Bloody Mama (1970)

It's entirely possible that sending the audience out feeling lousy was intentional

The plot isn't so bad, but the pace of storytelling is too slow which makes people bored. Certain moments are so obvious and unnecessary for the main plot. I would've fast-forwarded those moments if it was an online streaming. The ending looks like implying a sequel, not sure if this movie will get one

The best films of this genre always show a path and provide a takeaway for being a better person.

One of the film's great tricks is that, for a time, you think it will go down a rabbit hole of unrealistic glorification.

Which would be, of course, none.This movie takes a lot of liberties with the Barker Gang story, as one might expect. The whole thing also has kind of a creepy, incestuous vibe to it.The film is disjointed in its narrative and the characters do things that don't make a lick of sense. Shelly Winters looks like a confused old woman in the film (made when she was only 50) and her acting is just dreadful.the historical Ma Barker, by the way, was probably not even a criminal, her reputation was enhanced to allow the FBI to deflect from the fact they shot a 62 year old woman.Again, it's Roger Corman. A guy who made a hundred bad movies but gave a dozen actual stars and directors their start. Look for an early role by Robert DiNiro in this one.

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.

Bonnie and Clyde was a big hit in 1967, and I don't doubt that Hollywood's great money-spinner, Roger Corman, had that on his mind when he decided to direct a film based on another of America's great crime legends. The story of "Machine Gun Totting Ma Barker" is a well known one; I won't profess to know the ins and outs of it, but the basics are common knowledge. The film would only appear to be loosely based on the classic story, however, and Corman seemed keener to put the focus on the situation within the group rather than actually telling a story. The plot focuses on Ma Barker; a strong matriarch with four sons. The story takes place within depression era USA and Ma and her sons find themselves with little to live on and so turn to crime. The troupe carries out robberies, commits murder and does other such illegal acts and it soon gets dubbed as a 'crime spree'. However, more interesting than that is how the group itself works; perversion is rife as we get to witness things such as incest and homosexuality within the group.The film is rather entertaining throughout, but for me; something about it just doesn't work. Corman's directing style is very cold and despite excellent performances from the cast - the film fails to be involving and nobody really steps up to take the 'antihero' role effectively. It's a good job, therefore, that the film is entertaining for most of the duration as there isn't much in the way of distraction when it comes to the less entertaining parts. Corman has got himself together a good cast of actors; chief among them obviously being Shelly Winters. Winters looks decidedly less glamorous than in previous performances - but fits into her role here very well indeed and really convincing that she is the character she is portraying. The rest of the cast is fine too, featuring good performances from the likes of Don Stroud and Bruce Dern, as well an early performance from the great Robert DeNiro. There's not a great deal of highlights in the film; but Pat Hingle's role is entertaining and it all boils down to a very well working final shootout scene. Overall, this is decent enough; but I'm not surprised that it hasn't gone down as a great film and would only recommend it to those who happen across a copy.

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.