#113 - Ma Barker's Killer Brood

As the schizophrenia continues, we get another selection that has three movies on one DVD. This time around, the set goes by the title, Classic Gangster Movies. If there is anything I have learned while doing this, it is that the adjectives used to describe these kinds of movie collections are usually the exact opposite of what the movies should be described as. In this case, the only thing that makes them classic is that they are old. I suppose that the type of movie is classic, as well as how they made it, but in my mind, classic means that it is memorable and can stand the test of time. I'm assuming that none of you, except maybe one, have heard of this movie. And thats a big maybe. Therefore, this movie is no classic. It's not even a cult classic. It's just another old movie that is being put onto a DVD without the decency of digital remastering. Nothing as bad as Spooks Run Wild, but is it too much to ask to put forth some sort of an effort to make the movie look and sound better? Enough is too much!! You have the technology. We all know it works. We have all seen the results. I'm begging you DVD makers to use it.

But that's not why you came here today. You wanna know all there is to know about this movie. Well, I'll give you some info. It's about an hour long, black and white, has mom with a killer brood. Actually, it appears that in the midst of all these classic(there's that word again) gangsters, there was a team made up of a mother and her children. I would say that this is her story, but I get the feeling that the entire thing is a completely fictitious. I have no historical evidence to back that up, but it just seems to be the case. I'm sure the two Dillinger movies had plenty of fictitious moments, but they seemed to have a few more moments, such as his death, that were based on fact. This doesn't seem to be the case with this one.

Now that we have established that this is a movie filled with made up stuff in it(who knew?), let's actually talk about the movie itself. It's not too bad. It's not good, but we finally have another bad movie that has enough elements in it to make it fun. The best is Ma Barker herself. The movie is really all about her and the way she runs the show. If you believe this story, she was more of a badass and more coniving than Dillinger, Machine Gun Kelly, and all those guys combined. And let me tell you, the name Barker was never more deserving than for this character. It's ridiculous and over the top, but seeing her literally bark out orders to everyone in her nasty cold blooded style is pretty amusing, and at some times quite humorous. It takes a while for the movie to get going, which is hard when it's only an hour, but once the boys grow up to be men, it gets to be more like the gangster type movie it should be. I can't say that it's worth a recommendation, but it wasn't too bad.