Substitutes Can Let You Down Quicker than a Strapless Gown

Crazy Mama (1975)
directed by Jonathan Demme
rating: 3 out of 5 cravats
on DVD from Netflix

There’s a movie where Roman Polanski plays a vampire hunter; it’s a comedy, of course, but not a funny one. “Homage” wasn’t a sturdy narrative device back then, in part because the independent directors of the 1970s underestimated the craft involved in studio pictures. Movies like Crazy Mama are more often a mess than a pleasure, but in spite of a frenzied pace that borders on incoherence, Demme’s follow-up to Caged Heat is appealingly willy-nilly and warmly all-American.

For one thing, I've never been a Cloris Leachman fan because I dislike her typecast performance in The Last Picture Show. Here she’s a Venice free spirit who stuffs her breasts into a cocktail dress before marrying a married man in Las Vegas. Her dear mother dreams Southern dreams of reclaiming the family plot in Oklahoma. Linda Purl, the younger sister, occupies the drive-in crowd with her drive-in looks and clothes, and no one in the parking lot has to worry too much about the consequences of multiple hotel shoot-outs, bank robberies, and extortion plots. Everyone, including Bill Paxton on the CB, is just there to have fun.