Boxcar Bertha

The Roger Corman production, shot on an austere budget in Arkansas area, is routinely directed by Martin Scorsese.

While there is a striking similarity [to Bonnie and Clyde] in general content, background, fine color photography and even the use of hillbilly music, the new, more modest film stands curiously on its own.

Scorsese remains one of the bright young hopes of American movies.

'Promising juvenilia' is about the most one can say for it.

[Martin] Scorsese was anxious to show his chops on a real Hollywood feature and does so admirably (if impersonally) with rough-and-ready style on a mix of true story and exploitation drama.

Lots of violence, typical of the Corman exploitation mill, but the film still shows the budding talent of Scorsese in his use of moving-camera and period detail.

Scorsese's second film is one of his weakest, a violent impersonal work that feels like an extension of such rural crime-gangsters features as the exploitation flick Bloody Mama or the arty and better one Bonnie and Clyde.

Part exploitation movie, part visionary cinema, Boxcar Bertha is caught somewhere in between both.

Scorsese hadn't developed a personal vision yet, but a few moments during the heat of battle reveal a lively, playful camera. Not to mention the on-target performances by Hershey and her co-stars David Carradine, Barry Primus and Bernie Casey.

...an often interminable experience.

Although a Martin Scorsese retrospective could easily survive its absence, Boxcar Bertha is a cornerstone of the director's filmography

Scorsese at his most droll and uninspired.