Reeling Backward: "Big Bad Mama" (1974)

 

It isn't hard to glimpse the genealogy of "Big Bad Mama." Movies about rebels and outlaws were popular during the late 1960s and early '70s, especially if it was set in oldentimes to create some distance to comment on the ongoing political and social strife. "Bonnie and Clyde" was a critical and cultural hit, so we got a lot more similar films to follow in its wake.

It's the story of a tough, single-minded woman who goes on a cross-country crime spree with her two teenage daughters, along with a couple of hanger-on men in tow.

This was also a period where mainstream movies had very suddenly become much naughtier, with swearing, explicit violence and nudity virtually verboten just a few years earlier. "Mama" has a copious display of boobs and butts, including star Angie Dickinson. There was a brief era of "sexploitation" films before the advent of hardcore pornography into theaters, sort of a sweet appetizer before the less appetizing main course.

Excoriated at the time for lowering America's morals, these fleshy flicks seem almost quaint today.

I admit I was expecting a little more substance from the movie, even though I knew it came from the cheap oeuvre of schlock producer Roger Corman. It's basically just a repetitive string of various heists, which always end with Mama and her crew riding off in their car with a pile of cash, firing off a tommy gun to scare off pursuers as fast-paced banjo music plays, with sex scenes for the interludes between.

"Big Bad Mama" was essentially a remake of Corman's "Bloody Mama" from a few years earlier starring Shelley Winters. Whatever you want to say about him, Corman gave a lot of opportunities for youngsters like Ron Howard to make their first movies, or older waning stars to stay in the limelight. 

The movie also stars William Shatner during his wilderness years between the Star Trek TV show and movies, and a young Tom Skerritt. Sally Kirkland shows up in a brief bit role.

Dickinson, who'd seen her own luster fade after leading roles in the 1950s and '60s, rejuvenated her career with "Mama" turning her into a sex symbol in her 40s, going on to star in the hit TV show "Police Woman" and other projects. Little did I know, but Corman and Dickinson would reunite 13 years later for a prequel, which tells how Wilma McClatchie first lost her husband and farm, turning to a life of crime.

It's too bad "Mama" relies so much on skin and shootin', because there's the bones of a good story here. Wilma is a proto-feminist rebel, a woman who's lost everything and is determined to take it all back, and then some, on her own terms. She loves her two teenage daughters, and is happy to steal and kill to give them the finer things in life.

She's also unabashedly domineering, the boss of her criminal enterprise and her bedroom, too. She takes on a hot-tempered bank robber, Fred Diller (Skerritt), and makes him her plaything. But when a better prospect comes along in the form of a dashing gambler, (William J. Baxter), she switches sheets partners without even so much as a by-the-way conversation.

Later, after elder daughter Billy Jean (Susan Sennett) has taken on Diller as a lover and shared him with sister Polly (Robbie Lee), Wilma gives Baxter the boot and then promotes Diller back to the top spot. I imagine the idea of a mother and daughter bed-hopping with two different men seemed pretty scandalous when the movie came out.

The daughters are an interesting pair, and I wish the screenplay by William Norton (who also did "White Lightning") and Frances Doel had developed them a little more. Polly is childish and innocent, even carrying around a doll, though she's very curious about sex. As the movie open she's set to marry some country bumpkin, but Wilma blows up the ceremony because she doesn't want to see Polly consigned to a life of kitchen drudgery like she was.

Billy Jean is a little older and a little wiser, and definitely has some of her mother's steel in her spine. She has a penchant for teasing and playing jokes, and like Wilma she's definitely the alpha in her relationship with Diller. When Wilma claims him back, we can see the unspoken hurt in Billy Jean's eyes. 

They first get their start in crime by partnering with Uncle Barney (Willingham), a prospering moonshiner, though it's unclear if this is actually William's brother-in-law or the uncle appellation is just a familiar term for the girls. When he's killed by some lawmen, Wilma takes over his practice.

After being forced to pay off a fat, corrupt Southern sheriff -- is there any other kind in the movies? -- Wilma vows to always be the one taking cash, not handing it over, from now on.

