I queued up Crazy Mama (1975) for two reasons: I heard Joe Dante on a podcast talking about cutting the trailer and it was one of Jonathan Demme's (Stop Making Sense) first films - made for the Cormans, of course.
It's about three generations of crazy mamas. Ann Sothern (1940s comedienne) plays grandma, Cloris Leachman plays the mother, and Linda Purl as the teenager daughter. We meet Purl at the beach, telling her surfer boyfriend Donny Most, that she's pregnant - and he might be the father. We meet Sothern and Leachman getting evicted from their beauty parlor by Jim Backus. So they decide to head back to Arkansas and buy the old family farm. They take off with Most following in his woody.
They finance the trip by robbing - gas stations at first graduating to banks. They also pick up a suitor for Leachman, Stuart Whitman (Sands of the Kalahari) a Texan on the lam from his wife. Purl also picks up an admirer - a greasy biker named Snake. Most isn't too happy about this, but Purl insists that she gets both if she wants them.
This movie is pretty much Big Bad Mama - except without the nudity. But you still have the women with strong family ties, self-determination and loose morals, on a road trip/crime spree. Except this is set in the early sixties, so you get lots of R&R oldies instead of banjo music. I always think of Demme as a musical director, probably for Stop Making Sense, but also because I kind of confuse him with Jacques Demy.
We didn't hate this, but it was pretty forgettable. Jim Backus was out of the picture too soon, Dick Miller's part was also too small, and nobody was really giving their best, except maybe Gidget reject Most. Still, Corman (and his wife Julie, who produced) knows how to get you watching.
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