Ma Barker's Killer Brood (1960)

The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

Good films always raise compelling questions, whether the format is fiction or documentary fact.

Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.

Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

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.

Best exchange in the movie. One of Ma Barker's boys remarks of some blond tart that "she has a body by Fisher." (It was a popular commercial slogan at the time.) Ma replies sourly: "Any man who fishes knows that sooner or later he'll get stuck -- by the hook." We're not talking Billy Shakespeare here, nor Raymond Chandler, nor even Mickey Spillane.This movie is really distinctive. It features some of the worst acting, writing, and directing ever committed to celluloid. Wow -- it leaves you breathless. What holds the thing together -- to the extent that anything does -- is the story itself. Ma Barker, who shouts every line and slaps men and boys around, while teaching them that church is a place where you steal money from the collection plate. One of her boys loves playing the violin. That makes him a sissy, so she smashes the instrument over her knee. Too bad he didn't play the calliope. The boys grow up under her tutelage and petty theft turns into deliberate murder.For years, J. Edgar Hoover, President-for-Life of the FBI, spent his time and effort tracking down these small-time anti-nomian hoods, like Ma Barker, Machine Gun Kelly, Alvin Karpis, and John Dillinger. They were a sensational nuisance in the depression-era South and Midwest. But Hoover also was adamant about the Mafia in the cities. There was no such thing. Even into the 1960s there was popular doubt about its existence due to Hoover's influence.Hoover never wanted to pursue organized crime. There was too much money around that might corrupt his agents, and too little celebrity for Hoover himself. The Mafia were much harder to identify and convict than dumb hoods like Baby Face Nelson. And members of Cosa Nostra had names like Frank ("The Enforcer") Nitty, Salvatore ("The String Theorist") D'Amiano, and Giordano ("The Logical Positivist") Bruno. It would have been like tackling a tar baby, whereas Ma Barker and her Merry Men were relatively easy prey. Historically, she wasn't the gang's leader but more of a maid.Hardly anything resembling a thought went into this production. At a party (in the middle 1930s) somebody is banging out left-over boogie woogie on the piano, from the 1940s, and some of the guests do a tame jitterbug. The makeups and wardrobe are echt-1950s -- except for one spectacular three-piece suit worn by one of Ma's kids that has shoulders wider than those made for Joan Crawford by Adrian. It's a loud pin stripe and it fits him loosely, like a tent.There's no reason to go on about this film. As one scene is ending, the director's camera follows a man's hands down to his desk top, where he briefly touches some of the clutter there, then follows his hands back up to his face -- utterly without point.You want a good crime story of a gang? Try "The Asphalt Jungle" or "White Heat." Skip this.

It's true, Ma Barker really did nothing, other than as the man said, provide a house of refuge for her admitedly killer brood. She never had a gun in her hand (the billboard for the movie shows her blasting away with a "tommy" gun) and would not even have known how to fire one (she was not bright). Ma Barker never was charged with a crime, and was never arrested. She was shot by Hoover's "G Men" in I think 1935, and they had to justify he murder somehow, so they just made up the story of her being a criminal master mind. Anyhow, this movie stinks, not just because it is fake, but from what the young man above said so well, that it is just a junky movie.

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.