Big Bad Mama

Roger Corman's production, following up on his own Bloody Mama, is something of a delight. Although covering the familiar ground of bank robbing during the Depression, the film persistently and boisterously treads its own path. Dickinson and her two daughters, the one practised beyond her years, the other pretty dumb, move through rural and small-town America selling bootleg liquor, picking up men, robbing banks, and kidnapping rich daughters, arguing that if Ford, Rockefeller, Capone and the rest can have a slice of the cake, why can't they? The ribald script, pausing occasionally for insight, sets up various wayward characters (most of them hot for Mama and her girls) and indulges a capacity for ménages à trois.