Big Bad Mama (1974)

Directed by Steve Carver

Starring Angie Dickinson, Robbie Lee, William Shatner 

Rated R

USA 

“Never trust a girl giving away her donuts for free.”

It's the old-timey days. Which ones? The 30’s. The Depression. Angie Dickinson is Wilma, mother of two teenage daughters, conniving Billie Jean (Susan Sennett) and infantile Polly (Robbie Lee). With so little money to go around and no daddy and/or husband around, what’s a mom supposed to do? She’s gotta feed her family, and there’s really only two options: sex or crime. Wilma chooses both. 

First, though, she’s got to deal with dopey Polly’s latest crisis. When the film opens, Polly is about to get hitched to local yokel Charlie. Mama is not happy, and the wedding quickly turns into a melee. Wilma interrupts the proceedings halfway through, and a church-wide fist-fight ensues. Polly's boob falls out and Wilma steals the church's collection plate. They all take off in their pal Barney's car. Where? “Anywhere but East Texas,” says Wilma.

They hit the road, getting out of town before the angry townspeople get 'em, but they're soon pursued by the feds (Dick Miller!). They elude the cops – Robbie lets her boobs dangle out the window -but not before the law gets one good shot in, killing Barney.

Now the girls are on their own! Can they manage without a man?

Sure. They decide to run Barney's moonshine business without him. It's not an easy gig, though. On her first delivery, Wilma goes to to the wrong house and wrestle a fat old lady.

Also, Polly gets way too friendly with the customers.

Turns out the guy she as cavorting with was the sheriff's son, so to get out of going to jail, Wilma tries to convince the sheriff that Polly's retarded. When that doesn't work, she has to pay him all their bootleggin' dough. Flat broke, they have to start from scratch.

Wilma gets a job a diner while the girls try out for a gig as low-rent strippers.

It goes pretty good until Wilma shows up to rob everybody.

Flush will ill-begotten cash, they hit the road once again, with the law hot on their trail. Unfortunately, their car breaks down soon after. Luckily, it breaks down right where an evangelical preacher is tending to his flock. Mama and the girl quietly slip into the congregation and jump onto their bus, headed for salvation or California, whichever comes first.

Actually, they don't wait around to find out. They rob the preacher, taking his car and his dough.

Then they hole up in a hotel for the night. The girls are so excited, they chase each other around the room. Polly's topless at this point, and also, Robbie Lee takes a real-life spill during their antics, but they keep it in the shot anyway.

The next day, they decide to rob a bank, but halfway through, Fred (Tom Skerrit ) shows up to rob it himself, and a bloodbath ensues!

In all the chaos, Wilma snatches the money and they take off, with machine gun wielding Fred right behind them. After his car gets smashed up, he ends up in Wilma's back seat. In more ways than one, if you know what I mean.

Mama's new boyfriend makes Billie Jean jealous, she she tries to gussy up to seduce him.

However, all this fornicating distracts them, and a filthy cat burglar busts in and almost gets away with all their dough Luckily Wilma shoots him and gets her money back.

And then they all dress up and go to the horse races, where she meets up with slick-willie type Baxter (William Shatner), who offers Wilma a tip on the horses. Sadly, he cannot afford to bet on them himself.

He knows how to pick them, though, and they end up making a bundle.

Said bundle increases dramatically when they rob the box office while picking up their winnings.

So then the gang heads home and Wilma has graphic R-rated sex with Baxter while Fred peeps at them through a hole in the door.

Feeling jilted, he has sex with Billie Jean, who finally gets naked. So then she's naked for the next ten minutes to make up for the first half of the movie.

And then she has a three-way with Fred and her sister. The 1930's were crazy, man!

The gang finally makes it to California, and everybody schemes about what their next big score is gonna be. While Wilma works out the details, Polly gives Billie Jean some shocking news: she's pregnant! Ah well, the show must go on. Wilma pretends to run a lunch wagon and they rob an oil refinery.

It goes pretty good except that Polly gets shot in the arm.

They fix her up and then hang out at the beach, where Wilma yells at Fred about the whole impregnating-her-daughter thing. As you do.

Wilma decides it's time the girls join high society, so they rob some rich folks for their fancy clothes and crash a high-falutin' party. Of course, they're not really there to hob-nob, they're actually there to rob everybody. Wilma suddenly pulls out a machine gun (where was she hiding it?) and they take everybody's jewelry and cash. Wilma even shoots up the cars and garden statues on the way out.

PS look close and you'll find frequent Corman collaborator Paul Bartel at the party!

