Boxcar Bertha (1972) Every dedicated lover of cinema well knows the number of superstar directors, actors and other movie craftspeople who apprenticed under the fast 'n furious King Of Low Budget Exploitation.....Roger Corman.
And anyone who's read or heard anything about Corman well knows he didn't jump-start all these brilliant careers out of the magnanimous goodness of his heart.
Letting directors like Francis Ford Coppola, Peter Bogdonovich,, James Cameron, Ron Howard and Jonathon Demme get their foot in the door to become professional filmmakers was a win-win for both Corman and his apprentices......
He handed the fledgling directors the opportunity to use all their natural talents while on the learning curve of the art, craft and business of movie-making. In return, he got them to work for him for next to nothing......or sometimes, nothing at all. And for the ever penny-pinching Corman, producing movies for as little money as possible was the perrenial Golden Rule.
We realize other buffs would hotly disagree with us, but in watching these films by the Corman trainees, we'd be hard-pressed to spot any future excellence of the young directors who toiled on them. We think they weren't so much worried about crafting great cinematic art,.....they were just thrilled to make a movie, any movie.........even if Corman only gave 'em only 3 days and 5 dollars to make one.
But having finally gotten around to watching Martin Scorsese's one and only film for Corman, we were surprised at how Scorsese managed to put his unique stamp on the film, even though it's awash in the in the usual Corman-dictated helpings of nudity, sex and blood drenched violence.
'Boxcare Bertha' supposedly inspired by the real hard-knock Great Depression life of transient Bertha Thompson, never aspires to be anything more than a low grade 'Bonnie And Clyde' ripoff designed for fast playoff and quick cash at drive ins and seedy double-feature grindhouses.
It's paint-by-numbers, 1930's bums-on-the-run stuff with Barbara Hershey as the hot-to-trot Bertha and David Carradine as her lover, a union organizer forever battling with thuggish cops and murderous goons from the railroad company he opposes. (As a nice bonus, the nefarious railroad tycoon is played by Carradine's father, John Carradine, using his best, voice-of-doom delivery.....)
From the look of the film, it's clear that the then 30 year old Scorsese was not content to simply pump out another piece of shlock for Roger Corman. He meticulously story-boarded the entire film, and virtually every shot in it appears carefully thought out and composed for maximum storytelling impact.
In other words, it looks like a movie from a director who'll soon be on to much better things.....(which is something we couldn't say, for example, watching Ron Howard's "Grand Theft Auto" of James Cameron's "Piranha 2: The Spawning")
And proving us right, Scorsese next went on to direct "Mean Streets".
It's easy to spot the director's already sure command of the filmmaking arts, even while having to stop to let Hershey strip naked at regular intervals and also stage the expected shotgun slaughters of a 1930's outlaws-vs.-the-law tale. (And years before his "The Last Temptation Of Christ", Scorsese even got to throw in a crucifixion......)
Since "Boxcar Bertha" exists as a prime example of a Roger Corman-ized drive-in doozy and also a fascinating peek into the flowering of a major director, we'd say it more than earns 3 stars (***). Corman and Scorsese completists shouldn't dare miss it.......
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