprised it didn't get more attention. Worth a look.

Trashy gangster picture from Roger Corman about Ma Barker and her criminal sons. It's very loosely based on the real people. I won't say it's uninteresting but it sure isn't much fun. It's violent, schlocky, and quite frankly, gross. I didn't care about anybody in the movie, which made it hard to become invested in the plot. It does have a nice cast, though. Shelly Winters gets a lot of flack for this movie but I thought she was pretty good. Robert De Niro appears in an early role. I missed his name in the credits so when I saw him I couldn't believe it was really him. Bruce Dern, Don Stroud, Pat Hingle, and Scatman Crothers are among the other solid actors in the cast. Like I said, it's not much fun but it's worth a look. I did love that corny theme song.

Some movies romanticize the life of crime, or make the criminals into sympathetic characters, but Roger Corman's "Bloody Mama" goes in the opposite direction with its depiction of the Barker crime family of the 30's and their ruthless murders, sadism, incest, drug addiction, and insanity. It's a morbidly colorful mixture of negative southern poor white trash stereotypes, encapsulated in a family of sociopaths, with a vintage Shelly Winters bringing her trademark intensity to the role of Ma Barker and a great cast as her sons and their associates, including Don Stroud, Robert Walden, Bruce Dern, Diane Varsi, and Robert DeNiro. A mishmash of humor and repugnancy, it's definitely not for the squeamish.

This is an amazing film for 1970, and a good film to watch by itself today. A true gangster story, with no romantics at all. Evil people do evil things, they just do them because they are stupid and degenerated. No social comment is being made, and this is actually the best decision the script writer and the director could make. Only a completly social careless society can let such people 'enjoy the freedom', with the execution squad being the only 'educational tool' it knows. The viewer gets it by itself. The mix of documentary with the true story is discrete and smart. I liked the movie, and gave it 8/10 on my personal scale.

A gleefully trashy Corman cheapie, with Shelley Winters as the sex-crazed head of a family of criminals. Very bloody and perverse, yet strangely campy, and with good support from Bruce Dern, Robert DeNiro and Don Stroud, in a brilliantly sadistic role. Add to this Winters' fascinatingly overblown performance and you have a classic. Based on a true story, but you'd never guess.