Mama's Dirty Girls

A family of gold diggers. What a way to go. A woman named Mama and her 3 daughters, finds a man with money, have him killed, and get the money in the process. From the last killing, she finds out that the man was a renter, not a owner. The only thing that he owns was the car. So the family goes out and find a widower who owns a motel. A perfect catch. Or is it? It turned out that the widower is a lot more sinister than Mama! His last wife died at his hands. It looks like that they need to be more crafty than him.

This movie has lead to other films years later. I liked it very much. It's a starter.

2 out of 5 stars.

Mama's Dirty Girls is a gritty little seventies thriller, which reminded me a lot of 1974's other mother and daughter seducing men flick, Big Bad Mama; only with less humour. Typically, the production values are not very good and the film doesn't have a great deal of credibility when judged against serious films. However, like many seventies thrillers; Mama's Dirty Girls makes for a fun watch and while things like the acting aren't up to much; it's not important as nobody goes into a film like this expecting great acting and there's more than enough in the way of sleaze and nudity to make up for it. The plot focuses on 'Mama' and her three daughters. Mama marries men with money and then sets up situations that end with their death, leaving her to inherit the fortune. Naturally, she decides to teach her daughters to do the same thing and the four of them move to a new town. There, Mama meets Harold; a rich man whose wife died under questionable circumstances. Mama marries him, but he doesn't play along with her plans for him to go the same way as her previous husbands.

The film begins with a scenario in which Mama's current husband plays away with one of the daughters and ends up "committing suicide". It's not great or all that well put together, but it sets the film up nicely; and actually ends up being one of the best parts. While the film is mostly fun throughout, there are times when the plot isn't entirely interesting and this does bring the whole piece down a bit. At just eighty minutes, Mama's Dirty Girls doesn't really have time to get too boring, however, and I'm sure most viewers won't have much of a problem with the 'downtime'. The girls don't particularly impress with their performances, but they do well in other ways. The film features a fair bit of nudity, which is always welcome in films like this (and, films not like this) and the girls look nice too, which is a bonus. There's a fair bit of violence too; though nothing too shocking. It all boils down to a suitably downbeat conclusion which sees the lead characters pretty much get what they deserve! Overall, this is a decent slice of seventies trash and fans of such films could do a lot worse!

If this film had been directed by Russ Meyer it would have been so much better. The gals sure look good and the guys are either dumb or studs (or both) and Meyer's cartoon style of film making would have turned this threadbare romp into good fun. Oh well, one can't have everything and we do have down on her luck Hollywood old-timer Gloria Grahame in good form as the feisty 'Mama' looking for gullible men to marry so she can bump them off for their money. When she is not on screen however, boredom stretches to the horizon and you may want to read a newspaper or find something else to do until she returns.

This is more early 70's "hicksploitation"; a very low-budget film that borrows heavily from already low-budget, Roger Corman-produced fare like "Bloody Mama" and "Big Bad Mama", except that it seems to be set in the present day. Like "Big Bad Mama" especially it focuses on an older female criminal and her sexy daughters as they seduce and murder wealthy men. The mother marries the men, the two older daughters seduce them, and then they all kill them. The plot of this movie is actually pretty stupid. It is not really necessary to kill these men, nor if they're going to murder them is it really necessary to seduce them. And they're also pretty dumb criminals--their first target isn't even wealthy while their second is a dangerous widower who may have murdered his own wife. The ending is a lot less than action-packed--you get the idea they ran out of both money and coherent ideas.

What really redeems this movie though is the stellar cast. The mother is played by Gloria Graham, an actress whose B-movie career stretches all the way from 50's film noir like "The Big Heat" to 70's drive-in fair like this or the underrated horror flick "Blood and Lace". Despite a weak script and no-budget she holds her own here against the likes of Shelly Winters or Angie Dickinson who played similar roles in the Corman pictures. Then there are TWO 70's drive-in queens. Candice Rialson was not a great actress and only appeared in a handful of movies (most famously as a very tempting college co-ed who tries to seduce Clint Eastwood in "The Eiger Sanction"), but she was always VERY sexy, and her character here is such a malicious minx she not only tempts her stepfather by lolling around in a skimpy bikini, but she also cruelly teases a semi-retarded handyman just for the fun of it. (She also has some memorable nude scenes). Then there's Sondra Currie, older sister to Cherie and Marie Currie of the music group The Runaways. Currie was kind of second-rate Claudia Jennings (who really should have been in this), but she's still great as the oldest sister who is not only sexy but vicious--she not only seduces her cop boyfriend into the murder plot, but commits a "criss-cross" murder to hook him in as well. (Unfortunately, Currie apparently had a no-nudity clause in her contract, which is regrettable in itself, but also results in dumb scenes where she's covering her bare breasts with her hands for no apparent reason while lying in bed with her boyfriend).

The youngest sister is the good one who's not involved with the seductions or the murders, and the actress who plays her is not very memorable. But the cast is rounded out nicely by Annika DiLorenzo as the cop's wife. While Currie and Rialson were somewhat talented, DiLorenzo was never more than a really nice piece, but she made quite an impression both on screen (where she played one of the slave girls in the extra near-hardcore footage Bob Guccione inserted into "Caligula") and off (where she was a Penthouse Pet of the Year and reputedly a mafia moll for several members of the Gambino family). This movie, as a movie, is a waste of time, but this cast might just be worth it.

Mama's Dirty Girls (1974)

** (out of 4)

Mildly entertaining exploitation film has Gloria Grahame playing Mama, a single mother who with the help of her sexy daughters marries rich men and then kills them. The gang sets up shop in a small town where mama finds a hotel owner with some cash but one of the daughter's falls for a local cop.

MAMA'S DIRTY GIRLS features a great title and a great poster and, to be honest, that's all you needed back in the day to get some people to view your low-budget movie. Director John Hayes put his footprint all over 70s exploitation and while this film isn't a classic it's at least entertaining enough to make it worth watching if you enjoy such trash.

The biggest problem with this film is that it has a very weak screenplay that's pretty much one-note from the start to the finish. The film opens up with an extremely good sequence as we see mama and her girls take care of a man who finally breaks down and goes after one of the daughters. I thought this sequence was well-directed and crossed the line into horror territory but sadly nothing that follows is near as good. There are way too many stretches where not much is happening and after a while the film just begins to drag.

With that said, it is fun seeing someone like Grahame eating up this exploitation role. By this time there were countless movies out there where former stars, now up in age, turned to playing bad people and the actress does a good job with it. The supporting performances are decent for the most part but the main thing is that the ladies get naked. After all, this is an exploitation movie.