Watch Bloody Mama For Free

Wow! Such a good movie.

One of my all time favorites.

It was OK. I don't see why everyone loves it so much. It wasn't very smart or deep or well-directed.

The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

'Bloody Mama' is low budgeted gangster film directed by Roger Corman. It is a gritty B-movie loosely based on real life Ma Barker who ran The Barker Gang. Not the best gangster flick out there but interesting enough in its heavy exploitation sauce to give it a curious look. The film doesn't idolize the gangster lifestyle but rather showing them merciless sociopaths these kind of people actually were. Corman turns on another twist of sleaze with Ma Barker's incestuous relationship with her sons. Shelly Winters' larger-than-life performance as corruptive and disillusioned Ma Barker in the verge of insanity is just magnificent. Although the performance goes on the edge of hammy, but it is powerful play and undoubtedly entertaining. And one can't go without mentioning the immensely talented supporting cast with strong acting works - Bruce Dern, Pat Hingle, Diane Varsi, Scatman Crothers and Robert DeNiro in one his earliest roles as junky Lloyd Barker.Fast paced, energetic action ride about machine-gun toting mom who robs banks with her sons and speeding past depression era's '70s style supermarkets. Nice piece of enjoyable trash, and it is one of the Corman's personal favorites.

No doubt inspired by the huge success of the big budget major Hollywood studio movie "Bonnie & Clyde", American-International Pictures teamed up with producer/director Roger Corman to make this story of Ma Barker and her sons. But the results are sort of disappointing. I feel I should point out that I didn't find the movie to be awful - the movie is never boring, the production values are okay, the cast (not just Winters but also the future stars) give good performances, and there are some trashy touches that are fun. However, the script should have had a lot more work before filming started. We don't really see what motivates not only the character of Ma Barker, but her loyal sons (who are pretty interchangeable for the most part.) Also, the first half of the movie has some pretty sloppy storytelling, being one vignette after another with no firm story being told. And in the end, the movie can't decide whether it is a serious look at the Barker gang or a trashy drive-in viewpoint.As I said, the movie is not terrible, but it doesn't really work at whatever angle you want to regard it as. It's probably best suited for viewing when you're in a real undemanding mood.

Although it's always interesting to watch a Roger Corman movie, I couldn't really get with this one. The problem is that the entire movie is laid out in the first ten minutes. Ma Barker is a twisted woman who lives out her mania through her sons, with whom she has incestuous relationships in every sense of the word. A crime spree ensues until it all ends in the long-anticipated bloodbath. Roll credits. Lots of gore but no suspense or development. Shelley Winters acts her butt off but can't salvage the movie. Interestingly, Robert de Niro has his first role here, and surprisingly he's laughable. Actually, maybe not so surprisingly since he has to overplay a hick and finds no place for his method acting. It's amazing that he still managed to evolve into stardom after this rocky start.

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.