Crazy 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.

Jonathan Demme directs this AIP-style "criminals on a tear" road flick with a lot of style. He celebrates both 1950s Americana and old performers, like a man nostalgic for the 1950s and old Hollywood. It's a redneck fight for justice, with women beginning a crime spree to get the money to buy back the family farm, like THE LAST PICTURE SHOW meets a Dorothy Arzner version of WHITE HEAT. Cruise way down the cast list, and far from Cloris Leachman and Ann Sothern in the leads, you'll find 1930s Tinseltown prankster Vince Barnett, and Bill Paxton before anyone thought to put his name on the credits.

Bruce Logan's best-known titles as cinematographer may be TRON and DRACULA'S DOG, but he does good here, and is still working. The music by Snotty Snot and the Hankies offers the gravitas that the subject require.

Cloris Leachman was spinning off from a supporting role on "The Mary Tyler Moore Show" to headlining her own series "Phyllis" in 1975, the same year this goofy road movie was released. Leachman stars as Melba Stokes, who runs a beauty parlor in Long Beach, California with her mother Sheba (Ann Sothern) and her daughter Cheryl (Linda Purl). When the shop is repossessed by banker Jim Backus aka Thurston Howell III (a great little cameo) Leachman and ladies head back to Arkansas and the family farm which was stolen away from them when Melba was a girl. Along for the ride is Cheryl's boyfriend, surfer boy Donny Most aka Ralph Malph who finds out he's going to be a daddy thanks to Cheryl. The ladies knock over a filling station, which sets about their plan to rob their way back to Arkansas earning the money to buy back the farm.

Stopping over in Las Vegas, Melba hooks up with Jim Bob Trotter (Stuart Whitman). Cheryl falls for greasy biker Snake (Bryan Englund, Leachman's real life son), and Sheba makes a friend in elderly Bertha (Merie Earle) who believes that the secret to casino winning is to spout cliches before she pulls the handle on the slot machine. Jim Bob and Melba decide to have a phony wedding so the makeshift gang can rob the chapel, and then it's back on the road!

The ladies continue their crime spree, knocking over a grocery store and a bank. Meanwhile, back in Texas, Jim Bob's depressing wife (Sally Kirkland) is startled to hear that he's been kidnapped. Another plan by Melba and company to raise money, this one turns out in a bad way for the group. When Melba and her gang finally return to Jerusalem, Arkansas they are disappointed to see that the farmland of their youth has been turned into a country club. Needless to say, there is a hijacked wedding and more car chases.

This is a funny movie (with a GREAT final scene) that is given spirited performances by Leachman, Sothern, and especially Merie Earle as the nursing home escapee who finds a few thrills in her last days. There is some surprising violence, an eclectic 50's soundtrack, and control over the whole crazy-quilt through the direction of Jonathan Demme. The most touching scene in the film is when the weary travellers stand under a tree and remember their fallen friends by "shouting them into Heaven".

Hopefully, this one will be released on DVD in my lifetime.

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.

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.