Boxcar Bertha **** (1972, Barbara Hershey, David Carradine, Barry Primus, Bernie Casey, John Carradine) – Classic Movie Review 5371

Director Martin Scorsese’s Depression-era 1972 romantic crime thriller stars the young and lovely Barbara Hershey, who scores a success as real-life Thirties Arkansas labour organiser Bertha Thompson. Bertha takes a leaf out of Bonnie Parker’s book in Bonnie and Clyde and joins rabble-rousing rail union boss Big Bill Shelly (David Carradine) in a gang of crooks who rob trains to avenge themselves on the bosses of a railroad.

As you would expect, this is a fascinating, highly watchable movie, with a worthwhile, little-known, real-life tale, a welter of Seventies-style violence and some interesting background detail about unions and the Depression (Carradine sends his loot to the union fighting the railroad bosses).

Producer Roger Corman gave the young Scorsese an early directorial opportunity (it is only his second feature film, after Who’s That Knocking at My Door in 1967). Lustily done, it is vintage Scorsese.

The screenplay by Joyce Hooper Corrington and John William Corrington is based on the book Sister of the Road, a fictionalised autobiography of radical and transient Boxcar Bertha Thompson, written by Dr Ben L Reitman.

Also in the cast are Barry Primus, Bernie Casey, John Carradine, David R Osterhout, Harry Northup and Martin Scorsese in a cameo.

It runs 88 minutes, is made by American International Pictures, is shot by John Stephens and is scored by Gilb Guilbeau and Thad Maxwell.

© Derek Winnert 2017 Classic Movie Review 5371

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