Bloody Mama

Young Kate Barker is brutalized by her father and older brothers, who rape her. Thirty-five years later, the middle-aged Kate 'Ma' Barker, now brutalizes innocent people herself, while indulging her monstrous sexual appetites. She lives by robbing banks with her four sons; the pragmatic Arthur, the sadistic Herman, the bisexual Fred, and the loyal, drug-addicted Lloyd. It all begins in the late 1920s when Ma leaves her husband, George, and her Arkansas home and embarks on her own with her four sons on a robbery-murder spree to make her own fortune, while keeping them under a tight leash.

When Herman and Fred are arrested and imprisoned for petty theft charges, Ma takes over the group and leads Arthur and Lloyd on a bank robbery spree to gain enough money to get her sons out of jail. The gang is joined by a gunman, Kevin Dirkman, who was Fred's cellmate during his incarceration (and his strongly implied lover). The group is also joined by a local prostitute, Mona Gibson, whom Herman frequented before his imprisonment. The gang resorts to more violent action and robberies.

While hiding out at a cabin in Kentucky, Lloyd is approached playfully by a young woman named Rembrandt, who swims up to him as he dangles his feet in the lake. The encounter begins flirtatiously, but quickly turns into rape and abduction, after Lloyd shows her the needle marks on his arm. Lloyd tells her he's a Barker, in spite of Ma's warning to use an alias. Not wanting the woman to report their location to the police, the Barkers hold her captive and Ma kills her by drowning her in the bathtub, despite the protests of her sons.

Some time later, the gang arrives in Tennessee where they abduct a wealthy businessman, Sam Pendlebury. Holding him for a $300,000 ransom, the sons, particularly Herman, bond with their captive whom they see as the decent father figure they never had. When Herman and Mona go to collect the ransom, they are chased by a pair of FBI agents and barely escape. The ransom is eventually paid in full, and the plan is to leave Sam untied at the hideout, giving them plenty of time to escape before he can talk to the police. But Herman wants to see Sam's eyes--which when uncovered, remind him of their father. Sam says he can't see any of them (almost certainly true, given his head trauma, and the fact he's always been straight with them, even when it put his life in danger).

Ma still insists Sam be killed, so as to avoid any possibility of his identifying them. He's led into the woods to be shot, but the boys, now seeing Herman as their leader, set him free, lying to Ma about killing him. (There is no indication this leads to the gang's ultimate downfall). Later, to explain why they need to leave the territory immediately, Herman tells Ma of the deception, and knocks her to the ground, saying she's no longer the boss. The trust between them is gone.

The gang hides out in Florida Everglades where Lloyd soon dies from a morphine overdose and Mona leaves Herman and the gang after she reveals that she's pregnant and does not want to be around them anymore out of fear for the safety of her unborn child, which Herman fathered. Her fears are justified when Herman and Kevin give away their hiding place a little later. A local handyman and caretaker, Moses, witnesses them shooting an alligator out on a lake with a Tommy gun and calls the police to report his suspicions. When asked, he says their cars have Tennessee plates, and the authorities quickly deduce these are the Barkers.

At the climax, a large contingent of FBI agents and local police arrive at the Barkers' hideout and a huge shootout ensues between the authorities and the surviving members of the gang. Kevin, Fred, and Arthur are all killed (along with many officers). Herman commits suicide to prevent himself from being sent to prison again. Ma is the last one to fall, firing her Thompson machine gun at the police, screaming in rage and anguish, unable to accept that her boys are dead because of her.

AIP announced Don Peters was writing a script as early as 1967.[5] The gunman named Kevin is patterned after the historical gunman Alvin Karpis. The wealthy businessman character of Sam Pendlebury is a combination of historical kidnap victims William Hamm and Edward Bremer whom the Barker gang kidnapped in 1933 and 1934 respectively.

The film was shot entirely in Arkansas.[6]

Prior to playing Ma Barker in this film, Winters played "Ma Parker", a villain inspired by Barker, in the 1960s Batman TV series.

The film had its premiere on March 24, 1970 in Little Rock, Arkansas and was then released in 350 theaters in the southern United States from Texas to Florida, including 65 theaters in Arkansas.[7][6]

The film holds a score of 17% on Rotten Tomatoes based on 6 reviews.[8]

Howard Thompson of The New York Times wrote that "Miss Winters is plain wonderful" in the film, which although similar to Bonnie and Clyde in subject matter, "happens to be more honest and less pretentious, with no grudging admiration for criminal 'rebels.' What hoists the picture into real substance toward the home stretch is an eerie and fascinating by [sic] credible sequence with the Barker clan holding as captive a blindfolded millionaire, strongly played by Pat Hingle."[9] Arthur D. Murphy of Variety wrote, "Corman's production has the naturalistic look sought, but the occasionally poor looping and uneven color and textural qualities add up to a liability. His direction is passive, unpretentious, unambitious and therefore nearly nonexistent."[10] Gene Siskel of the Chicago Tribune gave the film 1 star out of 4 and called it "92 minutes of sado-masochism, incest, satyrism and voyeurism woven into a disgraceful screenplay ... In fact, the whole treatment might be called embarrassed 'Bonnie and Clyde.'"[11] Charles Champlin of the Los Angeles Times stated, "It is such a close if mocking tribute to a celebrated movie of a couple of years ago that it could be subtitled 'Mommie and Clyde.' It is a sleek, vile exercise ... Indeed, 'Bloody Mama' is a piece of pop art from which you emerge feeling depressed, degraded and diminished."[12] Kenneth Turan of The Washington Post wrote, "Its lyrical pastel shades—even the blood blends deftly into the color scheme—show that infinite pains have been taken with the film's visual aspect, a Corman trademark. Unfortunately, another Corman trademark—atrocious acting—is well-represented here, making it hard to recommend the film to people who can hear as well as see."[13]

The film was AIP's highest-grossing film of the year.[1]

The film is recognized by American Film Institute in these lists:

• 2008: AFI's 10 Top 10:
  • Nominated Gangster Film[14]

The film was initially banned in the UK, France, and New Zealand, although these bans were subsequently lifted.[7] Screenwriter Robert Thom's novelization of the film was also banned by New Zealand's Indecent Publications Tribunal in 1971, but 40 years later (in 2012) the ban was overturned by the Tribunal's successor, the Office of Film and Literature Classification.[15][16]

• List of American films of 1970
• Ma Barker's Killer Brood (1960), an earlier highly-fictionalized account of the Barker-Karpis gang
• Big Bad Mama (1974), a later film by Roger Corman about a mother-turned-gangster
• Big Bad Mama II (1987), the sequel to the previous film, also by Corman

• Bloody Mama at the American Film Institute Catalog
• Bloody Mama at IMDb
• Bloody Mama at Rotten Tomatoes