Made fast & cheap, in the receding wake of game-changer BONNIE AND CLYDE/’67, Roger Corman’s take on a less photogenic Depression-era crime-spree family has aged beyond exploitation to honest tawdry. There’s little concern for period niceties or unified style in technique & acting (the Corman form rarely rose above klutzy, part of his charm), the film becomes both BONNIE AND CLYDE retort in its refusal to glamorize (no fashion trends here), and something of a Southern-Fried evil American doppelgänger to Brecht’s MOTHER COURAGE. And warming to that task, none other than Shelley Winters as amoral, incestuous pack leader to a family of degenerate sadists who rob & kill with spontaneous abandon. With the bonus of seeing her scrubbing buck-naked son Robert De Niro in one of those portable zinc tubs. Actually, she takes on all the boys (4 or 5; you can lose track of this well-built clothing-optional crew) in bed, bath & beyond, though Robert Walden seems to prefer former cell-mate Bruce Dern, soon adopted as new family member. The script goes light on robberies to concentrate on two abductions, a pretty girl who learns too much (Pamela Dunlap) and wealthy family-man Pat Hingle who manages to service Ma when requested. It’s really quite an audacious work, though awfully rough-and-ready, with lenser John Alonzo very uneven on his first feature. Actually, some of his mismatched shots give off an inadvertent kinetic charge. It exemplifies what’s right and what’s wrong in here.
DOUBLE-BILL: As mentioned above, BONNIE AND CLYDE which looks pretty arch these days.
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