Bloody Mama

Director: Roger Corman

Cast: Robert De Niro, Bruce Dern

1970 / 90min / 35mm

Loosely based on the exploits of “Ma” Barker, that famed Midwestern criminal matriarch of the “public enemy” era, Corman’s drive-in dandy stars Shelley Winters as a mountainous, monstrous Ma, lording over a brood of killer sons that includes Don Stroud and a pre-superstardom Robert De Niro, joined by gunsel Bruce Dern in a spree of bank robberies, abductions, and cold-blooded murders. An attempt to cash-in on the success of Bonnie and Clyde with none of that film’s Hollywood gloss, Corman’s dysfunctional family melodrama—a personal favorite among his own films—gives us the Barker-Karpis gang as a pack of hop-heads, sadists, and psychos. Which of course is much more fun.