They move on from one scheme to the next, Wilma careful never to repeat her M.O. They rip off a veterans reunion where Billy Jean and Polly had been recruited as strippers, using her false effrontery at a mother angry about having her (not so) innocent daughters despoiled to make off with a pile of cash. A shyster preacher preaching the good word so he can run away with the donation basket finds himself plucked and booted out of his own car.

One curious job has them robbing an oil drilling company -- I'm a little unclear why such an industrial operation would have large wads of money lying around. They pick up Baxter, a smooth Louisville operating currently experiencing "an embarrassment of funds," at a horse track they stick up. They also pass themselves off as high-society types so they can rob an entire party full of rich snobs.

This leads to Wilma's grandest scheme to kidnap a snooty heiress, Jane Kingston (Joan Prather), and ransom her for a cool million, which will set them up for life. It seems to be going well, until the ongoing enmity between Baxter and Diller boils over, and the girl seduces Diller and then gives him the slip, and Baxter lets her go. 

Eventually he brings the cops for ubiquitous final shoot-out where he, Diller and Wilma all wind up dead.

A pair of federal agents in black suits and a black car, with Dick Miller as the senior of the two, wind up as the comic relief, constantly being run off into ditches or dumped into a pile of horse manure. 

The three-way dynamic between Wilma and the two men is curious, mostly for the fact they defer to her in every way. Diller loathes the fancy-pants Baxter, hurling constant insults and insinuations about his sexuality, though the latter never responds beyond mortified shock at the rude manners. He finally challenges Diller to a fistfight, boasting that he was a college boxing champion, though Diller simply swings his long-barrelled pistol into review -- phallic taunts much? -- and Baxter backs down.

I think Wilma is congenitally more attuned to a simple, violent but authentic soul like Diller, though she sees Baxter as a more genteel sort better suited to her ambitions in life. Though she eventually sees through his conniving facade to the sniveling coward beneath.

Dickinson's sex scenes with Shatner are pretty loopy to watch, if only from a pop culture standpoint -- Captain Kirk in the buff! -- but also for their total lack of real lovemaking. Baxter caresses Wilma's body with itchy fingers and wide eyes, as if in awe of her beauty, more like Thorin fingering dragon's gold than a lusty beast sowing his seed. He is a man who covets, and once he has something, that want turns to something else. 

For her part, Wilma is the sort of woman who doesn't shy away from worship.

Once I got over the fact "Big Bad Mama" was meant to be a fun scamp rather than a gritty crime story, I settled back and enjoyed the ride. Director Steve Carver keeps things moving along at a brisk pace, though I quickly grew tired of David Grisman's cotton-picking music.

It's the rambling, rambunctious story of a powerful women who flexes her smarts and determination, uses men and tosses them aside as she pleases. Sure, she flaunts her body, because flaunting is just what she does.

Reeling Backward: "The Dead Zone" (1983)

Stephen King writes a lot of books and during the 1980s to '90s there were so many film adaptations of them you can hardly keep them straight. They range from excellent to awful and various flavors of mediocre.

The poor box office performance of "Hearts in Atlantis" and "Dreamcatcher" in the early aughts -- both better flicks than they're given credit for -- sent the market for King movies south for a bit, but now there's been a resurgence with the "IT" duology and remake of "Pet Sematary."

We've also got another crack at a miniseries of his epic, "The Stand," one of my all-time favorite books, coming this December to the CBS premier access platform. (The less said about the 1994 TV miniseries, the better, though I still plan to say it in a little bit. Stay tuned.)

"The Dead Zone" came out in 1983 along with two other King adaptations that year: "Christine" and "Cujo." None of them were particular hits, though the other two at least have the benefit of a killer dog and a haunted car to cement their place in the cultural lexicon. "Dead," despite getting the best reviews of the lot, has been pretty well memory-holed.

It's the story of a school teacher who goes into a coma for five years after an accident, and when he awakes finds he has psychic powers to predict the future and see into the past. His visions occur when he touches another person (living or recently dead), and as things go on he discovers there's a "dead zone" in his premonitions wherein he can take action to prevent terrible events such as death or catastrophe.

