Crazy Mama (1975) on Netflix
Melba Stokes runs a Long Beach beauty salon and lives with her mother Sheba and her pregnant daughter Cheryl. A landlord's repossession sends the three women toward Arkansas.
- Netflix2.6/5
- IMDb5.4/101,235 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes89%
Trailer
Plot summary
In 1958, Melba Stokes, a widow, owns a beauty salon in Long Beach, California, and shares her home with her mother Sheba and her pregnant daughter Cheryl. When their landlord, Mr. Albertson, comes for back rent and repossesses their belongings, the loss of the salon sets Melba on a life of crime and the three women flee. They drive toward Arkansas to reclaim the family farm in a wood-paneled station wagon and a stolen Cadillac. On the road they rob a gas station and then head for Las Vegas. Cheryl's boyfriend Shawn is following her, and Melba takes up with Jim Bob Trotter, a runaway sheriff from Texas.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Crazy Mama (1975)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Original director Shirley Clarke was fired 10 days before Crazy Mama was to start filming. Producer Roger Corman called in Jonathan Demme, who turned the job down until Corman told him he had to direct it if he wanted to make Fighting Mad.
SPOILER
Jonathan Demme rewrote the script's ending, which originally killed all the leads, so that everyone escaped except the character played by Ann Sothern, because Demme disliked Sothern. Corman felt the film had no ending, so Demme shot an alternative ending with the family running a burger stand in Miami in 1959.- Jonathan Demme said Roger Corman was furious at him for changing the ending and believed Crazy Mama would be the first Mama film to lose money. Demme said it was indeed the first not to make money, and Corman canceled their next film, Fighting Mad.
- Producer Julie Corman gave birth to her first child while the film was being made: during a big gunfight and car crash scene, the ambulance standing by left the set with her in it to rush her to hospital.
- Bill Paxton worked on Crazy Mama as a set dresser, and the film gave him his first speaking role in a movie.
