NP: Boxcar Bertha

[JBFRAME at aol.com]

In a message dated 04/20/2002 11:34:20 PM Pacific Daylight Time, 
tyronemullet at hotmail.com writes:


> Exploitative? You betcha. Loaded with coincidence? Yeah. Martin Scorsese’s 
> first feature film? Uh huh. 1972 "true story" of 1930s Counterforce.
> 
>      

Young Bertha Thompson (Barbara Hershey) watches as her crop-duster father is 
killed while flying an unsafe plane under an employer's threats. Adrift in 
the South of the Great Depression, she hooks up first with maladroit Yankee 
cardsharp Rake Brown (Barry Primus), and then with labor agitator 'Big' Bill 
Shelley (David Carradine). Together with fellow fugitive Von Morton (Bernie 
Casey), they rob and harass the Reader Railroad and its tyrannical owner, H. 
Buckram Sartoris (John Carradine), whose shotgun-toting special deputies are 
never far behind. Big Bill goes to prison and Bertha becomes a prostitute, 
but fate won't keep them apart forever. 
    http://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/read.php?ID=3519
    


ACHTUNG!

spoiler 



An amazing ending to the film, etched in my mind all these years, is the 
crucifixion of  Bertha's lover, played by a young David Caradine.  He is 
nailed to the side of the box car in an apocalyptic apotheosis of staggering 
drama.  I relish this disturbing, depressing (no pun intended) story.  I saw 
it in at a drive-in in a double feature in 1973 with a really over the edge 
Blaxploitation thriller _Coffy_, directed by Jack Hill & starring Pam Grier & 
Booker Bradshaw, who gets his nuts blown off in a climactic scene.  
http://www.eccentric-cinema.com/cult_movies/coffy.htm

They don't make 'em quite like that any more, but they still pull off the 
occasional tasteless classic.  Seen _Dead or Alive_  by Miike Takeshi yet?  
If you love senseless violence & sexual exploitation Yakuza style, with 
absolutely no redeeming this is your bag.  
http://pears.lib.ohio-state.edu/Markus/Review/Films99/DOA.html
http://www.metroactive.com/papers/metro/09.13.01/tokyopop-0137.html
http://www.viz.com/deadoralive/introduction.html

You are guaranteed to walk out of the theatre weak in the knees.
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