Mama's Dirty Girls (1974)

Mama’s Dirty Girls: Directed by John Hayes. With Gloria Grahame, Paul Lambert, Sondra Currie, Candice Rialson. Mama loves men, but she loves money even more. She’s trained her three teenage daughters to meet, marry, and murder men for their money. But soon they meet Harold and he’s got other plans.

“This is more early 70u0026#39;s u0026quot;hicksploitationu0026quot;; a very low-budget film that borrows heavily from already low-budget, Roger Corman-produced fare like u0026quot;Bloody Mamau0026quot; and u0026quot;Big Bad Mamau0026quot;, except that it seems to be set in the present day. Like u0026quot;Big Bad Mamau0026quot; especially it focuses on an older female criminal and her sexy daughters as they seduce and murder wealthy men. The mother marries the men, the two older daughters seduce them, and then they all kill them. The plot of this movie is actually pretty stupid. It is not really necessary to kill these men, nor if theyu0026#39;re going to murder them is it really necessary to seduce them. And theyu0026#39;re also pretty dumb criminals–their first target isnu0026#39;t even wealthy while their second is a dangerous widower who may have murdered his own wife. The ending is a lot less than action-packed–you get the idea they ran out of both money and coherent ideas.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eWhat really redeems this movie though is the stellar cast. The mother is played by Gloria Graham, an actress whose B-movie career stretches all the way from 50u0026#39;s film noir like u0026quot;The Big Heatu0026quot; to 70u0026#39;s drive-in fair like this or the underrated horror flick u0026quot;Blood and Laceu0026quot;. Despite a weak script and no-budget she holds her own here against the likes of Shelly Winters or Angie Dickinson who played similar roles in the Corman pictures. Then there are TWO 70u0026#39;s drive-in queens. Candice Rialson was not a great actress and only appeared in a handful of movies (most famously as a very tempting college co-ed who tries to seduce Clint Eastwood in u0026quot;The Eiger Sanctionu0026quot;), but she was always VERY sexy, and her character here is such a malicious minx she not only tempts her stepfather by lolling around in a skimpy bikini, but she also cruelly teases a semi-retarded handyman just for the fun of it. (She also has some memorable nude scenes). Then thereu0026#39;s Sondra Currie, older sister to Cherie and Marie Currie of the music group The Runaways. Currie was kind of second-rate Claudia Jennings (who really should have been in this), but sheu0026#39;s still great as the oldest sister who is not only sexy but vicious–she not only seduces her cop boyfriend into the murder plot, but commits a u0026quot;criss-crossu0026quot; murder to hook him in as well. (Unfortunately, Currie apparently had a no-nudity clause in her contract, which is regrettable in itself, but also results in dumb scenes where sheu0026#39;s covering her bare breasts with her hands for no apparent reason while lying in bed with her boyfriend).u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eThe youngest sister is the good one whou0026#39;s not involved with the seductions or the murders, and the actress who plays her is not very memorable. But the cast is rounded out nicely by Annika DiLorenzo as the copu0026#39;s wife. While Currie and Rialson were somewhat talented, DiLorenzo was never more than a really nice piece, but she made quite an impression both on screen (where she played one of the slave girls in the extra near-hardcore footage Bob Guccione inserted into u0026quot;Caligulau0026quot;) and off (where she was a Penthouse Pet of the Year and reputedly a mafia moll for several members of the Gambino family). This movie, as a movie, is a waste of time, but this cast might just be worth it.”