Fred Schaefer Bloody Mama was in the theaters back when I was too young to get into R rated movies by myself, only recently did I get a chance to finally view this film. Seeing it now after nearly four decades, I think Bloody Mama tells us much more about pop culture in 1970 then it does about criminals in the 1930's. First of all, it's clearly an attempt by Roger Corman to cash in on the enormous success of Bonnie and Clyde, made only a few years earlier. The producers take full advantage of the changes in censorship ushered in by that previous film and here give us a screenplay filled with incest, homosexuality, nudity, drug addiction, and sadism, all portrayed by a cast of characters without a single redeeming moral value except for the fact that Ma Barker really did love her sons. A lot.Corman was obviously pandering to early 70's audiences (especially the youth like myself) who simply could not get enough good old sex and violence in their entertainment. Sadly, Bloody Mama isn't very good when compared with Bonnie and Clyde or The Wild Bunch; the screenplay just trudges along with scenes built to showcase each character's particular depraved personality. And the low budget really shows. Still any movie with this cast is worth seeing at least once if you're a film buff. Don Stroud, Clint Kimbrough, Robert Walden and a young Robert De Niro are the Barker boys. Was this De Niro's first gangster role? Stroud is pretty much forgotten today, but he was a great bad guy on old cop shows and would have been a much bigger star if he'd gotten the right role. Bruce Dern is Walden's prison lover who joins the gang and gets to sleep with Ma. He's still playing mean bastards all these years later, just watch HBO's Big Love. The only remotely redeeming person is Pat Hingle's kidnapped businessman; Hingle was an always dependable character star who brought a lot to anything he was in. Scatman Crothers is here a full decade before he worked for Kubrick in The Shinning and the late Diane Varsi gets to show off her breasts in one of her last roles. The main reason to see Bloody Mama of course is Shelley Winters as Ma Barker. Winters was one of the movies all time great scenery chewers and she doesn't let us down here. Her Kate Barker snarls, yells and sneers when she needs to and then turns around and cries, pleads and begs if that is what it takes to get her boys to bend to her will. Winters made a long career out of playing monster mothers, shrews and harridans, but there was something about the way she portrayed her mean characters that suggested they were just women who'd had to put up with a lot in life and had learned to give it back twice over. In the end, Bloody Mama is a relic of a bygone time, that time being the 1970's.

jotix100 Roger Corman, who specialized in low budget films show an ambitious side in directing "Bloody Mama" a sort of loosely based biographic picture about the criminal family that terrorized rural America during the Great Depression. Mr. Corman evidently took liberties in telling the story, the way he presents it, more as an entertainment than a factual account of the Barkers.Ma Barker, a hillbilly from the backwoods is tired of living in poverty. Her four sons clearly adored her because otherwise it would make no sense of following the old lady into a crime spree unlike the ones the country had seen up to then. The four sons, Herman, a trigger happy individual, Arthur, the quiet one, LLoyd, the junkie and Fred, an openly gay man, way ahead of the times he was living. Herman brought along his girlfriend Mona, and Fred, his lover, Kevin Dirkman, who is one is to believe the material, also serviced a horny Ma Barker.The director achieved a coup just in the mere casting of the film. Shelley Winters, who played Ma Barker, made a terrific contribution to our enjoyment. Don Stroud, Clint Kimbrough, Robert Walden and a young Robert Deniro are seen as the four sons. Diane Varsi and Bruce Dern are the two of the people the family attracted.

samgrass-3 Roger Corman's take on Ma Barker, with Shelley Winters hitting rock bottom as Ma. Corman mentions in the credits that any similarity between anyone living or dead is purely coincidental, except for the Barker family. Well, we can include them in with the rest, because other than naming the characters after Ma and her sons, there is no similarity. It's just good, cheesy fun. Going for a psychological turn, the movie seems to revolve around sex, except for parts where Corman inserts his social commentary on America, which is always a hoot. It was made during the period where Corman, applauded by the French, was believing his own reviews and imagining himself not as a B director, but as an important social commentator. Anyone who sat through Gas-s-s-s knows the depth of Corman's thinking. Robert DeNiro has one of his early parts, playing one of Ma's sons. I can just imagine method actor DeNiro asking Corman what his motivation is. Oh to be a fly on that wall. Not to be outdone, Shelley also mumbles quite a few of her lines, perhaps competing with DeNiro. Bruce Dern is also in there, as son Arthur's (Clint Kimbrough) sadistic prison friend who joins the gang. Don Stroud plays oldest son Herman. Lots of nude scenes, though I kept wishing that Shelley would keep her clothes on. Thankfully, she did. It's fun to watch, but Corman did this sort of nonsense better in Big Bad Mama.

tingeyh-1 This movie was my introduction to Roger Corman. I am now hooked. I think other posters have put too much emphasis on accuracy and technique. Sure the plot is not always logical and some of the performances are not great. I find that classics like Bloody Mama are so fun because the director and actors are aware that the film is not Oscar-caliber but still have fun with it. What makes this film so great is that it is a disturbing,campy, slapped-together mess. I would also like to point out that the always great Don Stroud has said in interviews that he had an intense affair with Shelley Winters during the filming of Bloody Mama. As they played a creepy mother son duo, this little morsel of trivia adds a whole new level of disturbing to this fabulous film.