Crazy Mama

Even though Jonathan Demme was in his still-cranking-exploitation-fare-for-Roger-Corman days, 1975's dysfunctional family crime comedy/drama CRAZY MAMA is a nice primer of the director's strong visual sense, one that would serve him for many years to come.  Fine use of locations.  Deft orchestration of action scenes.  Zippy style throughout.  What is most noticeable about this picture is its energy.  Nearly every frame is crammed with frenetic activity: the expected shootouts and chases, but also some fairly complex physicality by the actors.  Not always just straight slapstick.

The disparate group that comes together in a pursuit from California to Arkansas in the late 1950s all get nice showcases.  The actors' interactions feel completely natural; they were obviously very comfortable with their director, who allows wild, spontaneous behavior to alternate with more reflective moments.  Cloris Leachman, Ann Southern, and Linda Purl play three generations of the Stokes family, each repeating their matriarch's feistiness in all manner of living, especially when it comes to men.  Southern plays the eldest, a firebrand called Sheba who will hold the family name with honor, right to the bitter end.  Cheryl (Purl) is the youngest, tagging along the lovesick father of her unborn baby and a very laid back greaser she meets in Vegas.  Leachman is Melba, the middle aged beauty parlor owner who finds it repossessed, prompting the journey back East to her childhood home, shown in the prologue to have been the scene of her father's death at the hands of the police, who came to collect back payments on the land.  Funny thing, that history.

Stuart Whitman is on hand as Jim Bob, a gambler Melba marries in a quickie Vegas wedding, even though he's got a wife back in Texas.  Fans of Happy Days will enjoy Donn(y) Most as Cheryl's baby daddy, yet more or less playing the same role as he did on the beloved television show.  Fans of Mr. Magoo and Gilligan's Island will be tickled by Jim Backus' brief but memorable turn as the landlord who finds his automobile and dignity stolen at the beginning of the movie.  Both actors have very distinctive personalities and voices.  Demme, in a commentary track shared with Corman, has kind words for them.  Of Southern, he describes the legendary actress and former model as "tough."

Listening to the director and his old mentor makes this fun movie even moreso, especially as they reveal the little tricks to spice up their PG-rated product, including having Leachman hold a box high enough to push up her ample bosom.  Sorry fans, no nude scenes for her, though there are a few glimpses of Purl in a bathroom. CRAZY MAMA is far less sleazy and lurid than most New World productions, and that's part of its charm.  It's (mostly) good clean fun, with implications of a menage a trois and the more gruesome elements of gunfight bloodletting left to the viewer's imagination.  There's also a surprisingly comprehensive soundtrack of 1950's jukebox ditties:  novelty songs and ballads alike.  And you have to love those Brylcreem signs.

The cast is fine, but for me what makes CRAZY MAMA a true little gem is Demme's punch.  Gentle, nuanced, yet appropriately rowdy.  That he takes time for the characters to pause in a graveyard and earlier, to "shout" their departed into heaven (a wonderful scene) reveals that the director, working from a thoughtful script by Robert Thom, had far more on his mind than T & A.