Bloody Mama is a 1970 American exploitation crime film directed by Roger Corman and starring Shelley Winters in the title role, with Bruce Dern, Don Stroud, Robert Walden, Alex Nicol, and Robert De Niro in supporting roles. It was very loosely based on the real story of Ma Barker, who is depicted as a corrupt, mentally-disturbed mother who encourages and organizes the criminality of her four adult sons in Depression-era southern United States.
Corman considers the film one of his favorite in his filmography.
Plot
In rural Arkansas during the Depression, middle-aged Kate 'Ma' Barker, disturbed by the childhood incestuous rape she experienced at the hands of her father and brothers, also brutalizes those around her, while indulging in her monstrous sexual appetites. She is devoted to her four young adult sons: the pragmatic Arthur, sadistic Herman, homosexual Fred, and loyal, drug-addicted Lloyd. Ma decides to leave her husband, George, and her Arkansas home to embark on a robbery-murder spree with her four sons.
When Herman and Fred are arrested and imprisoned for petty theft charges, Ma leads Arthur and Lloyd on a bank robbery spree for the money to free her sons from jail. The gang is then joined by gunman Kevin Dirkman, Fred's older cellmate who eventually became his lover. Also accompanying them is a local prostitute, Mona Gibson, whom Herman frequented before his imprisonment.
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. Ma subsequently seduces Kevin, leading Fred to resent her.
After arriving in Tennessee, the gang abducts wealthy businessman, Sam Pendlebury, and hold him for $300,000 ransom. The sons, particularly Herman, bond with Sam whom they see as the decent father figure they never had. When Herman and Mona attempt to collect the ransom, they barely escape from a pair of FBI agents. With the ransom eventually paid in full, they plan to leave Sam untied at the hideout, providing them time to escape before he can talk to the police. Herman, however, wants to see Sam's eyes—which remind him of their father. Sam says he can't see because of head trauma.
Ma insists Sam be killed to avoid his identifying them. Sam is led into the woods to be shot, but the boys, now seeing Herman as leader, set him free, lying to Ma about killing him. Later, to explain the 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 gang hides out in the Florida Everglades where Lloyd dies from a morphine overdose and Mona leaves Herman and the gang after revealing her pregnancy and fearing for the safety of her unborn child. 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.
Cast
Production
AIP announced Don Peters was writing a script as early as 1967. 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.
Prior to playing Ma Barker in this film, Winters played "Ma Parker", a villain inspired by Barker, in the 1960s Batman TV series.