I can only imagine being a casting director in the early 1980s and trying to figure out what to do with Christopher Walken. An Oscar winner for "The Deerhunter," his first major film role, he did song-and-dance in the bomb "Pennies from Heaven," then made two movies in 1983 about people with mind powers, this one and "Brainstorm," with which it is often confused.

Then he played Bond villain Max Zorin a couple years later in "A View to a Kill," and the "kooky Chris Walken" trope was firmly established. His disjointed speech patterns and mad sorcerer's stare have pretty much defined his career since, from "more cow bell" to a 1,001 impersonations.

Though he occasionally gets better material.

His character, Johnny Smith, isn't terribly well defined before the accident. He's a somewhat dweeby high school English teacher in an idyllic town, Castle Rock, one of King's fictional New England settings. He's engaged to be married -- or at least engaged to be engaged -- with another teacher, Sarah (the winsome Brooke Adams).

Curiously, Walken wears his hair combed forward in an exaggerated Roman style prior to the accident, then in his familiar swept-back pompadour after. He also goes from tweed coats to flipped-collar raincoats, giving him a vaguely Dracula thing.

Raised by religious parents (Jackie Burroughs and Sean Sullivan), Johnny's relationship with Sarah is chaste, despite her entreaties. "Some things are worth waiting for," he tells her, before driving off into the rain to meet his destiny in the form of a detached semi-tractor tanker lying in the road.

Interestingly, right before the accident Johnny had experienced a painful headache/hallucination while riding a roller coaster with Sarah -- perhaps an indication his psychic powers were already there, just lying dormant.

I enjoyed the scene where he wakes up in the long-term care clinic. His doctor, Sam Weizak (Herbert Lom), warns his parents not to reveal too much to Johnny about what has happened to him. Then his mom immediately blurts out that he's been conked out for five years, and Sarah abandoned him to marry another man. Nasty old rhymes-with-witch.

She soon dies of a heart attack, and we're glad to see her go.

Johnny's first vision results in one of his nurses rushing home to save her daughter from a burning house, which results in him becoming a local celebrity. He also uses his power to reveal to Sam, with whom he forms a bond that goes beyond doctor/patient, that the mother Sam thought he'd lost during the Holocaust is still alive.

Sam calls her to confirm the information, but hangs up on her and leaves it there. He tells Johnny that finding each other 40 years later "wasn't meant to be," suggesting that he considers his patient's abilities to be some kind of perversion of the natural order. Sam also hosts a rambunctious press conference for Johnny that results in a nasty encounter with an obnoxious reporter, and all in all Sam seems a better friend than physician.

The plot meanders thereafter, the middle section playing as a crime procedural, followed by a family/romance drama, and the last act as an incongruent political thriller.

In the former, nearby Sheriff Bannerman (Tom Skerritt) comes calling to enlist Johnny's aid in solving a series of stabbing murders of young women. It's a pretty tired dance of refusal, then enlistment, then doubting of his abilities, and then denouement as the killer is confronted. I'll skip right to the chase and reveal that it's the sheriff's smirky deputy, played by Nicholas Campbell.

(Sorry, no spoiler warnings after 37 years.)

Johnny uses these events as an excuse to move away, setting up shop as a personal tutor in a nearby town. He lives in a pretty grand three-story house all by himself, as once again Hollywood movies seem entirely incapable of grasping the basic economics of regular folks. These are hardly the sort of accommodations a semi-employed teacher could obtain.

He also retains a pronounced limp and uses a cane to get around, though the movie doesn't delve too much into how Johnny's psyche is affected by his disability. Dr. Sam seems to think that Johnny's body will only get weaker as his mental powers grow stronger.

During this time he becomes personal tutor to Chris (Simon Craig), the ostracized son of a very wealthy man (Anthony Zerbe), and they form a brotherly camaraderie. Johnny uses his powers to prevent Chris' death in an ice hockey accident he foresees, and he begins to embrace his abilities as a blessing rather than a curse.

Chris has a bunch of cool nerdy stuff in his bedroom, including a then-rare personal computer, figurines and comic books, and I think he and I would've gotten along famously.

Around this time Sarah also reappears with her toddler son in tow. She claims to be happy with her life but regrets the one with Johnny she left behind, so she throws him a bone by having sex with him. Only this one time, she warns, and presumably his only time, since Johnny is implied to still be a virgin.

