Verrückte Mama

Entertaining 1950s era ganster mama movie emulates the best points of Corman's previous depression-era genre films. Demme does a solid job, succeeding particularly well in creating a feeling of casual cameraderie among the bandit women and the men they drag along with them as they go on a spree enroute to the family farm in Arkansas. Creates reasonably good characters who are often not used to their full potential, but a good time film (good 6 pack film) is the result. Leachman and Sothern make an effective pairing, and castaway Jim Backus makes a brief appearance as the first of many men the trio of Southern beauties will take advantage of along the way to their broken down dreamland.

Crazy Mama (1975)

** (out of 4)

Just four years after winning an Oscar in THE LAST PICTURE SHOW, Cloris Leachman showed up in this Roger Corman produced flick where she followed in the footsteps of Shelley Winters (BLOODY MAMA) and Angie Dickinson (BIG BAD MAMA) as tough mother's stealing for a better life. In this film, Melba (Leachman), her mother and her teenage daughter travel from California to Arkansas after their beauty parlor is taken away from them. Along the way they encounter several men as well as one robbery after another. Director Jonathan Demme certainly took a story that had already been done to death and at least brought some new touches to it but in the end there's just no way around the fact that we've seen this thing too many times before. I think the best thing going for the film is the direction of Demme because he at least makes the thing feel very authentic and you really do get the feeling that you're in the 1950s. With this setting the director is able to not only make things look like the period but he also get a nice selection of music from this period. Leachman is certainly game for her part but the screenplay doesn't do her many favors. The supporting cast features familiar faces like Stuart Whitman, Sally Kirkland, Dick Miller and Donny Most who is best remembered for his role on Happy Days. The film contains some nice car crashes, some nudity and quite a bit of violence and especially for a PG rated film. CRAZY MAMA has a lot going for it but there's still no way around the fact that it doesn't offer us anything we haven't seen before in better pictures.

A band of beauty shop desperadoes cartoonishly plunder their way from California to Arkansas, to reclaim the old family farm.

Wow! No energy crisis here. Just plug in the nation's generator and it'll light up from Broadway to Sunset with Denver in between. The movie's a classic of editing, scripting and directing; at the same time, add drive-in Oscars to actresses Leachman and Sothern.

This is the hillbilly masterpiece Roger Corman was building toward with his series of backwoods desperadoes. Sure, much is silly, along with the usual cartoonish violence and enough car crashes to put on an extra shift in Detroit. But there's still enough subtext to make you care.

This is America of forgotten people, the country's poor rural whites, one step ahead of bill-collectors and two steps from the law. Check out the cross-country tour of 1950's kitsch— the Burma Shave, the seedy motels, the lonely highway outposts—still familiar to thousands of us. And whose great idea was Leachman's tiger sheath dress that about says it all.

But don't overlook the subtext that slyly mocks the conventions of the time. No Ozzie and Harriet here. It's three generations of mother-daughter, ousted from their cut-rate beauty salon, picking up new family members as they rob and roar along—an 80-year old Granny, a 50's greaser, a philandering cowboy. And don't forget sweet daughter Cheryl's already knocked up, but can't decide which boy to hook up with. But then maybe she doesn't have to— and so much for 50's-style monogamy. Or consider hormonal old Granny who's still got eyes for the boys, plus young Snake who eyes her back—no sir, no ageism here. Or Jim Bob's wealthy wife, sobbing for Jim Bob on TV, that is, when not entertaining the sheriff on the side— and so much for the upper class.

Then there's the banker's moneyed class, the fugitive family's natural enemy. I love that big fancy wedding that suddenly explodes as the girls fulfill their 30-year debt of honor. Or when Sheba redesigns the banker's headstone with a barking pistol. No sir, it's sweat equity that earns a farmer his land and not the banker's money— too bad the law's on the wrong side here and we're made to feel it.

Then, of course, there's the Lord that keeps getting invoked along with a whiskey bottle. But it's not the religion of the church. It's the Sweet Jesus of desperate folk clinging to one another in a hostile world and hoping things turn out in the end. And speaking of end, what an inspired one here—the family that works together stays together, even if they can't seem to get the rules right.

No indeed, snooty Hollywood never recognizes kitschy films like this. But it's got style, humor, and a penetrating subtext that makes you feel rather than merely observe. Too bad ace screenwriter Thom died soon after. He had a real knack for the material. But more importantly, knew how to combine with director Demme's electric style. The result, in my little book, is worth 20 of those lumbering prestige films of the time. You know, the kind with Richard and Elizabeth that usually got the publicity space. All that vitality makes Mama a great extension of the 40's B-movie. Plus, it's funny as heck. So check it out.

This lively celebration of 1950's America is one of director Jonathan Demme's earliest and best films. After losing their beauty salon to some repossession men in California, grandmother Ann Sothern, mother Cloris Leachman, and daughter Linda Purl hit the road and embark on a crime spree, robbing and shooting their way back to their mid-western roots in Arkansas. CRAZY MAMA recreates a convincing '50's atmosphere, offers some of that decade's greatest music and, above all, features excellent performances by a wonderful cast. The film's brightest moments are supplied by Cloris Leachman and Ann Sothern, two of the finest actresses to ever grace the screen. Sothern's daughter, the equally gifted Tisha Sterling, plays her mother's character as a young woman in the opening scene of the film.

Any movie that opens with a montage with typically nostalgic images of life in the 1950's, and to the wondrous tunes of "All I have to do is Dream" by The Everly Brothers, is half of a winner already in my book. I instantly presumed that Jonathan Demme's "Crazy Mama" would become a massively entertaining 70's road-movie/parody exploitation flick, full of memorable highlights and delightfully eccentric characters, but that turned out a little bit disappointing to be entirely honest. The movie kicks off energetically and tremendously joyous, but runs out of steam surprisingly fast. When evicted from her Californian beauty parlor, enraged mother Melba mobilizes her daughter and mother to head back to Arkansas and reclaim the family farm grounds that were violently taken from them in 1932. Hiking along are daughter Cheryl's surfer boyfriend and a trio of a flamboyant weirdos the gang picked up in Las Vegas, including macho hunk Jim Bob, gambling addicted senior citizen Bertha and greasy biker kid Snake. The deranged motley crew leaves a trail of armed robberies and kidnap conspiracies from West to East, but the biggest confrontation with the law awaits them in Arkansas. In spite of the speedy pace, "Crazy Mama" is overall rather dull and repetitive. I also would have preferred the film to be more violent and gritty, instead of comical and trashy. The performances are pretty lackluster, with Cloris Leachman not really fitting her role and Don Most being a bleak imitation of the characters Ron Howard played in the sixties and seventies. Stuart Whitman is cool, though, and Linda Purl depicts a lovable 70's exploitation wench. The only aspect that remains brilliant throughout is the soundtrack full of golden oldies, like "Lollipop" and "Running Bear". "Crazy Mama" is the third and final feature in trash-producer Roger Corman's unofficial Mama-trilogy, with "Bloody Mama" and "Big Bad Mama" as its predecessors. I'm surely going to track down those, because they look a lot cooler than this "Crazy Mama". Director Jonathan Demme has had one of the most uneven careers in Hollywood, for sure! From the sloppy Women-in-Prison flick "Caged Heat" onto exploitation flicks like "Crazy Mama" and "Fighting Mad" and towards more serious thrillers like "Last Embrace". In the 80's, Demme directed a few TV-movies, popular comedies and a lot of Neil Young videos before hitting it big with Academy Award winning blockbusters "Silence of the Lambs" and "Philadelphia".