Bloody Mama
Director: Roger Corman
Year: 1957
Rating: 6.0
There
is nothing as strong as a mother's love. Or a child's love for his mother.
It comes in all shapes and sizes but it can be there for a lifetime. The
mother in this one should be celebrated nationally on Mother's Day. Have
a stamp saying Love Your Mother. Because there is nothing but love here for
her four sons. No matter their misdeeds, there is love and forgiveness. Crush
a man's Adam apple with your boot and kill him - Love and Forgiveness. Tie
a girl to the bed stand naked. Love and Forgiveness. Enter into a sexual
relationship with another man who likes to whip you. Love and Forgiveness.
Hump your brother's girlfriend in the back seat of the car while your brother
is driving. Love and Forgiveness. They are your son's. The blood of your
blood. And every now and then you like them lying in bed next to you at night.
Ma Barker. As legendary as they come. Her
sons were basically all rabid dogs. Killers with no compunction. Cretins
with no mercy. In this film from Roger Corman, he plays down their extensive
criminal activities and murders to focus more on the perverse family unit.
She packs up her boys after they rape a girl, leave papa behind and head
out to find America. Hard times during the Depression. One son is a psycho
killer, another discovers he likes being hurt, another finds heroin and the
final one is just creepy. Not a bad threesome playing the first three - Don
Stroud, Robert Walden and Robert De Niro. When Bruce Dern joins them as the
brother's whipper and occasional lover of the mother it is a full house.
Mom is of course played by Shelley Winters. A beauty back in the 1940s, as
her weight increased so did the crazy in her roles.
The film is part farce, part crime but mainly
just down and dirty. The iconic photos of Winters wielding a machine-gun
leave you expecting more action and violence than there is. Large sections
of it are taken up with the family telling mom how much they love her and
her fawning all over them. Or when they kidnap a man (Pat Hingle), their
conversations with him. Mainly there is just a big shoot-out at the end.
A doozy. In reality, it was only Ma and one of the sons against a lot of
law. The neighbors come and have a picnic and watch. Which actually happened.
Historians push back on the way Ma Barker
has been portrayed in films. They say she was not the leader of the gang
and was not likely involved in their crimes. Just a mom who wanted to be
with her boys as they skipped around the country. Have a good meal ready
for them when they came home from robbing a bank. But we believe what we
want to believe and neither she nor her sons are around to say otherwise
and this is the Ma Barker we want to believe in.