Sarah seems to think she's doing him a favor rather than letting Johnny's feelings slowly burn out naturally. This is just throwing a log on the fire, and borderline emotional terrorism.

The film's last bit is hokey and contrived, as Johnny encounters an ambitious young candidate for the U.S. Senate, Greg Stillson, played with dyed-black hair and cartoonish aggression by Martin Sheen. Stillson rides around in a Cadillac limo but dons a construction hard hat for his campaign appearances, doing push-ups and delivering rambling monologues about what's gone wrong with this country.

Johnny inadvertently shakes Stillson's hand during one of these, and sees a vision in which the man becomes President and launches a preemptive nuclear strike, seeing it as his personal destiny bequeathed by God. He consults with Sam, obliquely, about whether it would be right to commit murder to prevent massive tragedy, using the obvious Hitler proposition.

I adored Sam's non-prevaricating response: "All right. I'll give you an answer. I'm a man of medicine. I'm expected to save lives and ease suffering. I love people. Therefore, I would have no choice but to kill the son of a bitch."

Thus Johnny sets off on an assassination mission with his father's old World War II carbine, which is successful though not in exactly the way he intended. Of course, his own life is forfeited in the exchange.

"The Dead Zone" is like a meal in which the chef was given a lot or promising ingredients and never figured out the right way to put it together. Jeffrey Boam wrote the screenplay adaptation, in a short but busy career that also included "The Lost Boys," "Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade" and the second and third "Lethal Weapon" films.

It was one of director David Cronenberg's rare non-horror films during the early part of his career, busy with mind-bending tales like "Videodrome," "Naked Lunch" and "Scanners." I get the feeling Cronenberg didn't quite know what to do with such a relatively straight story, and ended up churning out the sort of bland studio fare any one of a hundred other filmmakers could've delivered.

It's not especially scary, or exciting, or emotionally engrossing... or especially anything, really. I can grasp why it's been mostly forgot.

Apparently King did write his own version of the screenplay, though Cronenberg reportedly rejected it for being too brutal -- a rather hilarious statement, given the grisly nature of his own oeuvre. Even funnier: the person originally imagined to play Johnny, and King's own choice, was Bill Murray.

Just trying to imagine that version of the movie gives me visions of my own -- most unpleasant ones.

Video review: "Lucky"

I often find it to be the case that movies dominated by a single superlative performance -- “Ray,” “Capote,” “Darkest Hour” more recently -- tend to suffer as a whole. When one actor’s in every single scene, and everything is always about him, then the storytelling can often devolve into a series of encounters, all of which are designed to give the main performer another chance to act the hell out of a scene.

I feel that way about “Lucky,” which is destined to be remembered as the swan song for legendary character actor Harry Dean Stanton. He passed away at age 91 a few months ago, decades of credits of kooky, mesmerizing characters under his belt. Nearly always the supporting actor, he finally got a chance to be the lead, and he knocked the hell out of it.

(Though I should note Stanton still has one more film in the can coming out in 2018.)

It’s about a man, Lucky, who is outwardly much like Stanton himself: ancient, respected but regarded with a sort of distance by others. Living alone on the edge of a tiny city out west somewhere, each of his days bleeds very much into the next.

He exercises, makes cryptic phone calls to someone during which he picks a word out of the dictionary, then puts on his cowboy boots to amble into town to buy milk and cigarettes -- seemingly all he subsists on -- followed by a drop-in at the watering hole where he hobnobs with the other denizens.

The supporting cast is interesting, but as I said they flit in and out of the frame only so much as they can help Lucky along in his journey. Beth Grant plays the grandstanding owner of the bar, and James Darren plays her guy, who puts off a Vegas vibe. Ed Begley Jr. plays the town doctor, astonished at Lucky’s fine health despite smoking like a chimney. Tom Skerritt turns up as another veteran, with whom Lucky trades reminisces.

David Lynch, still doing that strange, robotic, hard-of-hearing line reading that he always does, plays another aging fellow with a turtle problem. (Blunt but true: if it weren’t for his directing career, nobody would call upon Lynch as an actor.) Ron Livingston is a local attorney, to whom Lucky takes an instant dislike. 