And yet, that's still not enough for Wilma. She tells Fred she wants one more score: a million bucks. So they sneak onto a tennis court and kidnap Jane (Joan Prather) a snotty rich girl. She finds the whole thing pretty indignant, especially when Fred shows up later and paws at her.

Wilma sets up the ransom details. However, they're all over the newspapers at this point, and Baxter thinks this whole thing is getting out of hand.

While Wilma sets things up, Jane seduces Fred so she can escape. Unfortunately, Fred cannot help banging every chick he sees, so it works. As soon as she gets her shirt off, he drops his guard. She kicks him in the nuts and splits. Baxter, hoping to end all this craziness, lets her go and splits. Good thing Wilma shows up to fetch her.

Sadly, Baxter gets picked up by the feds. Hopefully, he won't rat Wilma and the girl out before their big score.

The big day comes. Wilma bangs Fred in the barn one last time (look close, you'll see some dark Dickinson bush!) and then makes the trade, gets the million bucks, and moves her family to Paris, where they live happily ever after.

No, that's not what happens. Baxter sells them out and bloody mayhem commences.  

It still seems odd that Angie Dickinson and William Shatner – who were both well-known and established actors at this point – would make Big Bad Mama at all, never mind appearing as naked as you possibly can in an R-rated 70’s flick. Even without their star power, Mama would have been a winner, but the sight of a fully-nude Shat slobbering over an equally unadorned  Angie should be on every B-movie fans must-see list. Throw in a spectacularly whiny appearance from Switchblade Sisters’ star and elusive exploitation icon Robbie Lee, plenty of red paint-splattering mayhem, gratuitous Tom Skerritt, the sight of the same five old timey cars crashing over and over, crisp photography, a lean, mean script that never stops moving, a refreshing lack of moral conviction, and the simple pleasures of soaking in Angie Dickinson’s mature beauty, and you’ve got the perfect drive-in flick.

Thanks to the 30’s era setting, the film hasn’t aged much in the past 40-something years, and Shatner’s current status us a camp icon makes his appearance here even more amusing now then it was in the 70’s. Plus, every woman in the movie gets naked. You can’t really ask for more than that, nor should you. All killer and no filler, Big Bad Mama is one of the primary  reasons why Roger Corman remains the King of the B’s.

- Ken McIntyre


PS: Hear the MAG crew discuss Big Bad Mama on Episode 119 of the Movies About Girls show! 

Single White Female (1992)

Directed by Barbet Schroeder

Starring Bridget Fonda, Jennifer Jason Leigh

Rated R

USA

"I know you weren't yourself when you did this, Hedy."

"I know. I was you." 

Directed by the fancifully named Barbet Schroeder, an Iranian born Frenchman probably best known stateside for 1987’s Mickey-Rourke-does-Bukowskl hipster docudrama Barfly, Single White Female is a dark thriller based on SWF Seeks Same, a novel by mystery writer John Lutz.  Given that Schroeder specializes in dank, depressing dramas about heroin and Nazis, it’s fairly safe to say that he did not envision Single White Female as a comedy. Likewise, the film’s two earnest young stars, Bridget Fonda  and Jennifer Jason Leigh, seem pretty convinced that they're creating high drama as well. The hideous outfits, worse hairdos, overwrought dialogue and near-constant nudity would suggest otherwise, but what the hell, it was the early 90’s. We didn’t know better back then. 

Fonda is Allie, a chick with a bad red bob who is marrying Sam, the dude from Wings (Steven Weber). In the opening scene, she finds out he's still banging his ex-wife. So that's uncomfortable. She's super-naked in this scene though.

Obviously, she's got to move on. First though, she has a meeting with Stephen Tablowsky and shows off her cheeseball 1991 software.

 He hires her for a low-ball price to do whatever he does. Some kind of fashion thing. So now she's got a gig, but without the scumbag boyfriend, she has to find some way to pay her rent. She'll have to get a roommate!

She sees a bunch of potential roomies.. Most of them are clearly insane. One last straggler, Hedra (Jennifer Jason Leigh)  shows up. When she gets there, Allie's curled up on the floor, crying her eyes out. 

They get into some leaky faucet antics together and girl-bond.. She's a little weird, but what the hell. They decide to give it a go. A fixing-up montage ensues. Also they eat ice cream and Allie teaches Hedra to dress like a real New Yorker. Gal pals in the city. So far, so good.

But then, one night, Allie notices some pills on Hedra's dresser. What are those for? Hedra pops up out of nowhere and tells a sad story about her dead twin. Luckily, her shirt's off at the time.

Sam keeps leaving let's-get-back-together messages, but Hedra just erases them. Also, she buys Allie a puppy. And then they watch old movies on TV in bed together. Is that weird? Could be weird.

