If Mean Mother were a cocktail, it’d be one part blaxploitation, two parts travel brochure, and one final splash of expired gravy. It’s a jet-setting fever dream of incompetence, stitched together with all the charm of a drunk man trying to explain a heist while being chased by airport security. This is Al Adamson (under the alias Albert Victor) at his most confused, most disinterested, and most exploitative—not in the fun way, either. No, this is a film that makes you feel like you need to shower, twice, just to forget you saw it.
The premise—what little there is—sounds halfway decent on paper: two Vietnam War deserters, one Black, one white, go globe-trotting through Europe and the Caribbean, trying to outrun the law and scam their way into a better life. There’s potential in the bones. But potential in an Al Adamson film is like a parachute made of spaghetti: it unravels fast and ends with your face in the pavement.
Dobie Gray (yes, the same Dobie Gray who sang “Drift Away”) stars as Beauregard Jones, and Clifton Brown plays his partner in desertion, Vince Kane. They’re both about as expressive as wax figures during a blackout. Watching them exchange dialogue is like watching two mannequins argue over rent. The chemistry is non-existent, the delivery stilted, and the emotions range from “mildly alert” to “deeply sedated.
The movie opens with Vietnam stock footage that looks like it was shot through a fish tank. Explosions, jungle shots, and canned screams abound. We’re told (in a voiceover that sounds like it was recorded on a motel answering machine) that these two soldiers just couldn’t take the war anymore, so they bolt. Fine. So far, so First Blood meets Cool Breeze. But instead of building a coherent narrative, the movie immediately devolves into a parade of mismatched scenes, lazy exposition, and geographical whiplash.
One minute they’re in Rome, the next they’re in Madrid, then suddenly they’re in Jamaica or the Dominican Republic or maybe it’s just a California backyard with a palm tree. The locations are real, but the plot is fake news. The transitions are abrupt, the editing is like a blunt trauma to the temple, and the continuity is laughable—characters change outfits mid-conversation, cars jump model years, and the sun seems to rise and set at will like it’s drunk on tequila.
The soundtrack is a greasy slab of mismatched funk, soul, and off-brand James Bond themes. Half the time it’s so loud you can’t hear the dialogue, which may have been a mercy. The other half of the time, it drops out entirely, leaving you to sit with the eerie silence of people who forgot they were in a movie.
Beauregard and Vince bounce from one scheme to the next like pinballs in a broken arcade. There’s a diamond heist that goes nowhere. There’s a nightclub scene that lasts forever and accomplishes nothing. There’s a moment where Dobie Gray seduces a white woman for information, but he moves with all the passion of a DMV employee asking for your license. Sex scenes are shot like hostage videos—awkward, poorly lit, and full of unenthusiastic grunting. It’s all sleaze without the sizzle.
The women, of course, are all paper-thin eye candy—barely clothed, poorly dubbed, and constantly being ogled by the camera like it’s a horny uncle at a barbecue. This isn’t even exploitation; it’s just boredom in a bikini. There’s no style, no tension, just the dull throb of the plot limping toward nothing.
Now, let’s talk about the action. Mean Mother boasts a few shootouts and fight scenes, all choreographed with the grace of a toddler swinging a broomstick. Gunfire sounds like someone popping bubble wrap in the next room. Blood squibs? Nonexistent. Fistfights? More like light shoving contests with occasional groans. One car chase looks like it was filmed during a lunch break on a closed street. No stakes. No adrenaline. Just the sound of a muffler dragging and your will to live fading.
And then there’s the narration. Oh, God. The voiceover is relentless. It explains things that don’t need explaining, ignores what should be explained, and occasionally contradicts the events on screen. It’s like having a half-asleep Uber driver describe a different movie to you while you’re trying to watch this one. There’s even a bizarre detour into philosophical musings about war, race, and freedom—as if the movie suddenly remembered it wanted to matter—but those moments pass quickly, like farts in a hurricane.
The worst offense, however, is how it wastes its premise. The racial tension, the deserter’s guilt, the moral ambiguity—all of it is teased but never explored. You’ve got two men of different backgrounds navigating post-war paranoia and foreign lands, and what do they do with it? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. Instead, they drink rum, fumble through scams, and occasionally remember they’re fugitives.
By the end of the film, you’re not rooting for anyone—you’re just begging for the credits. And when they finally come, it’s like someone finally turned off the gas leak in your living room. The relief is palpable.
Final Thoughts:
Mean Mother is a cinematic pit stop where talent goes to die. It wants to be a stylish, international thriller with a social conscience, but it’s directed by a man who probably gave the actors stage directions through a bullhorn while sitting in a folding chair next to a bar. The plot is thinner than hospital soup. The editing was done with garden shears. And the tone? Schizophrenic, at best. It’s not so much a movie as it is an accidental slideshow of someone’s ill-conceived European vacation—if that vacation included wigs, prostitutes, and people forgetting their lines.
Avoid this one unless you’re conducting a forensic study of how not to make a movie. Or unless you’re a film masochist with a taste for cinematic roadkill. Either way, Mean Mother is mean to your eyes, cruel to your patience, and downright vicious to your sense of narrative coherence.
File this under: “Found in a box in the garage, and should’ve stayed there.”
