After an opening scene in which a young woman is raped by her older brothers in the family's Ozark mountain home we learnt that the victim of that rape grew up to be ‘Ma' Kate Barker (Shelley Winters). She left home and married her husband George (Alex Nicol) and together they had four sons: Lloyd (Robert De Niro), Herman (Don Stroud), Arthur (Clint Kimbrough) and Fred (Robert Walden). Unhappy with the way that things have turned out, Ma decides to hit the road with her four sons, all grown men now, and to leave George to embark on what she hopes will be a life of easy money earned through crime.

Things get off to a bad start when a boat ride heads south after Herman, short tempered thug that he is, roughs up and injures a fellow passenger. With everyone upset afterwards, Ma brings Herman to bed with her later on. To say that this relationship isn't healthy is an understatement! Later, Herman and Fred attempt to get away with the funds raised at a charity picnic they win up getting busted by the cops and tossed into jail. Ma wants them out and so she, along with Arthur and Lloyd, decide to rob a nearby bank to get bail money. They make it out with the money, but the cops give chase. Ma and company make it away in time, spring the two jailbirds and then decide to go into hiding under false identities to let things cool down. After bringing on a hooker named Mona Gibson (Diane Varsi) who is in cahoots with Herman and a man named Kevin Dirkman (Bruce Dern) with a penchant for cruelty and a thing for Fred, they collectively decide to kidnap a millionaire named Samuel Adams Pendlebury (Pat Hingle) and hold him for ransom but a man named McClellan (Stacy Harris) and his follow F.B.I. agents won't be one step behind them forever…

Filmed on location in the Ozark Mountains this Depression Era gangster movie was obviously inspire by the success of Bonnie And Clyde when it struck box office gold a couple of years before and like that movie, it doesn't pull any punches when it comes to its depictions of violence. Ma has a tendency to want to get rid of any witnesses and tends to use her machine gun to do just that while her killer clan, each one as twisted and perverse as she, aren't any kinder or gentler. The Barker Clan are bad people, and tossing in Gibson and especially Dirkman into the mix doesn't do much to fix that problem. And so we have a movie about a bunch of miscreants out raising Hell and out to rob, cheat and steal their way to a better life but the script ensures that these characters are interesting enough that, even if we don't necessarily like them or sympathize with them, we do at least care to find out what happens to them. We also know that it won't end well for anyone.

Shelly Winters, past her pinup model years at this point in her career, has a ridiculously commanding screen presence in the lead. She plays the character with as much brash, bold charisma as you could hope for and is believable enough as the tough as nails ringleader. The four sons are just as good though, with a young Robert DeNiro really doing a great job as the smack addicted junkie son with a penchant for candy bars and no aversion whatsoever to rape and murder. Stroud and Kimbrough are excellent here as well and Bruce Dern steals quite a few scenes as Walden's former prison ‘friend.' Varsi isn't given as much to do as her male counterparts but given that this is unabashed drive-in fare through and through, it'll surprise no one to learn that she shows quite a bit of skin. More than just a pretty face, whoever, she handles her role quite well and in many ways her character is just as tough as Ma's four sons and just as handy with a gun as any of them.

Corman paces the movie well and the picture is nicely shot. There's good attention to period detail throughout the film, you'll notice it not only in the costumes and the cars but in the ways that the locations are dressed as well. The locations used throughout the movie offer up an appropriately folksy feel that contrasts in interesting ways with all of the onscreen debauchery. There are times where the screenplay feels disjointed and a little slipshod, sometimes coming across more as a series of set pieces than a completely cohesive narrative, but it's easy to look past this one, particularly if you have an affinity for gangster films and Corman movies.

Bloody Mama debuts on Blu-ray from Kino framed at 1.85.1 and in AVC encoded 1080p high definition. Aside from a few scenes that show some very minor print damage (small white specks, no serious scratches) the image is quite clean. Detail is nice and strong as is texture and while this stands out more in close up shots, we notice it in medium and long distance shots as well. Colors are reproduced very accurately and skin tones are natural and warm without looking too hot or too pink. Black levels are also fine. This is definitely a nice step up from the DVD release.