Cinema: Bock to the Crypt

Bloody Mama is a lurid little number featuring Shelley Winters doing her smothering-mother thing as the nefarious Ma Barker. You can tell she's the mama because she is older than just about anyone else in the cast.

Presumably she should know better. A hapless and bloody rehash of Bonnie and Clyde, Bloody Mama features Shelley as the head of a small criminal band of psychopathic wastrels, four of whom are, incidentally, her sons. There are heavy-breathing suggestions that the family that preys together plays together. Mama rewards her sons after a hard day of busting heads or robbing banks by letting one...

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