The screenplay by Logan Sparks and Drago Sumonja approaches Lucky sideways. We learn very little autographical information about him -- he was in the Navy, never married, but apparently was in love once -- yet we feel like we get to know him down to the ground. Lucky is defiantly atheist, yet as the end approaches he has many questions and concerns about what comes after.

The directorial debut of John Carroll Lynch, himself a noted character actor, “Lucky” is more concerned with raising difficult questions than dashing off easy answers.

Bonus features are slim but decent. They include two segments with Stanton, “A Few Words from Harry Dean Stanton” and “Behind the Scenes: Harry Dean Stanton’s Final Film Take,” along with interviews with Lynch and the screenwriters.

Movie:

Extras:

Review: "Lucky"

“Lucky” is not so much a story as a spare character study. The film will be forever remembered as the last starring role of the great character actor Harry Dean Stanton, whose movie career didn’t really take off until he was in his 40s.

Still, that was enough for a half-century of indelible roles, punctuated by Stanton’s signature sharp, gaunt visage – like a matinee idol who’d been sucked on a bit by a vampire – and languorous, offbeat line delivery.

No matter what character he was playing, Stanton never seemed in a hurry to get where he was going.

I doubt there’s ever been a more distinctly Harry Dean Stanton role than the one he has in “Lucky,” playing the titular character, a 90-something cowpoke who saunters around his sleepy little Western town, always up to not much at all. With his sad, droopy eyes and battered straw hat, Lucky is like the town’s resident mascot.

A creature of habit, he patters through the routine of his days: calisthenics, a walk into town for coffee at the local diner, a stop at the corner market for cigarettes or milk – all he consumes, as far as we can tell – more moseying, TV game shows, his evenings spent with a Bloody Mary at one of the two watering holes in town, where the same creatures come out every night.

Lucky used to go to the other bar, but got thrown out – or walked out, in his telling – for lighting up indoors long after that sort of thing became verboten.

A prideful loner, Lucky was in the Navy during World War II, and we don’t really know what he’s been doing in the 70-odd years since. Never married, no kids he can lay claim to, no pets, no responsibilities, no close friendships. He makes odd, one-sided phone calls to someone who appears to be a pal, mostly picking words out of the dictionary and discussing them.

It may not seem like much of a life, but it’s one Lucky holds to with fierce conviction. This is the sort of man who will challenge a fellow half his age to a fistfight if he thinks the guy is taking advantage of a friend.

When he sustains an inexplicable fall in his home, the wind goes out of Lucky’s sails. The doctor (Ed Begley Jr.) says he’s in exceptional health – something he can’t explain given Lucky’s pack-a-day habit. Just getting older, he shrugs. We get the sense Lucky could handle a dire pronouncement, the C-word or such. But just not knowing vexes him to his core.

“Lucky” is really a story of new beginnings. Is Lucky preparing for the end, looking for answers about the meaning of life, or trying to break out of his shell? Perhaps a mix of all three.

The creative team are all filmmaking veterans trying out new roles. John Carroll Lynch, another noted character actor, steps behind the camera for the first time as a director. Logan Sparks and Drago Sumonja have also worked as actors and crew members, now trying their hands at screenwriting.

I do wish “Lucky” had a little more narrative momentum than it does. The movie plays out mostly as just a series of encounters between Lucky and other townsfolk. Beth Grant plays Elaine, the matron of his bar, who likes being the center of attention. James Darren plays her main squeeze, who gets a nice speech of his own. David Lynch plays another odd oldster with a runaway tortoise.

Tom Skerritt gets the best supporting part, a small bit as a fellow veteran Lucky connects with at a diner. He gets a 4- or 5-minute speech that’s right up there with Quint’s U.S.S. Indianapolis soliloquy from “Jaws.”

“Lucky” is not a movie about an old man who goes on a journey, but one who comes to take the first few steps. Though I wish we could’ve followed him a little further down that path, it’s a fitting coda for Stanton, who gets to ride off -- or, rather, amble -- into the sunset on the back of one of his best roles.