User Reviews

I made a mistake of reading about Ma Barker before watching this second episode in the first season of The Untouchables. It kind of ruined things, because this story is almost entirely fabricated for dramatic purposes. In real life, Ma Barker never was directly involved in any of her boys' crimes and certainly wouldn't be firing a machine gun as she does in the dramatic shootout in Florida.

Also, this episode is disappointing because I want to see Robert Stack as "Elliott Ness" and his "Untouchables" in action in Chicago and this turns out be the Claire Trevor show as we see the life of her and her boys, mainly in Oklahoma. Trevor plays the kind of character atheist Hollywood loves to show: a church-going person who is nasty, violent and downright evil. Yes, in real life Barker came from a religious background, but this episode goes to such extremes in its distorted way to show a hypocritical woman that it's laughable. In truth, Ma was nothing more than an accomplice, unable to rat her boys out.

Trevor was always good playing nasty women in film noirs so she is effective in that role here, especially at the "advanced" age of 49. Speaking of that number, Trevor plays a character very similar to "Ma" in the 1949 movie "White Heat." Margaret Wycherly played that role and, frankly, I would choose her over Trevor.

Anyway, this was a departure from most of stories in this series, and a little too bias (and overacted by Trevor) to suit me, although it certainly wasn't boring.

Actually, there was one very neat thing in here. One of the Barker boys, "Doc," wound up with a girlfriend whom he married. She was a beautiful young woman, very sexy, and looked familiar. I just couldn't place where I knew her. The ending credits told me. It was Louise Fletcher, of "Nurse Ratched" fame in "One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest." Fletcher was about 24 when she filmed this episode.

There was a woman named Ma Barker (Claire Trevor) and he had several evil children who terrorized folks and were career criminals. Apart from that, most of what's in this episode is pure hooey. While it's debatable how much Ma Barker was in charge of the Barker Gang (most sources say she was stupid and unable to lead anyone....J. Edgar Hoover described her as the brains of the family), what isn't is that the FBI killed her in a shootout and Elliot Ness had absolutely nothing to do with this...nothing. Now if you can look past that it's all fictional, then you'll probably enjoy this show. As for me, I like the even crazier version of Ma that you see in "Ma Barker's Killer Brood"-- but this performance by Trevor is pretty silly and frequently over the top! Overall, fun and worth seeing but hardly accurate in any way--and the ending is just insane. But I do wonder how in the opening scene Ma could toss a grenade ONTO an agent and it explodes...and he's STILL alive!!!

By the way, as the blanket is about to be put over one of Ma's dead sons, pay attention---you can CLEARLY see him blink!

Two Oscar winning actresses from different generations, Claire Trevor and Louise Fletcher, star in this wildly fictional tale of how Eliot Ness and his Untouchables aid in the taking down of that notorious bank robbing family the Barkers. Anyone with a modicum of knowledge knows Ness had nothing to do with that operation. When Frank Sinatra and J. Edgar Hoover both object to a program that's taking in a lot of territory pilgrim.

Still Trevor gives one great expansive performance as the infamous gangster mother of the year, Ma Barker. She turns out to be the male role model as opposed to poor ineffectual Vaughn Taylor who she and the four sociopathic sons she raised. Louise Fletcher is the girlfriend of one of them who Trevor makes most definitely unwelcome. Ain't nobody good enough for her lovely sons.

That final shootout that has gone down in gangster lore when the family opens up the family arsenal is classic. This family could have been the poster family for the NRA.