Crazy Mama

This lively celebration of America in the 1950's is one of director Jonathan Demme's earliest and best films. After losing their beauty parlor to repossession men in Long Beach, California, grandmother Ann Sothern, mother Cloris Leachman, and daughter Linda Purl hit the road and turn to a life of crime, hoping to eventually make their way to family homestead in Arkansas. CRAZY MAMA recreates a convincing '50's atmosphere, offers some of that decade's greatest music, and features an excellent cast. The film's brightest moments are supplied by Ann Sothern, one of the finest actresses to ever grace the screen. Sothern's daughter is actress Tisha Sterling who plays her mother's character as a young woman in the opening scenes of the film.

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.

Jonathan Demme directs this joyous unrelentlessly kitschy celebration of 50's America: opportunity, rock'n'roll, and the road. He follows three generations of women and the men they pick up, for a crime spree from California to the old family homestead in Arkansas.

hat do we have here? The film debut of both Bill Paxton and Dennis Quaid. And Dick Miller appears! Oh, and it is directed by Jonathan Demme (his second feature) and produced by Julie Corman? Excellent!

The actual film is pretty silly, with bank robbery and general hijinks that seemed par for the course in the mid-1970s, at least in the world of Roger and Julie Corman. What I enjoyed most about this film was actually the soundtrack -- a great use of classic songs in this movie, which probably took much of the budget.

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.