Also weird, she's starting to wear Allie's clothes when she's not around, as nice-guy neighbor Graham tells her.

Sam shows up to get Allie back. She is unaware that he'd been trying to contact her, since Heddy's been disposing of any such evidence.

Amazingly, they decide to get back together, and they stay in a hotel to bone unencumbered. Heddy, meanwhile, sits alone eating ice cream and kicking the dog. Also she takes a bath. Boobs! 

When Allie comes back the next day, Heddy's super-pissed.

Heddy figures out what's up. She doesn't take it well. But what's she gonna do, really? Things get a little nuts with the two of them there. Allie's getting into a lot of naked antics with Sam, and Heddy's getting weirdly flirty with him. Plus, she masturbates with the door open. These two are naked a LOT in this movie.

Sam and Heddy look for a new place together. While that's going on, in a fit of jealousy, Heddy throws the puppy out of the fuckin' window. So that's the end of that.

Also, Allie's boss puts the moves on her. It's pretty rape-y, as far as these things go. He thinks he's gonna get a blowjob, but she kicks him in the nuts and splits.

Heddy, being a lunatic, knows how to fuck people royally. So she calls the boss pretending to be Allison and threatens him, tells him she’ll ruin him and his family if he doesn’t pay up.

And then they go out and get matching hairdos. Great. Now we have two goofy red bobs to deal with.

Back at the house, while Heddy's taking a shower, Allie goes through all her stuff. She finds photos of her with her twin sister – who obviously didn't die at birth – and also all the letters Sam sent her. Also, she may or may not have drowned her sister, given the handy newspaper articles in her shoebox-of-evidence.

So then Heddy goes to a weird S&M club and Allie follows her. She's there to find a boyfriend who looks like Sam. Also, they play that horrible disco Gregorian chant stuff.

That's pretty much the last straw for Allie. She goes up to tell Graham what's up. He tells her she's got to get rid of her.

On the way out, Graham casually tells her he can hear everything going on in the apartment through the vents. Hi might have told her that when she moved in. Would have been nice to know.  Anyway, it means Heddy heard the whole conversation. Allie doesn't figure that part out, though. Anyway, as you might expect, that's the end of Graham. Heddy sneaks up their and bashes his brains in.

At this point, there hasn't been any nudity for about ten minutes, so Heddy takes a shower. Allie tries to have a conversation with Heddy about all this craziness, but she's gone over the edge at this point. Also, Heddy's dad calls – Allie called him looking for help – and Heddy hangs up on him after he tells her if she doesn't come home, he's not gonna pay for her pills anymore.

So…Sam was out of town all this time. He comes back and Heddy shows up his hotel room. It's pretty dark and she looks just like Allie, so he doesn't notice until halfway through that it's not his girlfriend blowing him. He decides to let her finish. More nudity! Anyways, Sam's not impressed by her display.

So, you know, what can she do? She jams her high-heeled shoe into his eyeball. In the 90's, that would kill you instantly.

Allie finds out by watching the news the next morning. Yikes! Meanwhile, Heddy's burning all her stuff so that she can get the hell out town. Then she tries to straighten Allie out.

At this point, Heddy's got a gun, and she's dragging Allie around the apartment building, looking for an escape route. They end up at dead Graham's place. Allie gets tied up. Things get crazy from there. The brutal girl-on-girl violence is pretty impressive.  

There is almost nothing better than a good murderous stalker chick flick, and this is definitely one of the good ones. There’s something wildly compelling about watching a pretty young woman go absolutely bonkers, using both feminine guile and masculine violence to get her way, no matter how bizarre and misguided said way actually is. The fact that the antagonist in this film is only 5 foot 3 and probably 95 pounds only makes the whole absurd premise even loopier. As mentioned, there’s every indication that the cast and crew were attempting a serious, nail-biting thriller – and the $50,000,000 box office receipts would suggest that most of America did, as well -  but the dated look of the hair and clothes, the goofy dialogue, the shoe-horned plot points (what criminal carries all the evidence against them in a shoebox?), and gratuitous nudity all push Single White Female firmly into the trashy-campy category. I, for one, am perfectly happy with that. Fast, fun, completely implausible and needlessly earnest, Single White Female is gussied-up exploitation with A-list actors who seem to have no idea they’re in a B-movie. Also, if you think fashion was ugly in the 80’s, SWF provides ample evidence that the 90’s were no aesthetic picnic, either.

- Ken McIntyre

PS: Hear the Movies About Girls crew discuss Single White Female on Episode 118 of the Movies About Girls podcast!