Bloody Mama **** (1970, Shelley Winters, Pat Hingle, Don Stroud, Diane Varsi, Bruce Dern, Robert De Niro, Robert Walden, Alex Nicol) – Classic Movie Review 5368

Producer-director Roger Corman’s exciting and fast-moving 1970 gangster thriller cheapie stars the redoubtable Shelley Winters, who eagerly grabs her fine acting chance and her machine gun as uber-forceful Thirties mobster Kate ‘Ma’ Barker.

Ma leads her gun-toting Ozark clan out of Depression-era poverty by stealing, threatening, robbing banks, kidnapping and killing. ‘It’s supposed to be a free country,’ she says. ‘But unless you’re rich, you ain’t free. So I aim to be freer than the rest of the people.’

In the remarkable cast, Don Stroud (as Herman Barker), Robert De Niro (as Lloyd Barker), Robert Walden (as Fred Barker) and Clint Kimbrough (as Arthur Barker) stand out as Ma Barker’s bloody brood, especially De Niro as a drug-taking son.

Bruce Dern also has a good time as the Walden gay character Fred Barker’s ex-con lover Kevin Dirkman, who proceeds to ditch Fred and jump into Ma’s bed instead. Robert Thom’s story (with Don Peters) and screenplay tries for extra class in a probing character study, but it is quite strong enough even without it.

Corman recalls: ‘We were aware we were making a very special sort of movie. Certainly it was gangster film, but it was more than that. It examined the dynamics of a very strong, united family. In this film it was the woman who called the shots.’

As the poster says: ‘You gotta believe… you gotta have faith… but first you gotta get rid of the witnesses!’ However its most famous tagline is ‘The family that stays together slays together!’

It is the first of four Corman ‘Mama’ pictures, preceding Big Bad Mama (1974) and Crazy Mama (1975) and Big Bad Mama II (1987).

It runs 90 minutes, with the cut version at 82 minutes.

Also in the cast are Pat Hingle, Diane Varsi as Herman’s hooker friend Mona Gibson, Alex Nicol, Michael Fox, Scatman Crothers, Stacy Harris, Pamela Dunlap, Lisa Jill, Steve Mitchell and Roy Idom.

© Derek Winnert 2017 Classic Movie Review 5368

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