"Bloody Mama" is an early '70s exploitation shocker with a crazy Shelley Winters as the unattractive lead and a young Robert de Niro and younger Bruce Dern as members of her criminal brood.
The movie really just feels like an assortment of shocking moments, which are, after all, not shocking enough to recommend to hardcore exploitation fans. It's more about intimations of disturbing material, like the movie's opening scene featuring a flashback to Ma Barker's childhood, showing her pursued and held down by her brothers in the woods, presumably to rape her.
Later, with the killing and crime spree properly underway, it is implied that Ma has sexual relationships with all of her sons.
Actually relatively little time is spent showing the robberies the Barker brood committed. More time is spent with her repulsive sons as they use drugs, rape girls, and feed a piglet to an alligator - though none of this is depicted as much as distressingly implied.
What we're left with, then, is a movie that isn't extreme enough to satisfy exploitation fans, and doesn't give de Niro or Dern enough to do to be interesting to fans of either.
The movie really just feels like an assortment of shocking moments, which are, after all, not shocking enough to recommend to hardcore exploitation fans. It's more about intimations of disturbing material, like the movie's opening scene featuring a flashback to Ma Barker's childhood, showing her pursued and held down by her brothers in the woods, presumably to rape her.
Later, with the killing and crime spree properly underway, it is implied that Ma has sexual relationships with all of her sons.
Actually relatively little time is spent showing the robberies the Barker brood committed. More time is spent with her repulsive sons as they use drugs, rape girls, and feed a piglet to an alligator - though none of this is depicted as much as distressingly implied.
What we're left with, then, is a movie that isn't extreme enough to satisfy exploitation fans, and doesn't give de Niro or Dern enough to do to be interesting to fans of either.