ANGIE DICKINSON IN ROGER CORMAN’S B-CLASSIC BIG BAD MAMMA
BIG BAD MAMMA
1974/Director: Steve Carver/Writers: William W. Norton and Frances Doel
Cast: Angie Dickinson, William Shatner, Tom Skerritt, Dick Miller, Robbie Lee, Susan Sennett, Noble Willingham
I will assume (because so far I have not seen it stated explicitly) that this white trash exploitation gem from producer Roger Corman is supposed to be roughly based on the real life exploits of mid-west gangster Ma Barker and her daughters in the Barker/Karpis Gang. While Corman had already touched on this theme in his 1970 film with Shelley Winters called Bloody Mamma he let director Steve Carver handle this less violent, funnier and sexier retelling of the legend with Angie Dickinson as Wilma McClatchie, an east Texas mother who is driven to crime to try and save her daugther’s Polly and Billie Jean from a life of saw dust and pork an’ beans.
The movie came out in 1974 and at no time was white trash cinema more popular than in the early 70′s, with super cool Burt Reynolds playing a swamp bred stud in every other film he made and white trash pop hits like Amos Moses by super picker Jerry Reed played over the radio. The film also stars Tom Skerrit as bank robber Fred Diller, the Alvis Karpis character who was really the leader of the Barker gang it seems. Well in this depression era movie Dickinson wears the pants (literally, and sometimes they are bell bottoms!) and she and her growing gang escalate from simple bootlegging to bank robbery, kidnapping and murder in no time.
William Shatner is memorable as the “Kentucky fruitcake” William Baxter, who is more of a con-artist than a real gangster. He competes for Wilma’s charms against the hayseed with a Tommy gun Diller who has no love for this Kentucky gentleman crook. But he is too busy knocking up daughter Polly (played by squeaky voiced and freckle faced Robbie Lee who played the leader of the Dagger Debs in Jack Hill ‘s Switchblade Sisters) to give Wilma all the attention she needs. There is plenty of gratuitous sex and nudity here. Angie Dickinson has one scene of full frontal nudity (if that sort of thing interests anyone out there) and even Skerrit and Shatner show some skin. The daughters are in and out of clothes and in and out of bed quicker than a dog chasing a weasel around a hen house.
The violence is toned down and outlandish at times. Thank God cops in these movies never take any target practice. In one classic shoot out sequence Diller stands in the open with his Tommy gun and nails a half dozen or more cops hiding behind their cars before they finally plug him. The shootouts harken back to 1967′s excellent Bonnie and Clyde with Warren Beatty and Faye Duaway but are no where near as believable. B-movie institution and Corman regular Dick Miller plays a cop on the tail of Wilma who is always just one step behind her. Lot of fun. I recommend it.A – Z LIST OF URANIUM CAFE POSTS
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July 21st, 2008 at 4:14 am
I would have also recommended this site a month ago, but I just happened to re-watch this movie last week and wasn’t too thrilled with it. Admittedly, of all the movies on your homepage, this is my favorite since I’m not real into gore-fests (I’m more of a Smokey and the Bandit kind of guy), and I REALLY wanted to like this movie… I mean, Bill Shatner is laying pipe with Angie Dickinson, doesn’t that in and of itself make this a great film?
Nope. If you’re not going to give me great acting, interesting dialogue or an original plot – you better be ready to deliver the goods… and that means lots of violence and/or sexiness. This has only a moderate amount of both. And if you can’t deliver the goods, you’d better at least be cheesey enought to enjoy in a MST3K fashon, but this was just good enough to not fall into the “so bad it’s good category”. So a thumbs down from gilligan, but a big thumbs up to the Uranium Cafe back up and running!
July 21st, 2008 at 4:16 am
Correction to the first sentence “I would have also recommended this MOVIE a month ago”… not site. I will ALWAYS recommend the Uranium Cafe.
My bad. I should proofread my comments before I submit. Too lazy I guess.
July 21st, 2008 at 6:03 am
Thanks for your comments and disagreements on movie and music opinions are more than welcome since all of this is totally subjective, like what is the better burger, the Big Mac or the Whooper? Also, I know what you mean about typos and then sending off the comment and seeing all my blunders. I just cannot type and I try to get going fast and cannot make it 5 words usually with out bukku typos. I mean words like “have” or “connection” or “the” I just mess up over and over and of course I can spell those words, but my fingers seem to hit the vowels before the consonants.
As you may know I live in China and my choices are limited here and so one day when I was flipping through the unalphabetized DVDs at the local “FBI pirate warning ignoring” DVD store and found a few films that struck me as exceptional selections and one was Big Bad Mamma, a film I had never had much interest in seeing back when I had more choices. I think I had the DVD fir 6 months before I popped it in and while not “blown away” I was happy to have had for a night’s low brow entertainment and so recommended on that type of basis. It was better than CCTV (the state run propaganda network) or Mr and Mrs Smith (or the latest “hit” film that gets all the attention here). I will do an essay on movie watching here in China I think soon.
Also, I like gore less than my site may lead one to believe, though i am interested in it as a film phenomenon. I review of gore films can often be very tough and tend to be my harshest reviews. Alot of horror films were great without ever being gory or exploitive, while others were gory and great ( Romero’s Zombie films, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, etc…) but many are just pointless. To be frank, some scenes in Saving Private Ryan were “splatter” film material but of course it was not a gore film.
I am trying to branch out to other films now too, like The Seravnt and One Eyes Jacks and some film noir things since I love those films too. I have an essay in the oven on one of my favorite films ever called King Rat with George Segal and James Fox as POWs in WWII.
Thanks for the visit and opinions.