Big Bad Mama

Imagine Bonnie and Clyde without Clyde and with more of a trashy B-movie style to it, and you've got an idea of what Big Bad Mama is like. With Roger Corman on producing duty, you've to expect some silly trashy fun, and this film delivers that in droves as it's clear that nobody cared about making a credible film, which is usually good news for entertainment value. Angie Dickinson takes the lead role and makes good of it, as she carries the film with her engaging and enthusiastic performance. The film focuses on Dickinson's character Wilma, who decides to go into bootlegging when her lover is killed. Along with her two daughters, Wilma travels across the country and eventually meets a bank robber named Fred, and the pair decides to put their relative talents to good use in order to 'earn' themselves some money. The support cast is good, with the likes of William Shatner, Dick Miller and Tom Skerritt being put to good use, while lesser known performers such as Robbie Lee and Susan Sennett also giving entertaining turns. The reason this film works so well is undoubtedly down to director Steve Carver's focus on entertaining his audience. This does leave it feeling more than a little bit empty, but in a film where bank robberies, sex scenes, car chases and more feature heavily, this isn't a big problem. Overall, if you fancy a fun filled eighty minutes or so - you could certainly do a lot worse than this little flick!

Angie Dickinson stars in the title role as tough, but sexy matriarch, Wilma McClatchie, attempting to keep her family together during the Depression. After a shoot-out with the cops, Wilma's world is turned upside down by the death of her lover Barney (Noble Willingham). She initially tries to continue with Barney's bootlegging business with the help of her uncontrollable daughters Billy Jean (Susan Sennett) and Polly (Robbie Lee of 'Switchblade Sisters' fame). Things don't work out and they have to hit the road, all the while being pursued by tenacious lawman Bonney (B-grade legend and Roger Corman favourite Dick Miller).

A chance encounter with a bank robber, Diller (Tom Skerritt), causes a career rethink, and when the fugitives meet charming con man Baxter (William Shatner), the gang is complete. Will they find true love and happiness and a new life in California? Will they meet their end via the deadly force of Dick Miller and company? Will they all screw each other and say "hot damn!" a lot to the accompaniment of banjo music? Watch this Roger Corman produced campy trash and find out.

This movie is definitely one of the standouts when discussing 70s sexploitation...a very entertaining 30s rural gangster film; sex and violence at its best. Accept the film as trashy fun and you'll be fine.

Crashing cars, splatter guns, sex and nudity—whatever else about Roger Corman, he never made a boring movie, and this one seldom lets up. Take Wilma (Dickinson) and her two hormonal daughters. When they're not sticking a .45 in some moneyman's hapless face, they're stripping down for extra-curricular action. Lucky Skerritt and Shatner, except Skerritt's strictly low-class, while Shatner's a little short in the guts department. But Wilma's got high-class aspirations. So, being a hardscrabble, rural woman, she robs folks out in the open instead of behind boardroom doors.

But note the people she robs. All are pillars of what the counter-cultural 70's would call the "establishment". There's the huckstering preacher, the mortgage bankers, the boozy American Legion, and finally the wealthy snobs who think they are the "better people". In fact, their talk about not taxing the better people sounds almost contemporary. Note too that it's the high-class pretender Shatner who double-crosses the others. Yes indeed, screenwriter Norton may have been blacklisted in the 50's, but the political echoes continue

There's no room here for nuance or lengthy dialog. These folks don't waste time talking when there's another bank to rob or another car to crash. It's strictly the fast life for Wilma and her brood. Note how Mom sabotages daughter Polly's wedding, saying Polly'll only wind up on a poor farm with a bunch of skinny kids. That's probably some insight into those bank-robbing desperadoes of the Dust Bowl '30's. And so, America's back-handed liking for up-front outlaws like Wilma and Co. gets another jazzy installment.

The 1930's where America was at its worst:The Great Depression, The Dust Bowl in the Midwest. Hard times was at its worst, especially for Wilma(Angle Dickinson) and her two daughters BilliyJean(Susan Sennett) and Polly(Robbie Lee). Tired of being poor, they head out West to make a living. They come across Wilma's bootlegging lover(Noble Willingham) at a church to attend Polly's wedding which never takes place because Mama objects the man and his family. They would later find new partners in crime after Uncle Barney gets killed by the Feds. They would me etc a bank robber(Tom Skerritt) and a gambler(William Shatner) . Think they can pull it off? Of course. "Big Bad Mama" packs a lot in this movie: Laughs, drama, romance, even gunfire. No one has been left out of the fun. Billy Jean is the tough older daughter, while Polly is the very hormonally, emotional one. They did give the bank robber some lover while Wilma did the gambler. I heard that this almost got an Oscar nomination, but the silliness gave it a nod. I say, "It's good!" Silly or not, its a great movie. Great for late night viewing. 4 out of 5 stars