Ma Baker - Pistoleira Sanguinária

A major disappointment. As the apocryphal prize-winning cook and master criminal, Laurene Tuttle (who later the same year had a hilarious cameo as Sheriff Chambers' wife in 'Psycho') could really have shone as Ma Barker if she'd been backed by a halfway decent script & production; but this drab-looking quickie bogs down in endless talk and poorly executed action.

The high spot is probably the eye-watering scene in which Byron Foulger plays a plastic surgeon too drunk to properly handle a scalpel.

This film is a fairly inaccurate representation of Ma Barker, but is great fun with some very strange scenes. The slapping of the one son is a crack-up. Lurene Tuttle (Sheriff Chambers' sweet wife in PSYCHO) is incredibly vicious and driven as the matriarch of this ignorant brood of miscreants.

A 5 out of 10. Best performance = Lurene Tuttle. A lot of these cheapo exploitation flicks of the 50's and 60's are loaded with strange performances and interesting cinematography. This is available on cheap DVD and well worth a look. I waited years to find this one. Give it a shot!

I agree -- it was low budget schlock at its worst -- but I enjoyed it! I enjoyed seeing a Young Don Grady (of TV's My Three Sons fame) as one of the kids in the beginning of the film...Lurene Tuttle was quite 'campy' in her portrayal of 'Ma.' I only knew her from her days as the older nurse on the late 1960's TV series 'Julia' (starring Diahann Carroll).

I'll tell you how much I enjoyed this picture, I had gone to see a movie based on a Tony Award winning play earlier in the day, something that I had been looking forward to seeing, but I was thoroughly disenchanted and disgusted with it.

At least, with 'Ma', I did not expect HIGH expectations of it, but I enjoyed it!

Supposedly based upon the life of Ozark matriarch Ma Barker and her four felonious public enemy sons, this meanly made low budget example of drive-in movie schlock actually treats several incidents in the real-life career of the notorious Barker/Karpis Gang which was very active during 1931/35 from the Midwest into Southeast U.S., but so contorts the truth in order to create a lurid melodrama that a viewer is alienated from the proceedings, especially in light of obvious cut-rate production values. Al Karpis was the confirmed master hand behind the Gang's string of sinful successes whereas the factual Ma Barker, although enjoying holding open house for various fugitives, only travelled with her family and was patently incapable of organizing more than luncheons, whereas in this poorly scripted travesty Lurene Tuttle as a tommygun wielding sadistic sociopath performs a raft of maniacal actions, including running over a policeman twice, all while planning the Gang's adventures and serving up heist advice to respectful triggermen such as John Dillinger, Machine Gun Kelly and Baby Face Nelson.

I saw this with my family as a surprise studio preview to get reviews from the public. I was10 years old and this was in Burbank, CA. It was shocking to me then but I now know it was pretty campy. But Mr. Barker's killing was the worst for me. I think my parents were pissed off but we stayed through to the end.