Some films are sober explorations of a specific time and place. These films seek to create the illusion of reality – to pull the viewer into a world as convincing as the one they left behind when they opened the front doors of their local multiplex and walked inside. They pull no punches. They sugarcoat nothing. Their aim is to dig up the long hidden truths buried deep down inside all of us – hoping that, in doing so, we’ll gain some insight into our own lives.
“Big Bad Mama” is not one of those films.
Set in the U.S. south, during the Great Depression, BBM stars the wonderful Angie Dickinson as Wilma McClatchie. Wilma’s a tough lady who isn’t about to let any man tell her what to do. A single mom, Wilma is one-hundred per cent devoted to her two lovely teenage daughters – Billy Jean (Susan Sennett) and Polly (Robbie Lee).
Like all mothers, she’s just trying to provide for her kids. She just has a different way of going about it. While other mothers choose to work steady jobs to pay the bills, Wilma keeps the lights on by selling bootleg liquor and robbing banks. Of course, it’s the 30s and the Depression, so job offers for single mothers aren’t exactly plentiful.
From first frame to last fade, BBM is a hoot of a film. It’s silly, sloppy and never dull. It’s a Roger Corman produced faux hillbilly flick filled with car chases, wild shootouts and plenty of people jumping out of their clothes at the drop of a cowboy hat.
Having recently seen one too many “serious” films – which treated entertainment like a scorpion in a baby’s crib – BBM was just the mindless and shameless flick I didn’t know I needed.
No surprise, the opening minutes of BBM make about as much sense as a mandolin player in a Death Metal band. Why does Wilma drive Polly to church to get married if she’s just going to object to the wedding when they get there? Why? Well, if we don’t get to the church, we don’t get to see a wedding ceremony turn into a free-for-all. Oh, and, due to all that pushing and shoving, we’d also miss a very awkward close-up of Polly’s left breast – poking out from her torn white wedding dress. Give BBM some credit – it knows what it is and it makes no apologies for it.
Hyped up scenes of hillbilly hogwash come and go and come back again. All the filmmakers seem to be asking is that we enjoy ourselves. Please, enjoy watching Wilma drop off some bootleg whiskey at the wrong house just so she can go toe to toe with a woman three times her size. Please, enjoy watching Wilma rescue her strip teasing daughters from a gambling house before deciding to rob all the players while she’s at it. And, pretty please, enjoy watching Wilma try to cash a fake check at a small bank, only to be rudely interrupted by a tommy gun toting hot head named Fred Diller (Tom Skerritt) and his, not long for this scene, pistol packing sidekick.
Diller’s attempted bank robbery quickly morphs into Wilma and her daughters running away with his loot. It’s a ‘meet cute’ with a body count.
There’s also a 2nd body count of the sensual kind. To secure our attention between shootouts, cast members climb out of their clothes in rapid succession. Angie Dickinson in full frontal is such a wondrous sight, she could light the torches of a thousand young men and keep them burning for a fortnight. The fragile Robbie Lee comforts the sensual and sensitive side of the soul with her shy unveiling. Yet, it is Susan Sennett, a dream caker, who lingers in the mind long after the others have faded. A startlingly natural beauty, she may just be the very reason this glorious art form was invented in the first place.
Men join in on the fun, too. Both Skerritt and William Shatner (yes, that William Shatner) take turns bedding Wilma. One of Shatner’s scenes with Dickinson is so explicit that it could easily have teetered into an X rating if either one of them made a sudden, unrehearsed move. On hiatus from exploring the final frontier, Captain Kirk looks more than fulfilled exploring the backside of the sensuous Dickinson.
All and all, BBM is a demolition derby with dialogue. It’s a Looney Tunes cartoon in creep’s clothing. A kind of bargain bin “Bonnie and Clydes”, BBM feeds the naughty needs in all of us and does so with tongue firmly implanted in cheeks.
