Dirt-poor depression-era mother Wilma (Angie Dickinson) vows to put her life of poverty behind her. With her two daughters Billiy Jean (Susan Sennett) and Polly (Robbie Lee) she strikes out for California and stumbles into a life of crime. The trio run a number of scams before taking up bank-robbing alongside Fred Diller (Tom Skerritt) and moving on to gambling rackets with gutless huckster William Baxter (William Shatner). It’s all high adventure and fun and games until the inevitable comedown. “Big Bad Mama” is a great piece of trashy, mid-‘70s drive-in exploitation care of producer Roger Corman’s New World Pictures. Corman and his scriptwriters (William Nolan and Frances Doel) anti-establishment, counter-cultural credentials are to the fore in the targets chosen by Wilma: the conman preacher; conniving bankers; the American Legion; an oil firm and finally an upper-class gathering. The film also works as something of a parody of dustbowl gangster flicks, but these nuances are never left to linger as Wilma and her daughters have too many banks to rob, too many towns to shoot up and to many cop cars to run off the road. The dialogue is sparse and snappy and director Steve Carver keeps the action zippy and fun. The cast are great particularly Angie Dickinson who is powerful (and gorgeous) as the tommy gun totting mother determined that her daughters won’t grow up to a life of grinding poverty. Susan Sennett, Robbie Lee, Tom Skerritt and William Shatner all do fine but pale against the bright light of Dickinson. Dick Miller and Royal Dano are also in the cast, bringing their own idiosyncratic stylings. “Big Bad Mama” is wildly entertaining throughout, it’s trashy, campy, fast-paced and silly and full of sexy exploitation goodness. ( )