Bloody Mama

Bloody Mama (1970)

You gotta' believe... You gotta' have faith... But first, you gotta' get rid of the witnesses!

Sexually abused as a young girl, Kate "Ma" Barker grows into a violent and powerful woman by the 1930s. She lovingly dominates her grown sons and grooms them into a pack of tough crooks. The boys include the cruel Herman, who still shares a bed with Ma; Fred, an ex-con who fell in love with a fellow prisoner; and Lloyd, who gets high on whatever's handy. Together they form a deadly, bizarre family of Depression-era bandits.

Date of release
1970-03-24
TMDB
5.6 / 10 (109)
Runtime
1h 30m
Genres
Crime, Drama
Director
Roger Corman

Casting

Interesting facts

  • Filmed in: Kansas

Bloody Mama is a 1970 American exploitation crime film directed by Roger Corman, starring Shelley Winters in the title role, and Bruce Dern, Don Stroud, Robert Walden, Alex Nicol and Robert De Niro in supporting roles. It is loosely based on the real-life 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 considered the film one of his favorites in his filmography.

Production

AIP announced that 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 kidnapping victims William Hamm and Edward Bremer, whom the Barker gang kidnapped in 1933 and 1934, respectively. The film was shot entirely in Arkansas.

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.

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