Big Bad Mama: Special Edition

Dissed and dismissed upon its 1974 theatrical release as a cheap rehash of Bonnie and Clyde, this tawdry little potboiler from B-movie veterans Roger Corman (producer) and Steve Carver (director) serves up clichés as if from a 55-gallon drum of squeeze cheese. Big Bad Mama was considered quite a comedown for top-billed Angie Dickinson, but even the most obtuse observer can see she's delightfully uninhibited as hardscrabble thief and rum-runner Wilma McClatchie, raising cain during the Depression years with her two daughters, old lover Fred Diller (Tom Skerritt), and new partner William Baxter (William Shatner). Smoking cigars, wielding a Tommy gun, and doffing her duds with wild abandon, Dickinson turns in the campiest performance of her career (Shatner, who of course is no stranger to ham, lays it on heavy, too). Carver obviously wasn't taking the movie any too seriously either: in addition to swiping from Bonnie and Clyde, he apes familiar scenes from other hit movies of the late ‘60s and early ‘70s, including the wedding sequence from The Graduate. Awash in sex, booze, and blood, Big Bad Mama is one of the definite guilty pleasures of '70s cinema. Presented (a bit disappointingly) with a full screen transfer, DVD extras include audio commentary by Corman and Dickinson and “Mama Knows Best: A Retrospective,” featuring interviews with cast and crew. Recommended. (E. Hulse)