Mean Mother (1974)

Great Film overall

Bad Acting and worse Bad Screenplay

One of the most extraordinary films you will see this year. Take that as you want.

This is a dark and sometimes deeply uncomfortable drama

During his career directing movies, Al Adamson has created an infamous list of films to his credit. I would clearly put him on the list of 10 worst directors in history, with garbage pictures like "Psycho A Go-Go", "Angels' Wild Women", "The Naughty Stewardesses", "Horror of the Blood Monsters", and "Dracula vs. Frankenstein" to his credit (or discredit). Aside from, perhaps, William Grefe, Ray Dennis Steckler and Ed Wood...I honestly can't think of a worse director! But deciding which of these is worse is akin to choosing between having Ebola, cancer or a flesh-eating virus...they're all very nasty!Well, with "Mean Mother", Al's at it again. But instead of his usual garbage film, this time he secured the rights to a Spanish film. He then hacked the movie apart and inserted a few new scenes and, voila, an all-new blacksploitation movie!! If this isn't a recipe for disaster, I don't know what is!Oddly, "Mean Mother" stars Dobie Gray....a man known for singing pop tunes like "Drift Away". And, you can tell that Gray is no actor, with stilted delivery of his lines and some hilariously bad fight scenes that look as if they're all being done in slow-motion! And, most of the time he just appears to be slapping his enemies silly! The story begins in the 1970s but then there's a long flashback where you see Beauregard Jones (Gray) meeting up with a white guy and becoming friends with him in Vietnam. Years pass and they each go their separate ways...but both paths lead to a life of crime. Now, back in the present, the two are reunited.Aside from seeing the gorgeous Luciana Paluzzi (a Bond villainess in "Thunderball"), there isn't a lot to recommend here. The fight scenes are silly and completely unchoreographed, the acting is amateurish and the overall picture, despite the action, is awfully slow and dull. Heck, the sound is even bad--with some characters sounding a bit loud and others being almost impossible to hear! Still, for an Adamson film my complaints are NOT that severe. Now I am not saying any of this is good...it isn't. But it's not among the director's schlockiest...though this isn't saying much!

This movie essentially begins with two soldiers named "Beauregard Jones" (Dobie Gray) and "Joe" (Dennis Safron) who decide to desert while serving overseas in Vietnam. While Beauregard takes a tramp steamer to Spain, Joe flies under a fake passport to Italy as part of a gold smuggling operation. Upon reaching their destinations Beauregard accidentally crosses the Syndicate and has to leave Spain with them hot on his heels due to their mistaken belief that he has stolen some valuable merchandise from them. So with limited assets and nowhere else to turn he decides to travel to Italy in search of Joe. Meanwhile, in Italy, Joe has managed to make ends meet by doing odd jobs here and there for the same people who hired him as a smuggler and has met a beautiful woman named "Therese" (Luciana Paluzzi) in the process. But even though he would like to settle down and raise a family with her he realizes that being an army deserter carries its own risks and would be a serious liability for the two of them. And then Beauregard suddenly shows up with problems that threaten all of their plans and aspirations. Now rather than reveal any more I will just say that I initially thought that this was a standard "Blaxploitation" movie from the 70's with a plot which would probably follow the usual pattern . What I didn't know was that this film borrowed heavily from another movie titled "Run for Your Life" and essentially morphed into something that it was never initially intended to be. This helps to explain the meandering plot and the choppy effect from one scene to another. That said, although I admired the manner in which the makers of this film managed to cut-and-paste scenes from another movie to create something entirely different, I have to say that the overall picture lacked balance and solidity. Additionally, while the acting was tolerable, the special effects and action scenes definitely had room for improvement as well. In short, about the only thing going for this movie was the presence of Luciana Paluzzi and to a lesser extent Marilyn Joi (as Beauregard's girlfriend "Joy"). Other than that this film was rather cheap and uninspired and because of that I have rated it accordingly.

Mean Mother (1974)* (out of 4)Another patch job from director Al Adamson and producer Sam Sherman. This here was originally a Spanish movie directed by León Klimovsky but Sherman bought the U.S. rights but when he realized it wouldn't sell, he hired Adamson to shoot new footage and turn it into a Blaxploitation film. The story centers on two Vietnam men, one white and one black (Clifton Brown), who go AWOL and get into a life of crime, which adds up to nothing. Whenever you take one film, edit it down and then try to add new scenes around it, more often than not you're going to be left with some incomprehensible mess, which MEAN MOTHER certainly is. With that said, I've actually seen worst from Adamson who was used to mixing and matching movies since it was something he'd do throughout his career. I think what keeps this film slightly entertaining is the fact that both films are just so different yet seeing them together just as a unique and weird feel to it. I will also admit that I thought Adamson did a decent job at mixing the two together and especially when you consider how this type of thing should never be done and especially with these two stories. Still, the film is a complete mess with the typical low-budget bad acting, bad direction and bad cinematography. This is to be expected whenever the director's main job is to get a film in the can for cheap and not to be trying to make some sort of masterpiece. As awful as the film is there's still something that unique to the work of Adamson and it rings true here. I don't think anyone would consider him a good filmmaker but you've got to at least give him credit for trying anything to try and bring a film together.

After seeing Grindhouse last weekend, I wanted to see something that came from the real grindhouse or drive-in of the '70s. A movie with the title Mean Mother looked like something up my alley. It seemed to have started that way with Our Hero Beauregard Jones making a drug deal with his contact that goes sour and has him kicking the bad guys' butts, but then we meet his white buddy from the Vietnam War and many of his exploits gets the lion's share of the story when they're separated. Too bad, though when it does get back to Jones, there's also his girlfriend Tracy King (better known as Marilyn Joi) who's there as eye candy but what eye candy! She's worth seeing when, after getting tied up, she convinces her white captor to set her free in exchange for some hanky panky with plenty of nudity provided on screen. I should note that Our Hero is played by Clifton Brown a.k.a. Dobie Gray whose best known hit song was "Drift Away" ("Give me the beat, boys, to free my soul. I wanna get lost in your rock-n-roll and drift away...") Also Italian redhead Luciana Paluzzi, who is best known as Fiona Volpe in the James Bond film Thunderball, plays the white buddy's doomed girlfriend Therese. Like I said, there's plenty of boring stretches involving the white buddy but by the end it's back to Jones for an action packed ending (of the low budget kind anyway) that should make you at least glad you saw this once...